Feb 252025
 

Under the Radar shines a light on lesser-known cover artists. If you’re not listening to these folks, you should. Catch up on past installments here.

Delbert McClinton

Fear not, this is no obituary; Delbert McClinton is still around, a mere stripling of 84. Still, given that it’s been three years since his last album and more since he toured, I’d hate to have him slip away on me before I got the chance to celebrate him here.

Delbert who? That’s the response from most when I laud McClinton, his name having surprisingly little traction despite a career as long as my entire life. To answer the question, he’s a good ol’ boy from Lubbock, Texas, with a laissez-faire attitude to genre type-casting. Many of his records went top 20 positions in the US blues and country charts at the same time. We first heard of him playing his distinctive harmonica riffs on Bruce Channel’s “Hey, Baby.” In 1962! (That year he toured the UK with Channel; the Beatles were their opening act, and John Lennon famously got some playing tips from McClinton that he put to use on “Love Me Do.”)

That wasn’t even where McClinton began. He played Texas bar-bands from his teens, backing some of the blues legends then still on the road — Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins just to name a few. A hit with his own band, the Ron-Dels, “If You Really Want Me To, I’ll Go”, came in 1965, followed by a three-year partnership with Glen Clark, 1972-5, before striking out on his own. He was nominated for eight Grammy awards and won four — not too shabby. And let’s not forget his own songwriting, something he may even arguably be better known for. Emmylou Harris’s “Two More Bottles of Wine” was his, as well as many others that led to his 2011 indictment in the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame.

But it is his gravelly, gritty renditions of the songs of others that we celebrate today, vocals that sound they have spent years in the saddle, ahead being trampled underfoot in a bar brawl, buried and then brined for posterity. Imagine a mix of Johns Fogerty and Hiatt, gargled with a sandpaper side, and you pretty much have it. A laryngologist’s nightmare, and perfect for his tramples over blues, country and rock and roll.
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Dec 202024
 

Follow all our Best of 2024 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

best cover songs of 2024

Welcome to the 50 Best Tom Petty Covers of 2024!

We kid, of course. But for whatever reason, this year’s big trend in covers was: Tom Petty. At one point there were something like 20 Petty covers on our longlist. Many came from two all-star tribute albums that dropped, entirely coincidentally, the same year (they both made our Best Albums list). We narrowed it down, of course. Three Petty covers ended up in this Top 50, one not even from those albums. Then, just this week, another high-profile Petty cover dropped: Snoop and Jelly Roll reworking “Last Dance for Mary Jane”! Suffice to say that one wouldn’t have been a contender even if it hadn’t arrived too late.

That was the big surprise trend in 2024 covers. The less-surprising trend you could have called from a mile out: The new wave of young pop divas—Chappell, Sabrina, Charli—got covered a lot. We could have done an entire 50-song list of their covers, too (the “Good Luck Babe”s alone!). But, if we had, we would have missed out on gospel R.E.M. and country The Weeknd and electropop Mott the Hoople and soul Green Day and… you know what, just read the list.

(Moo-chas gracias and Deng-ke schoen to Hope Silverman for this year’s tiny-hippo art.)

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Nov 272024
 
al green everybody hurts

The Reverend Al Green is offering up a new cover of R.E.M.’s modern classic, “Everybody Hurts.”

“Recording “Everybody Hurts,” said Green, “I could really feel the heaviness of the song and I wanted to inject a little touch of hope and light into it.” And, because he’s Al Green, he did just that. The song still has the melancholy that seeps through the original, but the final chorus reaches another level of redemption, courtesy Green.

Playing on the track includes some heavy hitters, including Reverend Charles Hodge on keyboards, Texas guitar legend Will Sexton, and Steve Potts from Booker T and the MG’s on drums.

Speaking on behalf of his former bandmates, Michael Stipe said, “We could not be more honored, more flattered and more humbled. This is an epic moment for us.”

Green’s last release was in 2023 and was a cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Jun 142024
 

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

Take Me to the River

The Talking Heads cover of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” has a very solid place in the world of cover songs. Also in the world of Cover Me: the site’s founder and editor-in-chief devoted a chapter of his book Cover Me to it, and on our first Q&A post, when the staffers were asked to name their favorite cover song, that was the response from two of them.
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Apr 302024
 
best cover songs
The Dirty Nil — Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler cover)

I’m honestly surprised there weren’t more “Total Eclipse” covers during this month’s total eclipse. Perhaps because our total eclipse was of the sun, rather than the heart. Or, more likely, because this song is hard as hell to sing. Best of the bunch came this garage-rocking version from Ontario trio The Dirty Nil. Gritty and raw, and singer Luke Bentham sells the hell out of it. Continue reading »

Apr 082024
 
lorde take me to the river

It’s 40 years since a collaboration between Talking Heads and filmmaker Jonathan Demme led to the creation of one of the great concert movies, Stop Making Sense. High concepts, expert musicianship and a big suit cemented it in the minds of a generation. As part of a revival of the film in cinemas and, soon, at home, production owners A24 have curated a tribute album of the songs featured in the movie, to be released later in the year. Lorde has been bold enough to take on “Take Me to the River,” The Talking Heads’ take on the Al Green classic. Continue reading »