Apr 232014
 

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question: What’s your favorite cover of your favorite Beatles song?
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Nov 292013
 

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

Where would you start the lineage of hard rock and heavy metal? Many music fans pinpoint August of 1964, when “You Really Got Me” was released into the wild; two score and nine years later, it’s only gotten wilder. Thanks to the Kinks, heavy music would never be the same.

But it should be noted that “You Really Got Me” isn’t just a blueprint for hard rock – it’s also one terrific song. Have power chords ever been used so well, before or since? Have primal urges ever been more basically, urgently, and perfectly expressed? Van Halen’s version, which is probably the best known cover, doesn’t bring much new to the table aside from some pyrotechnics, which is a shame because there’s a lot more potential in the song. But other folks have been able to show just how durable a song it is…
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Mar 092011
 

This March, we pit 64 Beatles covers against each other in what we call Moptop Madness.

Yesterday’s winners: Jake Shimabukuro, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and Neil Young, “A Day in the Life”

Many days feature a few heavy hitters competing for the title, but today all four artists are relatively unknown (at least in these incarnations). Louisville duo Dirt Poor Robins deliver a rocking “Eleanor Rigby” that faces off against Brian Eno/Phil Manzanera’s one-album project 801 spacing out on “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Then, Brazilian metal band “Dr. Sin” pits their heavy “Doctor Robert” against Georgian songwriter Mark Heard’s light “I’m Looking Through You.”

Listen to each pairing below, then vote for your favorite. For added sway, try to convince others to vote your way in the comments. Voting closes in 24 hours. Continue reading »