![]() ![]() I watch and listen to Liliac’s covers and ask questions like “how well were they able to incorporate keyboards into songs that didn’t originally have them?” or “how well did Melody adapt her singing voice as either a tribute to or update of the original vocals, especially when singing songs originally sung by men?”. Since original songs have a songwriting component that needs to be evaluated, while covers don’t, the more important issue for covers is the arrangement. Reviewing and ranking covers is different than for original songs. That’s a big part of why this re-write was made. In my earlier ranked list, though, “The Last In Line” had not yet been covered, and “Master Of Puppets” was bumped out of the top 10 by another Metallica cover of theirs and their original tunes, for reasons I needed to explain further but really didn’t. They did the latter first, but eventually did cover both tunes, and absolutely crushed them. I said at the time that if they really wanted to establish themselves as the new face of metal music into the 2020s, they needed to cover – and master – two particular songs from that era and post them on video: Dio’s “The Last In Line” and Metallica’s “Master Of Puppets”. I recall responding to one of their videos (I think it may have been “Holy Diver”) on YouTube with a comment about their penchant for doing 1980s metal particularly well. Not every cover (or original for that matter) has been perfect a few of their early covers have exposed their youth a bit but as time has gone on and they have grown up a bit more, their covers have mostly become better and better. On their live performances as well as their “official cover music videos,” the band as a whole and Melody in particular has shown an incredible level of musicianship that is well beyond their ages. ![]() Dio’s “Rainbow In The Dark” and then “Holy Diver”. Through the various YouTube videos that have appeared since, Liliac has tackled some of the biggest and best hard rock and metal tunes, and nailed every one of them. The first one I saw was their cover of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” where I was simply blown away by then-16 year old lead singer (and bassist, then) Melody taking on the iconic Grace Slick. My introduction to Liliac, like with most people, was through their covers. And they are arguably the most exciting thing to happen in the music world in the last couple of decades. The entire band has been involved, at least to a small degree, in their songwriting. Their dad ( Florin Cristea aka “Papa Liliac”) is their producer and manager and occasional songwriter however, their original music is primarily the product of Samuel and Melody, on music and lyrics, respectively. Their musical style is concentrated heavily on 1980s hard rock and metal, though they’ve covered songs of various rock styles from the 1960s through the 1990s. So in writing this article and the companion article soon to come (Top 10 Liliac Original Songs), I separated my review of the two types of songs, and here present only their covers.įor those who simply haven’t heard of them yet, Liliac (pronounced “lily-ack”) is a rock band consisting of 5 siblings, currently ranging in age from 14 to 22: Samuel Cristea (22, 23 later this month) on lead guitar and backing vocals, Abigail Cristea (22 as of February 24) on drums, Melody Cristea (20, 21 in December) on lead vocals and occasional bass, Ethan Cristea (15, 16 in August) on bass and occasional rhythm guitar, and Justin Cristea (14, 15 in October) on keyboards. To start with, mixing the covers with the songs from their two albums of original material ( Chain Of Thorns, Queen Of Hearts) resulted in way too many “honorable mentions” that deserve a full review. In the months since, I have had my errors (there were several of them) pointed out, new videos have made their debut, and several re-listens have resulted in a modest but noticeable change in my ranking of Liliac songs. In May of 2021, I wrote up a Liliac Top 10 which included both covers and original songs. ![]()
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