Cover Me could probably have a new category added to the site just to handle all the Lady Gaga covers. For better or worse, the pop goddess’ songs have come to define mainstream music over the last couple years, and if you’re a young artist looking for a catchy (or ironic) cover, her stuff is a good place to start. Or maybe you’re a living legend of rock guitar and you’ve been making hits since the ’60s. Well, you too can cover Gaga. Continue reading »
Lord knows we’re no strangers to “Bad Romance” covers. We’ve seen it done, with varying degrees of competence, by Courtney Love, Joseph Gordan-Levitt, Lissie, Corey TuT, and Garden on a Trampoline. Well, London buzz band Klaxons give us another take and it just might be the best one yet. The trio recorded it for cover-happy Australian radio program Like a Version (whose cover compilations are must-buys). They strip it back, which is pretty much the only way to cover Lady Gaga. That choral intro is truly a thing of beauty. The whispered bridge ain’t bad either.
“I feel like she’s the ultimate pop star,” lead singer Jamie Reynolds said on air. “She’s raised the bar and made it difficult…to come along and be a pop star in this day and age. She’s really gone and done it.” Continue reading »
Celebrities have finally caught the “Bad Romance” covers train, and only about six months after everyone else! No matter. There’s plenty of room on the Gaga Express!
First up is Joseph Gordan-Levitt aka. Arthur (Inception) aka. Tom Hansen ((500) Days of Summer) aka. Tommy Solomon (3rd Rock from the Sun). His performance comes from a summer benefit show he threw with his production company hitRECord. It’s solo. It’s electric. It’s fun.
Courtney Love’s live performance is more funny than fun. She didn’t bother to learn the lyrics, but that doesn’t stop her from making some up! The rest of Hole tries to guide her, but as the world well knows, there is no controlling the Love-machine. Continue reading »
Follow all our Best of 2024 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
Welcome to the 50 Best Tom Petty Covers of 2024!
We kid, of course. But for whatever reason, this year’s big trend in covers was: Tom Petty. At one point there were something like 20 Petty covers on our longlist. Many came from two all-star tribute albums that dropped, entirely coincidentally, the same year (they both made our Best Albums list). We narrowed it down, of course. Three Petty covers ended up in this Top 50, one not even from those albums. Then, just this week, another high-profile Petty cover dropped: Snoop and Jelly Roll reworking “Last Dance for Mary Jane”! Suffice to say that one wouldn’t have been a contender even if it hadn’t arrived too late.
That was the big surprise trend in 2024 covers. The less-surprising trend you could have called from a mile out: The new wave of young pop divas—Chappell, Sabrina, Charli—got covered a lot. We could have done an entire 50-song list of their covers, too (the “Good Luck Babe”s alone!). But, if we had, we would have missed out on gospel R.E.M. and country The Weeknd and electropop Mott the Hoople and soul Green Day and… you know what, just read the list.
(Moo-chas gracias and Deng-ke schoen to Hope Silverman for this year’s tiny-hippo art.)
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
There was a time in this blog’s lifespan where a shocking percentage of the covers landing in our inbox and RSS feeds were of Lady Gaga songs. It only lasted a couple years, but for a minute there Gaga was doing Beatles numbers. Hell, even relatively minor singles like “Marry the Night” would dominate the covers world for weeks after people heard them.
As Gaga’s entered the Vegas-residency stage of her career, her new songs don’t get covered as often. But even still, there seems to be a respect from other musicians not afforded all her pop-star peers. A Katy Perry chart flop will get ignored. A Gaga chart flop will still likely land a few interesting covers.
Though the songs were never as weird as the outfits were, there was always some unexpected twist for other musicians to play with, from the rolled r’s of “Bad Romance” to the goofy theatricality of “Alejandro” to the best stuttering since “My Generation” (“pa-pa-pa-pokerface,” “stop telephoning me-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh”). Plus, even after a few years in the wilderness, everyone knew any minute she could return with a “Shallow.”
In our list of 30 covers below, all those big hits show up plenty. But even the more recent songs and album cuts make appearances. Lady Gaga’s songs are sturdy enough to remain infectious whether they’re performed as gothic metal or throwback rockabilly. See for yourself below.
The list begins on Page 2.
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 comes from Cover Me writer Jordan Becker: What cover song made you reevaluate your feelings about the original?
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