Covering the Hits: “All Night Long (All Night)” (Lionel Richie)

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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 »

The 50 Best Tribute Albums Ever

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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 »

Five Good Covers: Femme Fatale (The Velvet Underground)

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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 »

Watch: Aloe Blacc Records a Classy String Version of “Billie Jean”

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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 »