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Sep 082023
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

1990s One Hit Wonders

This month, our ongoing series of One Hit Wonders covers comes to its end. We’ve done the 1950s (think “Earth Angel,” “Tequila”), the 1960s (“96 Tears,” “In A Gadda Da Vida”), the 1970s (“My Sharona,” “Black Betty”), and the 1980s (“You Spin Me Right Round,” “Turning Japanese”). Now we hit the 1990s today and the 2000s next week.

For millennial readers, these will be the songs you remember hearing on the radio and watching on MTV growing up. So many ubiquitous classics of the era like New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” and 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” by artists who only had a brief moment in the sun (you might say someone stole their sunshine…). Also some fun flukes, where the artist’s cultural impact goes way beyond “one hit wonder” — but, according to the fickle US pop charts at the time, they qualify on a technicality: Robyn, Fiona Apple, etc. Plus Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” which has to be in the conversation for the most One Hit Wonder to have ever One Hit Wonder-ed. Continue reading »

Jul 142023
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

best grateful dead covers

I’ve heard it said that one of the curses of having a hit song is that the artist is forced to sing it for the rest of their life the same exact way it was recorded. While that may be true for some artists (certainly for the Eagles), it has not been the case for the Grateful Dead.

Since they released their first album in 1967, the band has never viewed their recordings as sacred texts. Instead they treated their songs as blueprints, starting places to begin the next great jam. Every time they perform a track, it’s like they’re covering themselves.

Take a song like “Fire on the Mountain.” It was originally recorded by Dead percussionist Mickey Hart as an instrumental called “Happiness is Drumming” on his 1976 album Diga. Robert Hunter eventually added lyrics, and the band began performing it on their legendary Spring ‘77 tour. They later recorded a condensed studio version for their 1978 album Shakedown Street, sung by Jerry Garcia. Since his passing, it’s been performed by many Dead offshoot bands and sung by the likes of Bob Weir, Bruce Hornsby, Oteil Burbridge, and, even reggae singer Jimmy Cliff. Each version is so different that I couldn’t tell you what counts as the “original.” One can trace a similar pattern with many of the Dead’s songs through the decades — don’t get me started on “Dark Star.”

Artists covering a Dead song have an invitation to reinvent it, as if at the request of the ghost of Jerry Garcia. Given such freedom, it’s only natural that the Dead’s catalog has inspired countless musicians across genres to put their own spin on the songs. This explains why nearly six decades after the band’s formation, and with the latest incarnation Dead & Company wrapping up this weekend, the onslaught of covers shows no signs of ever, ever stopping. These cover songs guarantee the band’s music will live on long after the last remaining members have passed away.

Here is a list of our favorites…

–Curtis Zimmermann

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Jun 302023
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

1980s one hit wonders

Is the 1980s the best decade ever for one-hit wonders? So many classic songs came out that decade by not-so-classic bands. It was, perhaps, a particularly fickle time to be chasing pop-chart success. Many of the oft-discussed one hit wonder bands have killer catalogs, but, for whatever reason, those catalogs contain only one tune that is widely remembered today. If you like “Take on Me” or “Safety Dance,” check out the respective A-Ha and Men Without Hats albums they came from, both just as good! The same holds true for many other ’80s bands. Dead or Alive, pictured above, has some other killer jams too, but alas, these days they’re best known as the “you spin me right round” band.

So today, we celebrate the big one-off hits in new wave, synth-rock, easy listening, and other very-’80s genres with some knockout covers. From “867-5309/Jenny” (Tommy Tutone) to “Turning Japanese” (The Vapors) to “In a Big Country” (Big Country — maybe hard to follow-up a hit that has your band name in the title). Rock down to Electric Avenue, and let these covers take you higher.
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Jun 272023
 

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Nina Simone Just Like A Woman

Today’s One Great Cover post is a guest post written by Graley Herren, and is excerpted from his post “Just Like Nina Simone’s Blues” on his Substack Shadow Chasing with his permission. We’re grateful for the opportunity to present it here.

