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

These days the Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt’s means of distribution for some of the cleverest old-school songwriting around, is arguably best known for the 69 Love Songs box set (if you don’t yet have it, there are half a dozen songs on it you’ll fall in love with), but they’ve come up with winners right from the start. “100,000 Fireflies” was their first single on their first album, Distant Plastic Trees, back when Merritt was letting Susan Anway handle all the vocals and he handled all the instruments. Anway sings of shrieking and suicide, over a simple backing just this side of rinky-dink, but what comes across is a devastating lilt of loneliness, made all the more painful by its catchiness.
Continue reading »