In the Spotlight Archives

In the Spotlight: The Jaded Hearts Club (Supergroups #5)

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 10:00 am 1 Response »

Jul 092021

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!

Let’s start our final day of Supergroup Week with the band that started my own deep dive into supergroups…

The origin story of The Jaded Hearts Club is so pure of heart (just look how happy they look above!). Jamie Davis, co-owner of Transcopic Records, wanted a Beatles cover band for his birthday party, so he recruited his musical friends, Matt Bellamy (of Muse), Nic Cester (of Jet), Graham Coxon (of Blur and co-owner of Transcopic), Miles Kane (of Last Shadow Puppets), and Sean Payne (of the Zutons), to help him out. After that initial foray into covers, the band released a cover album in 2020, expanding beyond the Beatles.

This inspired me to look into other supergroups, their origin stories, and the musical networks that create them. What musicians have a day job as musicians but still have creativity overflowing to pour into side projects? There’s an extra layer when supergroups cover other musicians’ work (I’m not including when they cover songs originally by members from their formal musical careers). Cover bands are the ultimate anti-ego; they’re paying their respects to music that has influenced them.

In the Spotlight: Country Supergroups (Supergroups #3)

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 10:30 am No Responses »

Jul 072021

The previous supergroups we’ve featured for Supergroup Week have been members of other bands, forming a new band with musicians based on their musical networks. This sometimes is a natural progression: band dynamics cause groups to fracture and leave members looking for a new team to create music with. Friends from a musical past-life join others that they’ve jammed with at some point to try something new. This time around, we have solo artists joining forces. This suggests a longing to collaborate and be part of a bigger musical effort. We also switch genres, from rock to country & western with some outlaw flair. The supergroup networks are still strong in the ’80s, often first marked by solo artists covering others’ work that they admired, and their legacies sparked new supergroups in the ’10s.

In the Spotlight: Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (Supergroups #2)

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 1:00 pm 1 Response »

Jul 062021

David Crosby (formerly of Byrds), Stephen Stills (formerly of Buffalo Springfield), and Graham Nash (formerly of the Hollies) formed the creatively named Crosby, Stills & Nash supergroup in 1968. There were no formal ties between the three; they had just played together in non-formal settings and were wrapping up their involvement in their previous bands around the same time. Starting in 1969, Neil Young (who knew Stills from Buffalo Springfield) was in and out of the group. This supergroup is the first band to have all members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, true supergroup status!

Despite their popularity and success, there was frequent transition between being a trio and being a quartet due to conflicting dynamics within the group. They started as CSN in 1968, became CSNY in 1969, and then went on a hiatus in 1970. Until 1973 everyone was working solo, and then CSNY 2.0 arose in 1973. By 1976 they were down to CSN. Young made his final stint in the band starting in 1988 but wasn’t always part of the touring, especially in the 2010s.

Crosby, Stills & Nash were supposed to release a covers album, teased in 2010 and 2014, but it never happened. A devoted fan has crafted a place holder if you can’t let it go.

In the Spotlight: Eric Clapton and Friends (Supergroups #1)

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 10:00 am 1 Response »

Jul 052021

It’s supergroup week at Cover Me!

What’s a supergroup, you ask? Well, it’s a bit of a fuzzy concept, but the idea is that a supergroup is a musical endeavor that is made up of folks who have previously established their musical prowess in other contexts. It’s the opposite of when groups split up to go solo. Supergroups provide an interesting way to track the networks of musicians, and they also lend some insight into the creative motivations of musicians who have already struck it big but are looking for a change of pace. Sometimes famous solo musicians join forces; other times bands break up and reform new ones. We’ll see both combinations throughout the week. Today we start off with super supergroup orchestrator Eric Clapton and his multiple (if short-lived) collaborations with friends.

In the Spotlight: Shawn Colvin

Posted by Tom McDonald at 1:30 pm 2 Responses »

Jun 182021

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!

We shine the spotlight on an artist who has won acclaim for her own songwriting—including a song of the year and record of the year Grammy—but who has been overlooked as an interpretive artist. Cover Me readers, let’s show Shawn Colvin some love. She has released not one but four albums of covers (if you count the Holiday song collection and the collection of children’s lullabies). And those are just the start: we can also look at covers she has inserted onto albums otherwise devoted to her own material, and listen to her guest appearances on other artists’ cover projects.
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In the Spotlight: Jamie Cullum

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Apr 162021

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!

Jamie Cullum is a jazz artist with fluency in the crossover to pop. He has won and been nominated for jazz-specific and more general awards alike, collecting a Rising Star British Jazz Award and most recently a Radio Academy Award for his BBC Radio show. He also scored a nomination for a Best Original Song Golden Globe, for “Gran Torino.” Admittedly, 2005 was a bit of an awkward year when he won both the BBC Jazz Award for Artist of the Year and the Worst British Male award from the parody Naomi Awards. Showing perseverance, Cullum won the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Award for Best British Male two years later.

Many of Cullum’s covers come from two “Song Society” albums, where he challenges himself to create a new take on a song in an hour, allowing for a lot of creative improvisation to shape the end product. The songs chosen include new hits on the pop charts as well as some throwbacks and standards. Other covers are sprinkled throughout his original albums as well. Here we take a sonic journey through a handful of his covers that both show his range as an artist and span original genres and decades. This doesn’t even cover (ha) his whole jazz cover album Interlude, so if you are a jazz cat, check it out.

P.S. Fun fact: Cullum is married to Roald Dahl’s granddaughter. If you are a Matilda, BFG, Willy Wonka, or Witches fan, there is even more of a reason to read on.
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