Oct 272023
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Velvet Underground and Nico

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

NEXT PAGE →

Nov 022022
 

“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty-odd years.

all night long covers

“All Night Long (All Night)” is the fifth of seven chart-topping singles in Lionel Richie’s career, two with the Commodores (“Three Times a Lady,” “Still”) followed by five under its own name. The extremely goofy parenthetical in the title clearly did not impact the song’s journey towards the top. Nor its legacy either; some of these chart-toppers we look at in Covering the Hits did not, in fact, get covered much. “All Night Long (All Night)” – that’s the last time I’m writing that parenthetical – still gets covered constantly. I mean, have you ever been to a wedding?

But below we’ll dig a little deeper into the most notable and most interesting covers, from the ‘80s through just last month. Continue reading »

Oct 052020
 
best tribute albums

Over our time tracking cover songs (13 years this month!), we’ve written about hundreds of new tribute albums, across reviews, news stories, and, when they’re good enough, our best-of-the-year lists. We also have looked back on plenty of great tribute albums from the past in our Cover Classics series. But we’ve never pulled it all together – until now. Continue reading »

Sep 142011
 

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

Andy Warhol’s vision of the perfect rock band, The Velvet Underground wrote the book on cool. With Nico, their aloof European vocalist, and the dark lyrics of Lou Reed, they were fixtures in Warhol’s Factory scene. When Warhol suggested that Reed should write a song about fellow Factory scenestress Edie Sedgwick, youthquaker, socialite, and all-around trouble with a capital T, Reed asked what kind of song. Warhol said, “Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale, Lou?” Of such conversations are deathless works of art made. Continue reading »

Jul 292011
 

Michael Jackson covers are a dime a dozen. In the past few months, we’ve already had a cello cover of “Smooth Criminal” (and what could really beat a cello cover by two dueling cellists), a funky cover of “Human Nature” by Bad Rabbits, and an equally amazing country/folk cover of “Billie Jean” by rising duo The Civil Wars. But the world didn’t know what it was missing until California R&B singer Aloe Blacc released his live video cover of “Billie Jean” with a full string section. He manages to channel and capture the spirit of the late great King of Pop and make one of the best and most interesting (and soulful) MJ covers so far this year. Continue reading »