Radio 1 Live Lounge Covers -- The Greatest Source Ever

If you know me or have ever read this site, you know I collect cover songs -- preferably covers of crappy British pop songs by crappy British artists. I am passionate about my collection, as anyone who has ever sat next to me at a Genius Bar knows (when I lost almost my entire collection last fall in the great Mac Book Pro motherboard failure of 2006 and then had to rebuild it. Three times.)

Many of my favorite covers in my collection come from BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, hosted by Jo Whiley. Bands come in, sing a couple of songs acoustically and then sing a cover or two. The covers are amazing: Charlotte Church covering Mario's "Let Me Love You," Corinne Bailey Rae covering Editor's "Munich," Jamie Cullum covering Pharrell's "Frontin'," Lemar covering The Darkness's "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," Maximo Park covering Proclaimers "500 Miles." Obviously, I could go on and on.

Unofficial Live Lounge has scores of tracks from 2004 until now including the new Alicia Keys cover of How to Save a Life. It also has two songs that I thought I'd lost forever: Willie Mason's cover of Grandmaster Flash's The Message and Franz Ferdinand's cover of Pulp's Mis-Shapes.