Oct 262017
 
free covers album

Ten years ago today, I had a whim.

I was studying abroad one semester and found myself with a lot of free time – school work was light, and a college student’s budget limited my international explorations – so I decided to start a blog. A second blog actually, since for several years I had run a personal blog of concert reviews and bootleg downloads called Dylan, Etc (it had more “Dylan” than it did “Etc”). I’d fallen in love with the cover song after hearing Bob Dylan (who else) play a revelatory cover of “Summertime” on his short-lived radio show. I’d already hosted a Cover Me college radio show, and decided to expand us to the World Wide Web.

These were the days of the so-called “MP3 blog,” which included a vibrant subgenre of cover-songs blogs. That’s right, I’d like to claim credit for inventing the category, but I didn’t – not even close. RIP to Copy Right?, Cover Freak, Fong Songs, and the rest of the pioneers – and shoutout to our fellow survivors from that era, Coverville, which was releasing podcasts before most people knew what that word meant, and the folk blog Cover Lay Down, which began around the same time as us.

A lot has changed over the past decade. We’ve published 3,564 posts as of this one. Oh, and did you notice the pronoun change there? Cover Me is no longer an “I” – it’s a “we”, with over 60 writers contributing over the years. We’ve grown from an ugly Blogspot to our spiffy own domain (which is overdue for a redesign itself, frankly). And in case the large banner ads all over the site weren’t clue enough, I just released a book also called Cover Me, which – back-patting alert – Variety called “one of the best multi-subject music books to come down the pike in years.”

We wanted to do something special to celebrate our tenth birthday. And we wanted to celebrate not just ourselves, but celebrate the cover song itself. So we put together this little album Cover Me Turns 10: A Covers Tribute to Covers as a gift to our readers. We contacted several dozen of our musician friends and asked them to cover a cover. That is, to honor the many great songs we might not even know without an iconic cover – Aretha Franklin reinventing Otis Redding’s “Respect,” Quiet Riot amplifying Slade’s call to feel the noize, Prince learning that nothing compares 2 Sinéad O’Connor.

We’re honored that so many of our favorite musicians contributed, and frankly speechless at how great a job they did. So speechless, in fact, that we asked them all to introduce their own work with a few sentences. A million thanks to all of them, and also to Cover Me writer and art whiz Sean Balkwill for designing the lovely – ahem – cover. The whole thing is free to download at Bandcamp until downloads run out, and free to stream forever.

Enough chatter from me. For ten years this blog has been all about celebrating the music and we’re not going to stop now. Thanks for taking this journey with us.

– Ray Padgett
Cover Me Founder Continue reading »

Apr 152017
 
HBO Girls music

The first episode of Girls aired on April 15, 2012, exactly five years ago. Six seasons in five years is more aggressive than the usual one-season-per-year pace of most shows. You could say Girls was growing up fast.

The series has featured more than 389 songs (per Tunefinder), not including the music of the finale tomorrow. Music writers routinely covered episodes, reveling in the impact the show’s music had on the depth of the storyline.

Covers of male songs performed by women were sprinkled across the episodes, in many cases spotlighting younger and less famous females. HBO could certainly afford the rights to the original recordings, so using these covers became a deliberate choice, not a plan B. Continue reading »

Feb 282012
 

Classic country star Patsy Cline is having something of a revival recently thanks to an unlikely group of fans– British rock bands. Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner performed her “Strange” for Australia’s Triple J last month, and now The Kills are getting in on the action. At their 10th Anniversary gig in New York last week, the garage rock duo added a minimalist take on Cline’s “Crazy” to their set. Continue reading »

Jan 132012
 

Australian radio station Triple J routinely recruits high-caliber musicians for its long-running covers feature, Like a Version. The latest addition to its roster is Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, who stopped by for a solo session during the first Like a Version of 2012. He brought along a cover of Patsy Cline‘s “Strange,” which often makes a brief appearance in the Monkeys’ gigs during their single “Fluorescent Adolescent.” Continue reading »

May 172011
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

arctic monkeys covers

When Arctic Monkeys burst onto the scene with the bratty, colloquial garage punk of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, few listeners suspected that the group of Sheffield teenagers would ever become grungy desert rockers. But they did exactly that, darkening their sound with the help of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and growing immensely as musicians at the same time. They’ve produced a multitude of covers along the way, and their diversity and quality is a great gauge of the band’s musical evolution. On the cusp of releasing their fourth album (the strangely named Suck It and See), here’s a look at five of the Arctics’ best cover performances. Continue reading »