The third esctoday.com TOP TEN list continues today with the places 3 and 2 being announced. As announced on Saturday, this week's topic are the TOP TEN bizarre cover versions of Eurovision entries.

All kinds of cover versions could be submitted. The ranking is purely subjective this week as a special exception and because of the high number of suggestions, we do not just rank ten single cover versions but ten groups of cover versions.

Sadly, we cannot feature all cover versions that were submitted. Nevertheless, we promise to feature those that did not make the top ten in the round-up article on Saturday. Anyway, we want to thank everybody who took part in creating the list.

So we continue…

No. 3 – Bubblegum dance versions of Eurovision classics

For a few years now, there has been a trend to release cover versions of Eurovision classics especially produced for children. Of course, many classics feature melodies that are easy to sing along so they are perfect for this kind of music although the bubblegum dance style does appear quite bizarre to those who are used to the classics.

The most successful cover version in this category came from France in 2006. A project named Pigloo released a cover version of the 1980 Luxembourg entry Le papa pingouin. The song was huge success and reached the top of the French single charts and it stayed in the top 100 for half a year. Due to the success, a German version was recorded and it reached the top ten in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0PyUkuymkM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKG08z85DtY

Successful formulas are likely to be imitated. Soon after the success of Le papa pingouin, young singer Karol released her own version of the 1977 French winner L'oiseau et l'enfant:

A more recent cover version of a classic was released by German band beFour in 2009. They recorded a new version of the 1975 Dutch winner Ding-a-dong and it was released as a single in 2009. It reached no. 61 on the German charts and it remains their worst selling single to date. It also their only singe that did not reach the charts in Austria and Switzerland.

Many thanks to Niclas Andersson for his contribution.

No. 2 – Unrockish cover versions of Hard rock hallelujah

In 2006, for the first time a hard rock song won the Eurovision Song Contest. However, some said that Hard rock hallelujah by Lordi is in fact a pop song dressed as "hard rock". Indeed, the song does have a melody that is suitable for many music styles and therefore it is no surprise that mayn different cover versions of the song have been performed.

One of them was performed by the TTÜ men's choir on television:

Maarja, who had represented Estonia in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1996 and 1997, performed a classical version of the song in the 2007 Estonian national final. Especially the combination of music and lyrics seems a little odd here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cydm3-_y2nA

The most famous cover version was released by dance group Frodo shortly after the Eurovision Song Contest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ja9wV6NazQ

Other notable cover versions, of which we unfortunately could not find footage online, include a jazz version of the song as well as various acoustic guitar covers.

Many thanks to Dragan, Paschalis and sanka for their contributions.

Tomorrow, we will introduce the number 1 on the list.