May 302025
 
avril lavigne

Avril Lavigne performed a cover of Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” at one of her most recent live concerts in Moncton, New Brunswick. The artist is currently on her Greatest Hits Tour, which is also being supported by first-rate pop-punk acts such as All Time Low and Simple Plan.

This live version of “Pink Pony Club” was made under stunning magenta lights. Acoustic guitar in hand, she hypes up the crowd, then begins the song. She traded her normally bright timbre for something richer. The cover is like a long crescendo, her backup band eventually adding soft tambourine taps and strummed chords to further support the texture and feeling of the recreated song. Continue reading »

Mar 032025
 
best covers of february 2025
Bring Me the Horizon — Wonderwall (Oasis cover)

Screamo Oasis? That’s sure to piss some people off! Can’t wait for the Gallagher brothers to weigh in. This reminds me of Biffy Clyro’s highly divisive “Modern Love” a few years back. Not generally my genre of music, but I do love when a band takes a swing like this.

The Great Leslie — Fix You (Coldplay cover)

For a couple weeks this months, my Google Alerts were taken over by some TV-performance show called Chefsache ESC 2025. Which I’d never heard of, and still only vaguely understand what it is (some sort of Germany-only Eurovision?). It produced some wild covers though. The Feuerschwanz medieval-metal version of “Dragostea Din Tei” must be seen to be believed. But we’ve written about that song before—they released it on an album a couple years ago—so, instead, here’s a group called The Great Leslie performing Coldplay like they’re Franz Ferdinand. Continue reading »

Feb 212023
 
snail mail live covers

Baltimore’s beloved indie-rockers Snail Mail just threw the five-day Valentine Fest in their hometown venut Ottobar. The band’s Lindsey Jordan and co. performed every night with an array of special guests, and invited many of those guests up for one-night-only cover songs.

First up, Soccer Mommy joined the band on the festival’s second night to tackle Avril Lavigne’s “I’m With You.” Quiet verses exploded into a sing-along chorus that had the whole crowd belting along. Continue reading »

Feb 152023
 

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

cover of instrumental

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question: What’s your favorite cover performed by a child?
Continue reading »

Oct 312022
 
avril lavigne
Avril Lavigne & All Time Low – All the Small Things (Blink 182 cover)

One way you can tell millennials are getting old: There are now nostalgia-bait festivals catering to the music of their (our) youth. Such was the case with When We Were Young, the emo and pop-punk fest in Vegas a couple weeks ago with Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Bright Eyes, and dozens more. A video high point is this extremely fun and infectious cover of “All the Small Things” by All Time Low and Avril Lavigne, performed right after Blink 182 announced they were getting back together. Best part: When the entire crowd hollers alone to “Work sucks / I know”! Continue reading »

Sep 012022
 
Parker Graye Avril Lavigne Complicated

Parker Graye is a singer-songwriter from Nashville by way of British Columbia. She’s released a number of original singles in recent years, part of her self-described mission to “make country music sad again.” Clunky political references aside, Graye’s aims have been funneled towards her latest, and biggest, release from last Friday: a country cover of “Complicated,” the 2002 hit from emo-rock icon (& fellow Sad Canadian) Avril Lavigne. Continue reading »