Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Cat Power’s album The Greatest. And to mark the anniversary, she’s releasing a new EP, recorded with the same band who played on The Greatest. She is also planning a tour early next year, which will feature a performance of The Greatest in full. The EP will feature two covers. Continue reading »
The contemporary Irish-folk quartet Lankum has teamed up with director Leonn Ward and his team to create a spellbinding cover and music video for “Ghost Town.” The original version by The Specials put the social issues of the 1980s—urban decay, unrest, unemployment, societal chaos—on the table for everyone to see. This (of course) was done in a sort of ska-Brit-punk genre. Now, Lankum has recreated the song, making it what this Stereogum article is calling “doom-laden experimental music.” Continue reading »
At the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, Elton John led a tribute to Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson. “We loved each other,” John said, “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather pay tribute to than Brian Wilson and his family with this incredible song.” He then launched into a cover of the 1966 song, “God Only Knows,” with back up from musicians including Don Was on bass and Benmont Tench on piano. (“God Only Knows,” appeared on the Beach Boys record Pet Sounds.)
Describing the first time he met Brian, John said it happened the first time he was in Los Angeles with lyricist Bernie Taupin. “We were scared shitless because he was my idol. He was the one that influenced me more than anybody else when it came to writing songs on the piano. It was an evening we would never forget,” John said. “Meeting someone who was a true genius doesn’t happen very often.”
The emotions were visible on John’s face as he sang the repetitive title line, “God only knows where I’d be without you.”
Brian Wilson passed away in June from cardiac arrest at age 82.
The product of Bob Dylan’s new singing style and a parallel decision to write more straightforward lyrics, “Lay Lady Lay” was his biggest hit in 4 years, since “Like a Rolling Stone” went to #2 on Billboard in 1965. Because of its relative accessibility – how very unlike ’60s Dylan it is – it is one of the Top 15 most-covered Dylan songs. For most artists, that wouldn’t be a lot of covers, but because it’s Dylan, it means there are hundreds. Continue reading »
So, here we are, another year and, not so much another Willie Nelson album, but another Willie Nelson tribute album, seeing him paying respect to another of his old buddies. This time, following discs dedicated to Ray Price, Harlan Howard and Rodney Crowell (astonishingly only six months since the Crowell set!), we have Merle Haggard in the frame.
Of course, the problem for a site like this, is that when Willie loves a song–and he loves a lot of ’em–he sings ’em again and again and again. A cover lover has to be on their guard and make sure that any earlier rendition, by or including him, wasn’t the first outing ever for that song. All but one of these songs have been covered previously by Nelson, frequently alongside Haggard, but my research suggests they had all had their original recording un-Willied, so to speak, all coming from Haggard alone, usually with his band, the Strangers.
Haggard and Nelson had history together, dating at least as far back to the early ’70s, each bit players on the Nevada Casino circuit. Haggard, four years younger, after an early life plagued by insolvency and petty larceny, had hardened his ambition to become a country singer. It was hearing Johnny Cash sing “Folsom Prison Blues,” as a twenty-year-old inmate in San Quentin, that lit his fuse. Nelson, who had already quit Nashville disappointment, was seeking alternative routes to satisfy his muse, with the two bonding and becoming part of the eventual “Outlaw Country” movement. Over the years they frequently appeared together, bolstered by a set of four shared duet albums, between 1983 and 2015, the last only a year before Haggard’s death.
Here the recordings have taken shape over the space of several years, between the myriad other projects that Nelson has forever on the boil. As such there are other old friends to respect; this record contains the last recordings of Nelson’s sister Bobbie and longtime drummer Paul English, who died in 2022 and 2020, respectively. The rest of the musicians are all also familiars of what Nelson calls the Family Band, producing the by now familiar mix of loving looseness, all helmed here by Mickey Raphael’s production, his harmonica a warm presence throughout.
Continue reading »
A few months ago, music journalist Jason Schneider released the book That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence. It’s a fascinating read—but don’t take our word for it. None other than Lenny Kaye, who in addition to playing on an iconic version of “Hey Joe” (it was the Patti Smith Group’s first single!), is a music journalist himself. He wrote in the book’s foreword, “In these pages, Jason Schneider has traced Joe’s lineage through its many mise-en-scenes, not only the bare bones of the song but the inner complexities and contradictions that each artist brings to it, subject and subjective.”
As part of the book, Schneider listened to, naturally, a lot of different versions of “Hey Joe.” Since I assume we all know the Hendrix version (and if not, here’s a deep dive on it), we asked Schneider to tell us about some lesser-known covers he loves. Continue reading »