Bella White uses bluegrass to express her brand of melancholy musicality. Tales of lost love and wronged women, in the country tradition. She provides astute covers where she finds those tales from others, as we noted last year. Her most recent cover is of Ted Lucas’ “I’ll Find A Way (To Carry It All).” Continue reading »
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
Sixty years ago this month, The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show. You don’t need us to tell you what a momentous occasion this was; entire books have been written on the subject. Suffice to say we’re using the anniversary as our excuse to finally devote a Best Covers Ever to perhaps the biggest band of them all. We’ve done Dylan. We’ve done the Stones. We’ve done Dolly and Springsteen and Prince. But there was one last giant remaining.
Though it’s difficult to measure this precisely, The Beatles are the most-covered artist of all time according to the two biggest covers databases on the internet (SecondHandSongs, WhoSampled). And that certainly feels right. “Yesterday” is often cited as the most-covered song of all time, though that needs qualifiers (a ton of Christmas standards would beat it). But, again, it feels right. The Beatles were ubiquitous in their day, and they’ve been ubiquitous ever since. They just had a chart-topping single last month, the A.I.-assisted “Now and Then,” which was duly covered widely. If “Carnival of Light” ever surfaces, no doubt a carnival of covers will soon follow. Continue reading »
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
In 1965, the Isley Brothers were looking for a bigger label to help them grow, and found it in Tamla/Motown. The then-trio of O’Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald Isley sang this Holland/Dozier/Holland composition, Ronald on lead vocals, with Motown’s crack Funk Brothers session team on the instrumental heft. As with so many of the songs from Motown on the 60s, it is a masterclass of construction, from the opening propulsive percussion and the piano riff that immediately identifies it. The orchestra swoops in and the brothers start to emote, before Ronald pipes up with the lead vocal. The xylophone is a magical addition, a catalytic converter that seems to spark and stimulate the responses of Rudolph and Kelly. Magnificent, even as a honking sax plays a baritone solo, a song that has continued to resonate over the subsequent years.
“This Old Heart Of Mine” was first a hit in 1966, and was the Isley Brothers’ biggest Motown success, reaching (only!) number 12 on the Billboard chart that year. In the UK it fared worse, reaching number 47, and then better, hitting the number 2 slot on a 1968 re-release. It seems odd that Motown let them go shortly thereafter. Berry Gordy, who’s been known to make a mistake or two, told them that “It’s Your Thing” was not the kind of music he wanted them recording. But irreconcilable differences don’t always spell “The End.” Cue the brothers setting up their own label, and history!
So what other artists had old hearts that were weak for the song? Listen and learn…
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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!
’70s AM radio soundtracked nearly every childhood car journey I ever took. It was in the backseat confines of my Mom’s white Chevy Nova with the sunflower painted on the side (those ’70s were swingin’) that I first became acquainted with The Spinners’ 1975 hit “They Just Can’t Stop It (The Games People Play)”. It was love at first listen. The song ended up marking an important personal milestone for me; it was the first 7-inch I ever bought with my own pocket money (one dollar, and seven cents to be precise). It was purchased at a local record haunt/head shop called “The Etc Shop” (now that’s what I call ’70s) from its cool lady proprietress, Naomi. I played the 45 over and over in my blue shag-carpeted bedroom, mimicking every one of the song’s vast array of vocal inflections. From Bobby Smith’s smooth lead to the spare but crucial contributions of bass singer Pervis Jackson (whose voice was as deep as the earth’s core), I sang along and “got down” as hard as a 9-year-old white suburban soul-loving gal possibly could. Continue reading »
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
On October 27, 2013, ten years ago today, Lou Reed died. I happened to be in New York City at the time, and his passing was a lead story on the 11 o’clock news. It was as though a part of the city itself had died. Which, inescapably, it had. Reed embodied NYC, from its seedy back rooms to its secret heart, in a way few other people, let alone musicians, ever did.
While Reed’s solo career is highly and deservingly accoladed, it still got overshadowed by the Velvet Underground. Reed’s first band featured Welsh musician John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen Tucker, with Nico singing on the first album and Doug Yule replacing Cale in 1968. The band’s four studio albums started ripples that turned into tsunamis; they went from secret-handshake status to Hall of Fame giants, their influence right up there with the Beatles.
We’re honoring Lou and Company with this collection of covers. Some covers couldn’t hold a candle to the original (you’ll find no “Heroin” here), but many of the originals were receptive to another artist’s distinctive stamp. Whether you prefer the first or what followed, you’ll hear the sound of immortality as it opens yet another path of discovery.
–Patrick Robbins, Features Editor
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
Last week we kicked off our new One Hit Wonders series with ten covers of big 1950s hits, and today we continue it with 20 covers of 1960s smashes.
Some classic songs getting covered in here, in some cases by artists that should have had many more hits just as big. So it goes in pop music. We’ll probably never be able to do a The 40 Best Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs Covers Ever list, though, so we celebrate them here with a few fun reimaginings of their early 1960 chart-topper “Stay.” Continue reading »