Best (So Far) finds the finest first-round covers of the latest pop hits.
After Saturday Night Live ad teasers, cell phone captures of Coachella videos, and endless interviews with the album’s collaborators – including the pizza guy – Daft Punk‘s Random Access Memories has finally arrived. An with it, hundreds of covers of the album’s first single “Get Lucky.”
We already heard Daughter’s mesmerizing take. Now here are our five other favorites to date. Continue reading »
It’s hard to believe, startling even, that we haven’t posted a Lana Del Rey related cover in almost six months. After the release of the Great Gatsby, however, it is safe to say that more Del Rey covers will be pouring in soon. First up after this lull? Deadbeat Darling with a live acoustic rendition of the ever-popular “Video Games.” Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
“I Want You Back” was such a perfectly written song it would have been a hit no matter who did it first (Gladys Knight & the Pips were early candidates, as was Diana Ross), but the world lucked out by discovering it through the Jackson 5. Michael Jackson, still a couple years away from his teens, delivered a vocal Dave Marsh called “just beyond belief, nuanced and knowing but at the same time, young and innocent.” Backed by a musical track that combined the sounds of Motown and Sly & the Family Stone with a double dose of sunshine, Michael and his brothers were never going to miss the target, but who knew their arrow would embed itself so deeply in the bull’s-eye?
Continue reading »
It’s been an eventful week for David Bowie covers. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield blew up the Internet earlier this week with his zero gravity performance of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” shot in the International Space Station. Last night on Jimmy Fallon, confetti and giant-hamster-ball lovers The Flaming Lips also performed a Bowie cover that is sure to quickly make its rounds on the world wide web. Continue reading »
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
Like any self-respecting rock musician these days, David Byrne has a musical currently running in New York, Here Lies Love, a disco extravaganza about Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and today he will celebrate his 61st birthday basking in its excellent reviews and an extended run. Although Byrne will always be known for his work with Talking Heads, he has also released solo albums of wildly varied styles, written books, created visual art projects, directed films and written music for movies, television, ballet and opera (winning an Oscar for his work on The Last Emperor). He has collaborated with artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Fatboy Slim, St. Vincent, Twyla Tharp, Phillip Glass, Robert Wilson, Selena, and Thievery Corporation. Not to mention running a record label and an Internet radio station. Also, he has designed bicycle racks. Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
“Stagolee” or “Staggerlee,” or “Stack-O-Lee,” or other variants, is the musical retelling of a cold-blooded murder. Some trace the song to roots in English murder ballads, but it seems pretty clear that the precipitating event that led to this much-recorded story was the killing of William Lyons by “Stag” Lee Shelton at the Bill Curtis Saloon in St. Louis at Christmas time in 1895. Lyons’ death certificate is reproduced above.
By all accounts, Shelton was a “bad man,” a pimp and gambler, and he and Lyons were at the saloon, drunk and arguing over politics or some such, when Lyons made what probably didn’t feel like a fatal mistake — he took Shelton’s Stetson hat, possibly after Shelton had crushed Lyons’ derby. Accordingly, Shelton shot him dead. Rather than lead to calls to ban handguns, this seemingly pedestrian, if horrific, event (it was apparently just one of 5 similar murders that day in St. Louis) sparked a legend that has been recorded more than 400 times, in virtually every style imaginable.
Continue reading »
Tomorrow, Bhi Bhiman releases covers album Substitute Preacher, his mostly-acoustic take on everyone from the Police to Dio. As these things often do, the project started with one song.
“The inspiration to do this covers record came from one song,” Bhiman wrote. “It was “Walk of Life”, by Dire Straits. I knew the song since being a kid, and I’ve always thought of it as Mark Knopfler’s nod to Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode.’ The song really rings true with me because, in a way, it’s my story too. So I started doing a live version, in a country blues style with the audience whistling along, and it became a highlight of my shows.”
For the video, Bhiman brought in old Buster Keaton footage, calling him the “greatest physical comedian of all time.” Listen to “Walk of Life” – and watch Keaton paddle a horse, scrub a lion, and fall down a lot – below.
Check out more Bhi Bhiman at his website.
In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
Where I come from, Shel Silverstein was a demigod. —David Mamet
Shel Silverstein was the unofficial poet laureate of everyone’s childhood. His books — The Giving Tree, A Light In the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends — were instrumental in showing that kids could handle some of the adult themes in life without becoming degenerates, or maybe even that it was okay to be a degenerate. That’s not to say the bluenoses didn’t try to stop him: A Light in the Attic placed midway in the top 100 books banned from the 1990′s. Some bristled at Silverstein’s adult side, even though he saved his more salacious material for songs and adult poems that weren’t meant for children. That material is definitely a product of the sixties and seventies, detailing everything from every sexual fetish imaginable (“Freakin’ At the Freakers Ball”) to every drug available (“The Perfect High”). Some of it we’ll feature today, the 14th anniversary of his death (or at least of the day they found his body). Read on. Continue reading »
They Say It’s Your Birthday: David Byrne 
Five Good Covers: I Want You Back (The Jackso… 
The Best Cover Songs of 2012 
Five Good Covers: Stagolee (traditional) 
The Flaming Lips Rock Laser Undies to Cover B… 
The Five Best Covers of Daft Punk’s “Get Luck… 
Breakfast At Your Place Goes Very Old School … 
In Memoriam: Shel Silverstein 
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