Mar 292019
 

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

the cure

“Friday I’m In Love” is a dumb pop song, but it’s quite excellent actually, just because it’s so absurd…. It’s so out of character – very optimistic and really out there in happy land. It’s nice to get that counterbalance. People think we’re supposed to be leaders of some sort of “gloom movement.” I could sit and write gloomy songs all day long, but I just don’t see the point. – Robert Smith

For a mopey band, the Cure sure knew their way around a good pop song. Any number of sunshine ‘n’ rainbow combos would give their proverbial eyeteeth for the skills to write, record, and release songs like “In Between Days” or “Boys Don’t Cry.” But of all their songs, none seem so counter to Robert Smith & Co’s image as “Friday I’m In Love.” It’s so exuberant, so euphoric, you almost don’t know what to do with it. Picture someone skipping down the sidewalk, hands up high, beaming at the sunshine, people turning to stare at his wake – that’s “Friday I’m In Love.”

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Dec 172018
 
best cover songs of 2018

Two things strike me as I scan through our list this year. This first is that many of the highest-ranking covers are tributes to recently-deceased icons. No surprise there, I suppose. But none actually pay tribute to artists that died in 2018. They honor those we’ve been honoring for two or three years now – your Pettys, your Princes, your Bowies. Hundreds of covers of each of these legends appeared in the first days after their deaths, but many of the best posthumous covers took longer to emerge.

Good covers take time. That principle – the cover-song equivalent of the slow food movement, perhaps – holds true throughout the list. Sure, a few here appear to have arisen from sudden moments of brilliance, flash-arranged for some concert or radio promo session. But many more reveal months or even years of painstaking work to nail every element. Making someone else’s song one’s own isn’t easy. These 50 covers took the time to get it right.

– Ray Padgett, Editor-in-Chief

Start the countdown on the next page…

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Jan 262018
 
david byrne madonna

“Watch out, you may get what you’re after,” David Byrne sang in 1983’s Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House.” Byrne is not shy to collaborate with artists he admires across a vast array of genres and levels of fame, including St. Vincent, Selena (RIP), Fatboy Slim, Caetano Veloso, and more. It seems Choir! Choir! Choir!, a Canadian choir that went viral for their rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in 2016 – and a large crowd of fans – got what they were after last Saturday in New York when the choir performed with David Byrne. Continue reading »

Feb 272015
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

yankee hotel foxtrot covers

Writing about Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot seems a little like eating at a buffet right before closing. There may be a few good things left, but it is pretty well picked over, and what’s left has lost its flavor. Few rock albums of the past 20 years have been discussed and analyzed as much as YHF. Yet we proceed, undaunted, because what we do is different. And maybe, just maybe, listening to a full set of covers of each song of this great album will allow you to hear it anew. Because you never know when the buffet is going to get restocked with something fresh.
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