November 2016 - Page 2 of 3

Hear a Teenage Bruce Springsteen Cover “Suzanne” Before Leonard Cohen Released It Himself

Posted by Ray Padgett at 1:00 pm 1 Response »

Nov 142016

As we continue to mourn Leonard Cohen, here’s one little gem his death has dug up. Earlier this year, Bruce Springsteen made a point of paying tribute to artists we lost on stage. He covered “Rebel Rebel” for David Bowie, “Take It Easy” for The Eagles’ Glenn Frey, “Dream Baby Dream” for Suicide’s Alan Vega, and “Purple Rain” for Prince. And were he on tour, he’d surely sing something by Leonard Cohen (I bet he’d do a great “Everybody Knows”).

But he’s not on tour, so instead check out the one time he did cover Cohen: way back in 1967, years before the E Street Band. He was only 18 and playing in a local New Jersey band The Castiles. Somehow he got onto Leonard early – before Cohen had even released his own version of “Suzanne,” Bruce was covering it. He probably learned it off the Judy Collins version, which came out the year before Cohen’s own. Continue reading »

Watch Coldplay, Norah Jones, Avett Brothers, Car Seat Headrest, More Cover Leonard Cohen Live

Posted by Ray Padgett at 11:36 am 2 Responses »

Nov 142016

On Friday, we posted our tribute to Leonard Cohen, calling him maybe the greatest gift to cover songs ever. Many musicians agreed over the weekend, covering his songs across the world in live shows. We’ve rounded up a bunch below, from Coldplay, Norah Jones, Okkervil River, The Avett Brothers, Car Seat Headrest, and more.

The biggest surprise: Not many people picked the most obvious choice, “Hallelujah.” It seemed so perfect that I saw at least one person on Twitter begging musicians to pick something – anything – else to cover, and they listened. I figured it would dominate even more than “Purple Rain” did when Prince died, but perhaps many felt intimidated by the iconic Jeff Buckley and John Cale versions. It also might seem a daunting song to really sell, particularly if you just learned it in the tour bus (one of the only bands who did cover it: Styx). Continue reading »

In Memoriam: Leonard Cohen

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:00 pm 1 Response »

Nov 112016

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about Leonard Cohen covers. In some respects, he might have been the most cover-friendly artist of all time. Only Bob Dylan would come close.

Why was his music so coverable? Well, for one he wrote terrific songs. Duh. But so do Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones, and covers of their songs on average do not match covers of Cohen. Or look at the Beatles, who I’d put on the opposite end of this spectrum. The average Beatles cover is nowhere near as good as the original (though lord knows there are exceptions).

But no artist inspired more great covers than Cohen. Perhaps that is because unlike the Beatles, whose performances are hard to top, his original recordings were rarely definitive. His early albums were so barebones that one could do almost anything with this songs. Then there was the Phil Spector record, where great songs were buried under too much production. Then the ’80s came, a decade rarely kind to singer-songwriters, and Cohen’s records especially suffered from a reliance on instantly-dated production. In so many cases, Cohen’s perfect songs were presented with imperfect recordings. Hundreds of songs ripe for another artist to come along and make his or her own. Continue reading »

Joan Baez Covers “Beautiful and Deep” Antony and the Johnsons Song

Posted by Ray Padgett at 1:03 pm No Responses »

Nov 102016

Over the course of a career now in its sixth decade, Joan Baez has always had her ear to the ground for younger voices. She famously introduced a little-known songwriter named Bob Dylan to her already big audiences, and has continued to seek out newer songwriters ever since. On her most recent albums, she’s covered songs by Josh Ritter and Thea Gilmore. And now, on her current tour, she’s been covering the Antony and the Johnsons song “Another World.” Continue reading »

Covers of Campaign Songs Through American History

Posted by Ray Padgett at 8:00 am 1 Response »

Nov 082016

When we last did an election-themed post, we wrote “this damn election continues to never end”. That was in August of 2008. How naive we were then. As this latest round finally limps to a close today, we wanted to put together a cover-song soundtrack to take with you to the polls. To that end, we’ve compiled our 11 favorite covers of campaign theme songs.

Campaign theme songs used to be far better than they are now. Up until the 20th century, candidates would use songs written specifically for them, from James Madison’s “Huzzah for Madison, Huzzah” to James K. Polk’s “Jimmy Polk of Tennessee.” The best remembered is probably William Henry Harrison’s “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” a song proved more influential than his actual presidency, which lasted a month before he died in office. Sometimes these theme songs were just rewritten versions of popular songs (“Hello Dolly” becomes “Hello Lyndon”, “My Kind of Town Chicago Is” becomes “My Kind of Guy Dukakis Is”), but even still at least some effort was being made to come up with original lyrics.

Sadly, those days have ended. Now candidates choose from a handful of already-popular songs that vaguely embody their message. Hillary Clinton’s been using Katy Perry’s “Roar” a lot this time around, which Donald Trump leans on Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” after just about every other musician filed cease and desist letters (they eventually did too). No matter your politics, the move away from jolly songs about a particular candidate is a bummer. We’d definitely get behind a platform of “Make Campaign Theme Songs Great Again.”

In lieu of that, we’ve made a playlist celebrating campaign songs past and present. We could only find so many covers of the older candidate-specific songs – they don’t age well, particularly if the candidate is a loser (artists are not lining up to cover “Go with Goldwater”) – so we padded it out with some more recent campaign theme songs you might actually know. Go vote, and bring this soundtrack with you. Continue reading »

Five Good Covers: Hello, I Love You (The Doors)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 2:30 pm 1 Response »

Nov 042016

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

When the Doors went to number one with “Hello, I Love You,” many of their fans called them sellouts. Never mind they’d already gotten to number one with “Light My Fire” the year before; this time around, the thinking went, they were out to write a hit single and leave their darker stuff behind. More than half a century has passed since Jim Morrison wrote about that dusky jewel walking across the California beach sands, and while you can count the number of people who hum “Horse Latitudes” these days on the thumb of one hand, “Hello, I Love You” has maintained its status as a much-beloved classic of the sixties.
Continue reading »