Faith (Limp Bizkit cover)
George Michael's 1987 hit "Faith" was a four-week No. 1 and a defining pop moment of the '80s. Limp Bizkit took it and weaponized it: quiet verse, explosive down-tuned chorus, turntable scratches. The cover became the radio hit that broke the band to the mainstream.
George Michael's "Faith," released in October 1987 from his debut solo album of the same name, became one of the most recognizable songs of its decade. It spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was Billboard's No. 1 single of 1988—a sunny acoustic rockabilly production that seemed to own the airwaves.
Limp Bizkit's cover appeared on their 1997 debut Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$, then dropped as a single on October 31, 1998. The arrangement played the verse almost straight and quiet, then detonated into heavy metal on the chorus, with DJ Lethal's scratching cutting through the top. It was a sonic theft and a reinvention: the bridge by which a generation of rock radio listeners arrived at nu-metal. George Michael was reportedly not amused—guitarist Wes Borland said in an interview that Michael "hates us for doing it."
The song set the template the band rode into Significant Other and remains a perfect time capsule of late-90s rock radio. One cover transformed Limp Bizkit from a debut-album band to the MTV-era phenomenon they became.
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