Feb 232024
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

beatles covers

Sixty years ago this month, The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show. You don’t need us to tell you what a momentous occasion this was; entire books have been written on the subject. Suffice to say we’re using the anniversary as our excuse to finally devote a Best Covers Ever to perhaps the biggest band of them all. We’ve done Dylan. We’ve done the Stones. We’ve done Dolly and Springsteen and Prince. But there was one last giant remaining.

Though it’s difficult to measure this precisely, The Beatles are the most-covered artist of all time according to the two biggest covers databases on the internet (SecondHandSongs, WhoSampled). And that certainly feels right. “Yesterday” is often cited as the most-covered song of all time, though that needs qualifiers (a ton of Christmas standards would beat it). But, again, it feels right. The Beatles were ubiquitous in their day, and they’ve been ubiquitous ever since. They just had a chart-topping single last month, the A.I.-assisted “Now and Then,” which was duly covered widely. If “Carnival of Light” ever surfaces, no doubt a carnival of covers will soon follow. Continue reading »

Aug 242021
 
grandaddy gral brothers

As a part of the record label Perpetual Doom’s ongoing “Stay Tuned” series of TV theme song covers, Californian indie rockers Grandaddy and New Mexican electronic duo GRAL Brothers have tackled the themes for, respectively, Frasier and Are You Afraid of the Dark?.

The original Frasier theme is a catchy and bouncy jazz track, which Grandaddy has transformed into a slower and understated punk rock sound. The distorted vocals don’t add anything interesting, leading to a slightly underwhelming rendition. Check it out (if you really want to) below.

The GRAL Brothers track, on the other hand, is brilliant. Despite having only about 30 seconds of a spooky, jaunty theme song to work with, they’ve spun it out into what they describe as a “lucid high-desert landscape.” The track sounds insanely wide in your ears, like you’re staring out at a spooky sci-fi wasteland. If they ever make more episodes of the show, this version has to be the one used for the theme song. Check it out below.

Feb 012021
 
cover songs january 2021
Amanda Shires – That’s All (Genesis cover)

Our first song kicks off what will be a theme here. A lot of these came out at the very top of the year (or the very end of 2020) to kick a garbage year to the curb and hope for something better. Shires said: “’That’s All’ is a song that I have played a lot on tour. The song defines 2020 for me. It’s a true Covid anthem and I dare you to not dance to my version when you hear it!” Continue reading »

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?
Continue reading »