One Great Cover: Elvis Presley “Blue Moon”

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Aug 142026
 

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

Blue Moon

August 16, 2026 will mark the 49th anniversary of the passing of Elvis Presley. While the 50th anniversary in 2027 will no doubt lead to many tributes, we decided to dive in early and explore one of his many great cover songs: “Blue Moon.”

Most of Elvis Presley’s biggest hits–from his early days as a rowdy, pelvis-shaking rock n’ roller, to those from his later years as an over-the-top Las Vegas performer–were cover songs.

Whether it was his megahits like “Hound Dog” or “Suspicious Minds,” or some of his stranger covers like “An American Trilogy” (a smash up of the Bahamian lullaby “All My Trials,” “Dixie” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic”), once Elvis put his spin on a song, he wrote a new chapter in its history.

Such was the case with “Blue Moon.” Though the song was by no means Elvis’ biggest hit, with his cover, he fused together rock n’ roll with the Great American Songbook and guaranteed the song would endure not just as a standard but as a rock classic.
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One Great Cover: Club Nouveau’s “Lean on Me”

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Jun 122026
 

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

Lean On Me

Forgive me for getting a little personal, but when I first heard Club Nouveau’s cover “Lean on Me,” my reaction was simple: “What? Why?” I loved the Bill Withers original, mostly because it was released the year I was born. During my early mixtape years, I created one with the biggest songs from 1972. (Along with every year of my life up to that point.) As a side note, several other songs from that 1972 tape spawned covers within a few years, including “Without You,” “Oh Girl,” “I’ll Take You There,” “I Can See Clearly Now.”

Bill Withers wrote and recorded “Lean on Me” for his second album, Still Bill. He intentionally kept the lyrics simple. The song connected immediately, reaching #1 on both the Billboard Soul chart and the Hot 100. After its April 21, 1972 release, it earned Gold certification — more than a million copies sold — in less than two months. By year’s end, Billboard ranked it as the seventh-biggest song of 1972. Rolling Stone later included it among “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” and the song is part of the Grammy Hall of Fame.

So now you understand my initial reaction to a cover of this classic: “What? Why?”
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One Great Cover: Elvis Costello’s “She”

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Feb 202026
 

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

She

Nearly 50 years ago, Elvis Costello earned the temporary enmity of Lorne Michaels, and a healthy dose of publicity. During his performance on an episode of Saturday Night Live, he stopped playing “Less Than Zero,” a song about undue deference to a dangerous Fascist, and swung into “Radio Radio,” a song about unreasonable control of what could be said in broadcast media. Different times.

As Costello was only on the show because the Sex Pistols had made themselves unavailable by going through one of their breakups, people might have been tempted to consider him as another artless provocateur from the British punk scene. Costello, however, would contend that it was a reasonable musical decision to change the song. Americans, fortunately for them, would know little about British Fascist lickspittle Oswald Mosley, but could understand something about the marginalization of artists by broadcasters. For his cheek, Costello was then marginalized by SNL for the next decade.

Being led by the music has been the key to Costello’s career. Long-time fans could have seen him in Grand Concert Halls with leading-edge classical ensembles covering Kurt Weill, or in the less salubrious surroundings of a converted circus in Liverpool, playing his early hits, in a building that helped shape those hits. He has collaborated with hip-hop artists and New Orleans legends. His album with Burt Bacharach, 1998’s Painted from Memory, is a beautiful piece of work. His work with Paul McCartney was a career highlight, for at least one of them, and the emotion in every aspect of his performance for McCartney and the Obamas at the White House is touching.

These successful collaborations, which often last beyond the original nature of the project, do not suggest a man who provokes ire unnecessarily. Musical differences are a catalytic necessity, but one needn’t be difficult about it.
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One Great Cover: Bjork’s “It’s Oh So Quiet”

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Dec 052025
 

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

I almost regret doing it.
— Bjork, 2002

Bjork‘s “It’s Oh So Quiet” is a rare example of a cover song being way more successful than the cover artist would have wished. The Icelandic singer-songwriter recorded the old Betty Hutton jazz hit in 1995, only as “sort of a joke.” She didn’t expect it to be her most successful single as a solo artist. She didn’t expect it to outperform her innovative Top 40 originals: “Venus as a Boy,” “Big Time Sensuality,” “Play Dead,” and “Army of Me.” She didn’t expect it to be a Christmas favorite, or to catapult her to a level of fame that involved physically attacking an invasive reporter at a Bangkok airport. And she almost certainly didn’t expect it to be considered “quintessential Bjork” in all its whimsicality, or to go down in history as the most recognizable showcasing of her acrobatic vocals.

“It’s ironic ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ became my biggest song,” Bjork said in 2002, the same year she agreed with her fans to omit it from her Greatest Hits album. She deemed it a track she’d put the least creative effort into, and one that didn’t represent her at all, as if its immense popularity was entirely out of her hands and an abomination in her catalog. She made perfectly clear that she was embarrassed by it; that she disowned it. She therefore left us asking the important question: Who or what is to, erm, blame for this One Great Cover?

Here are a few contenders, with reasons given.
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One Great Cover: The Third Mind’s “Sally Go ’Round the Roses”

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Nov 282025
 

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

For our “What’s your favorite cover of a traditional song” post from last November, I wanted to write about The Third Mind’s version of “Sally Go ’Round the Roses.” It seemed like the perfect chance to collect my thoughts about The Third Mind, a “supergroup” led by fiery guitarist Dave Alvin (formerly of The Blasters, The Knitters, and X). After all, The Third Mind featured the spell-binding singer Jesse Sykes, who had fallen into a mysterious silent since 2011.

Except I found out that “Sally Go ’Round the Roses” is not a traditional song. Not even close. It was written in 1963, and recorded by The Jaynetts that same year.

OK, so I was wrong. In my defense, Joan Baez misled me. In the Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, we see Baez in a hotel room singing “Sally Go ’Round the Roses.” Baez mostly played traditional ballads (when not playing Dylan covers), so I assumed this song too was “trad.” I also knew that the British folk band Pentangle–those revivers of traditional British Isles roots music–had covered the song on an early album.

But you know what they say about people who assume.
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One Great Cover: The White Stripes’ “John The Revelator”

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Nov 052025
 

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

The White Stripes' “John The Revelator”

In the documentary It Might Get Loud, Jack White is shown putting a record on a turntable. He sits, listening intently, as we hear Son House’s “Grinnin’ in Your Face.” After a few bars the camera zooms in on the record cover and we hear Jack’s voiceover: “By the time I was about 18, somebody played me Son House. That was it for me.”

He elaborates that the song has been his favorite since the first time he heard it, and he was taken in by the simplicity of the music. “I didn’t know that you could do that, just singing and clapping.” Continue reading »

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