“Hey Ya” is Outkast‘s biggest hit and most streamed song and it could not be escaped in 2003 and 2004. It and its music video were ubiquitous. It was the seventh biggest song of the year but felt even bigger. Billboard once listed it as the 145th biggest song of all time. Continue reading »
What’s Green Day’s biggest hit of the ’90s? At least in terms of total sales, not chart position, it’s probably the least Green Day-like of all their hits, “Good Riddance.” Nearly three decades later, it is one of their top five most-streamed songs too, no matter how unlike the rest of their (’90s) oeuvre it is.
Gigi Perez is a Cuban-American singer-songwriter based in Florida who has been releasing singles for about half a decade. Her song “Sailor Song” blew up on TikTok in 2024. Hollister enlisted her for their new ad campaign and she’s done a cool thing with it: she’s covered “Good Riddance” as country rock. Continue reading »
It feels like every hit song must have a slow piano cover at this point. There are so many out there. Not all hit songs are suited to the style yet it feels like every hit song gets one. But, despite the proliferation of this very specific cover style, there is still the odd new version that pokes through, that works so well it’s almost like hearing the slow piano cover for the first time. Sometimes, that’s an easy song for the style – a song whose lyrics befit a change of pace and arrangement. But other times – perhaps more often – the successful slow piano cover is one that shouldn’t work on paper. Continue reading »
“All Along the Watchtower” is one of the most famous covers ever. Infamously transformed from its original harmonica- and acoustic guitar-driven story-song from Bob Dylan‘s pivot to country, to one of the iconic psychedelic rock songs of the era. So many people who cover “All Along the Watchtower” are in thrall to the Experience version. Even Dylan. Continue reading »
Roy Orbison‘s “In Dreams” is notable for being the rare Top 10 hit single that is through-composed, i.e. no sections of the song repeat. And of course it’s also notable for Orbison’s bravura vocal performance.
Legendary gypsy punks Gogol Bordello encountered the song, like many, through its appearance in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, a film that reintroduced the public to the power of Orbison’s songs and voice. It was arguably “In Dreams” appearance in that film that helped launch Orbison’s brief career renaissance in the late ’80s before his untimely death at 52. Continue reading »
“Fade Into You” is Mazzy Star‘s iconic song and their one hit, though it charted outside of the Top 40 on the Hot 100 (charting better than that on some niche charts). It is the song they are forever associated with and the embodiment of their sound.
I haven’t heard anywhere near a plurality of the 60+ covers of “Fade Into You” that have emerged over the last 30 years but I’m going to guess most of them try, in some way, to capture the dreamy feel of the original – slow, hazy, ethereal. Continue reading »