Dec 112015
 

Follow all our Best of 2015 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

BestCoverAlbums2015-575

Everywhere but here, the world of cover and tribute albums tends to be a sleepy one. Most years our “Best Cover Albums” list is composed of records that either flew totally under the radar or, at best, earned a few news posts on music blogs. There’s the “all star” tribute albums that make a brief mark before being largely forgotten. And there’s the big-name artists whose cover albums get seen as a side project before their next “real” albums. That’s just the lot you sign up for when you release an album of cover songs most years.

But most years don’t have Ryan Adams. Continue reading »

May 082015
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

logical

Written by Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson (with an assist on the second chorus’s vocal harmony by Rick Davies), “The Logical Song” not only has more words of three or more syllables (twenty-seven!) than some bands have in their entire discography; it also has a warning about using schooling as a brickbat that resonates even more post-No Child Left Behind. Plus which, that saxophone break would send any contemporaries whimpering their way back to Baker Street. It was the band’s biggest hit off their biggest album, Breakfast in America; that unforgettable cover model, Kate Murtagh, is 94 and still going, much like “The Logical Song” itself.
Continue reading »