May 262022
 

Rarely Covered looks at who’s mining the darkest, dustiest corners of iconic catalogs.

bob dylan 1980s

Here’s part four of our five-part series on great covers of Dylan songs practically no one covers. If you need to catch up, start at the beginning!

Robbie Fulks – Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody

Robbie Fulks knows his rarely-covered Dylan; a few years ago he covered every song on Bob’s 1978 album Street Legal. Other than maybe “Señor,” no one covers those tunes! In 2016, he did an entire concert of Christian Dylan songs at iconic Chicago venue The Hideout. He dug deeper than just the Saved or Shot of Love tracks (or Slow Train Coming, which I covered in the ’70s post). That includes Bob’s hidden fire-and-brimstone gem “Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody.” Continue reading »

Apr 302018
 
best cover songs april

April was the best month for covers of the year so far. There’s no particular reason for that, I suspect. These things just ebb and flow. But the fact remains that it was a proverbial embarrassment of riches, as the length of the list below confirms.

As always, there’s no quality difference between the main picks and the honorable mentions; a cover’s categorization is only determined by how much I had to say about it. Continue reading »

Nov 102017
 
best covers 1987

Last year I did a roundup of the Best Cover Songs of 1996. It was a fun project to retroactively compile one of our year-end lists for a year before Cover Me was born. I wanted to do it again this year, but continuing the twentieth-anniversary theme with 1997 seemed a little boring. Turns out 1997 also featured a bunch of Afghan Whigs covers.

So to mix it up, I decided to go a decade further back and look at 1987. Needless to say, the landscape looked very different for covers. For one, far more of that year’s biggest hits were covers than we saw for 1996. The year had #1 cover hits in Heart’s “Alone,” the Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter,” Los Lobos’ “La Bamba,” Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now,” Club Nouveau’s “Lean on Me,” and Kim Wilde’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” Plus ubiquitous hits that didn’t quite top the charts, but remain staples of the songs-you-didn’t-know-were-covers lists, Buster Poindexter’s “Hot Hot Hot” and George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set On You.” Continue reading »

Jan 282015
 

When John Fahey-esq acoustic guitar virtuoso William Tyler delivered a covers session for Aquarium Drunkard, most of the choices were understandable ones for a fingerpicker: Ry Cooder, Blaze Floley, and a track from a compilation of rare solo guitar performances. The final one was a left-turn though: Blue Ösyter Cult. Specifically, an obscure track called “She’s As Beautiful As A Foot” from their relatively unsuccessful debut LP. Continue reading »

Apr 282011
 

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

The Beatles’ pilgrimage to India in 1968 led to an outpouring of new material from John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, all of which competed for space on their new album (the White Album). Though it didn’t make the cut, Lennon’s “Child of Nature” reappeared in 1971 on Imagine with different lyrics and a new title: “Jealous Guy.” The song stands as one of Lennon’s best, the desperate plea of a jealous lover who realizes that he may have gone too far, pushing away the very person he wants near. Continue reading »