Cover Song Spotlight #1

Rank Stranger by Ralph Stanley

Critical Country
4 min readAug 22, 2022
Reed George, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Since recently getting into guitar, I’ve really come to appreciate the art of an authentic cover video. I think there are so many amazing singers and pickers who go completely unnoticed, and I’ve decided to start a series showcasing some of my favorite YouTube covers of some of my favorite songs!

The first edition of this new series is going to be a bit of a trial run to see what y’all think of the idea, featuring covers of the song that got me into this deep rabbit hole; “Rank Stranger” by Ralph Stanley.

“Rank Stranger” was written by the famous gospel writer, Albert Brumley Sr. and was made famous by the Stanley Brothers in the 1960s. Since then it has been a staple in the world of bluegrass and gospel music, and is considered an all time classic.

I could show you the really notable covers of this song, like Ricky Skaggs, and Billy Strings, but that’s not the point of this series. I want to show you the everyday people who just sat down and recorded themselves covering this tune, and show off the hidden talent…

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Critical Country

I’m Ethan, and this is my (mostly) country music blog: Critical Country | Top Writer in Country Music and Music | Contact me at ethansilvers@yahoo.com