When Bob Dylan was named the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year, he delivered a thoughtful acceptance speech in which he reflected upon his musical inspirations, including “The High Priestess of Soul”:

Nina Simone. I used to cross paths with her in New York City in the Village Gate nightclub. She was an artist I definitely looked up to. She recorded some of my songs that she learned directly from me, sitting in a dressing room. She was an overwhelming artist, piano player, and singer. Very strong woman, very outspoken, and dynamite to see perform. That she was recording my songs validated everything that I was about. Nina was the kind of artist I loved and admired.

The admiration was mutual, though it was tempered by Simone’s acute awareness of Dylan’s comparatively privileged access to the star-making machinery of American pop culture. In a 1966 interview, Simone lamented,

I have no faith that the greatest talent in this country will get any recognition while they’re alive. Perhaps Bob Dylan, but me, and Billie [Holiday] before me, and [John] Coltrane—in the jazz circles, yes, but not the general public. I don’t believe that the talent that would be considered artistic in this country is going to get any recognition, and that includes me.

Simone numbered Dylan among “the greatest talent in this country,” but her main point was to decry the biased inequity with which respect for such talent was granted or denied.

That said, Simone paid Dylan the highest compliment one musician can give another by performing several of his songs, and doing so with profound sensitivity. Late in life, her esteem for Dylan was unequivocal. In Princess Noire, biographer Nadine Cohodas points out that Simone kept a picture of Dylan on the wall of her French home in Bouc-Bel-Air, hanging next to a photo of Little Richard. Her friend Precious Williams visited there in 1999, and as she was leaving Simone told her, “Please tell my public that there aren’t many of us geniuses still living. Hardly any of us left at all. It’s down to Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, and Frank Sinatra, except Frank’s already dead.”

Simone and Dylan’s musical paths intersected most directly when she covered five of his songs during a five-year span: “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” on Let It All Out (1966); “I Shall Be Released,” “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” on To Love Somebody (1969); and “Just Like a Woman” on Here Comes the Sun (1971). All of these performances are noteworthy, but for this post I want to focus on “Just Like a Woman” as a comparative case study in the artistry of Simone and Dylan.
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Jun 232023
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

1970s one hit wonders

Last month, we presented covers of one-hit wonders of the 1950s and the 1960s. And we’re back to do it again!

This month, we’ll tackle huge hits by not-so-huge bands from the ’70s and, next week, the ’80s. Today, covers of classics like “Spirit in the Sky,” “Black Betty,” “Why Can’t We Live Together,” and “Video Killed The Radio Star” (I would have thought that one was ’80s given the famous MTV connection, but it came out November 1979). Then next week we’ll dive into perhaps the greatest decade for one-hit wonders cover. Continue reading »

May 262023
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Prince

In July of 1958, a Prince was created. That was the month Charles became Prince of Wales. Earlier this month he was officially crowned King.

In June of 1958, another Prince was created. He died seven years before Charles’ coronation, but he had long before passed beyond the arena of royalty into the field of the celestial.

Prince was, if not a god, a divine presence, more felt than understood. That he was a musical genius was almost taken for granted; his prolific recording, his tremendous work ethic, his mysterious appearances where you least expected him (On Muppets Tonight?? Making fun of Hee Haw???)–all served to make him more myth than man, and now he’s less man than legend.

Prince famously told George Lopez that “covering the music means your version doesn’t exist anymore,” but that’s not quite so. Prince may not (or may) be immortal, but his music definitely is, and the covers that continue to roll in are all the proof you need. This post offers some of the evidence. (Certainly not all of it – more nominations missed the cut than made it, and the great majority of them were very worthy.)

Before we begin: to qualify, a Prince song needed to have been officially released before the cover version. Sadly, this means the Bangles’ “Manic Monday,” Sheila E’s “The Belle of St. Mark,” Celine Dion’s “With This Tear,” and others didn’t get considered.

And now for our selections. And don’t worry, Charles–it’s good to be King. It’s just more magical to be Prince.

–Patrick Robbins

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