Patrick Robbins, Author at Cover Me

Patrick Robbins

Patrick Robbins lives in Maine, where he moves through life with the secure knowledge that, as Penn Jillette said, "In all of art, it's the singer, not the song," On Wednesdays he goes shopping, and has buttered scones for tea. He is the author of the novel The Warmer.

Full Albums: Steely Dan’s ‘Katy Lied’

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 12:00 pm 2 Responses »

Mar 142025

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Usually an artist’s popularity wanes after fifty years go by. But nothing about Steely Dan counts as usual. Even in the seventies, their impossibly smooth sound, their obscure yet hyperliterate lyrics, and their focus on the studio in lieu of performing made them stick out like sore thumbs. But Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, and company du jour knew what they wanted, and now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it turns out to be what people want, need, can’t get enough of. The book Quantum Criminals, portraying the characters in Steely Dan songs with words and paint, was a critical smash, and Rolling Stone just published a listicle ranking every Steely Dan song.

Katy Lied, released fifty years ago this month, saw Becker and Fagen giving up their road-tested bandmates in favor of the best studio musicians money could buy, including twenty-year-old drummer Jeff Porcaro and not-much-older Michael McDonald, whose Doobie Brother days had yet to come. It saw the band getting a little cooler, a little warmer, a little jazzier. Like every Steely Dan album (at least, every one from Steely Dan Mark I), it has champions who say it’s the best thing they ever did. In 1987 Rolling Stone named it to their list of the best 100 albums of the past 20 years, the sole Steely Dan album on that roster. (This, after calling it “exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock” in their review twelve years earlier.)

Steely Dan’s unique combination of iconoclasm and tasty licks make them a band that covering artists tend to approach tentatively, if at all. How many other bands see tribute artists be so eager to throw out the lyrics and take their best instrumental whack at it? You’ll find more than one instrumental in this Katy Lied cover collection, along with live covers and one cover that’s a tribute to another band altogether.

They Say It’s Your Birthday: Aaron Neville

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 11:00 am 1 Response »

Jan 242025

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with covers of his or her songs. Let someone else do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Aaron Neville is 84 years old today and definitively retired. In a 2023 interview he explained that “my asthma doesn’t let me hold the notes like I used to. Like Linda [Ronstadt, also retired against her will by illness] says, I don’t want to cheat the fans. For them to be looking for this and not getting it. I tell them I’ve got a lot of records already recorded so they can still listen to my voice.”

Well, thank heaven for that. That voice – that creamy, silky, fluttery, angelic, blessed instrument – spent more than half a century bringing listeners peace, soul, and inspiration. Neville called it the God in him touching the God in the listener, and he has touched so many in so many different ways. He knew his way around funk music – as one of the Neville Brothers, how could he not? – but it was on the ballads that he truly soared.
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Five Good Covers: “Crazy Train” (Ozzy Osbourne)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 1:30 pm 1 Response »

Oct 162024

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

It’s hard to remember where 1980 Ozzy Osbourne was (even if you’re not Ozzy Osbourne). When he released his first solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, expectations could not have been much lower. His last few albums with Black Sabbath saw him flabby and uninspired, vocally and otherwise. He was drinking and drugging at a literally unbelievable rate (the discovery that he’s a genetic mutant was still years away), and Black Sabbath had just cause to fire him. But he still knew how to put together a band. And when he found a five-foot-seven, 105-pound genius of a guitarist in Randy Rhoads, he assured that his own star would shine for a few decades more.

“Crazy Train” features not one but two hall of fame riffs from Rhoads, and Osbourne singing lyrics that could have made him sound like a hippie in another context (“Maybe it’s not too late / To learn how to love and forget how to hate”). But ohhhhh, that context! Bob Daisley, who played bass and claims lyrical credit, said, “As a child, I remember the feeling of fear. I knew Ozzy would like that [concept] because he felt like that, too, having been through it himself. He was kind of frightened about the threat of World War III and how we, as young people, had inherited these troubles, influenced by the threat of nuclear holocaust throughout our lives.” Years later, Ozzy would elaborate: “To me the ultimate sin is nuclear weapons. This is the ultimate sin. I don’t know about Ozzy Osbourne being crazy. Don’t you think these lunatics are crazier, building these bombs to blow us all [up]?”
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Five Good Covers: “Help Me Make It Through the Night” (Kris Kristofferson)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 3:00 pm 3 Responses »

Oct 042024

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

Help Me Make It Through the Night covers

Kris Kristofferson’s resume may be one of the most remarkable documents of 20th century music. With his passing earlier this week at the age of 88, it was de rigueur for all In Memoriam pieces to bring it up. The man was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves boxer, and a prizewinning short story writer. He was a US Army veteran, a helicopter pilot, and an award-winning actor. He could quote William Blake from memory, and he could rip Toby Keith a blistered new one. And, of course, he gifted the world with truly classic songs, plain poetry that dazzled in its simplicity and its emotional heft. He truly was, as he wrote in “The Pilgrim Chapter 33,” a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.

“I’m for anything that gets you through the night,” said Frank Sinatra in a 1963 interview with Playboy, “be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” Kristofferson, struggling to finish writing a song in the Gulf of Mexico, came back to that line and used it as the linchpin for “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” The song was about a one-night stand and therefore wore controversy on its back like a target. But the words were so plainspoken and intimate, the need far more naked than the girl, that people fell over themselves running to cover the story of a man all alone with his heart, no matter who else was in the room.

In the Spotlight: Seal

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 11:00 am No Responses »

Sep 272024

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!

Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel’s list of awards and accolades go on nearly as long as his full name. He’s won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance – all for “Kiss From a Rose,” his 1994 smash – and been nominated twelve more times. He’s sold twenty million records. And he’s earned all his success, thanks to a voice of soul, range, and power, both silky and sensual, lustrous and rich.

Hits, Seal’s 2009 best-of compilation, contains six covers: “Fly Like an Eagle,” “A Change Is Gonna Come,” “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” “I Am Your Man,” and “Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again.” Naturally, we wanted to dig a little deeper. It was beyond certain that we wouldn’t have to dig too far down before we found gold. Here are just five of the worthy nuggets we unearthed.
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Five Good Covers: “Sixteen Tons” (Merle Travis / Tennessee Ernie Ford)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 2:00 pm 3 Responses »

Sep 132024

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

Merle Travis may have brought “Sixteen Tons” into the world, but it was Tennessee Ernie Ford who made it immortal. The song’s arrangement – clarinets didn’t often get the spotlight, but one sure did here – was spare and distinctive. Ford’s bass baritone and his finger-snapping, both casual and menacing, hooked listeners in both the pop and country worlds, taking the song to number one on both charts. In a 1960 TV appearance together, Travis told Ford, “The song never amounted to much until you sung it.” Ford replied, “I never amounted to much until I sung it, either.”