‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
Earlier this month, Weezer released their seventh self-titled album (20th overall). Like all the other self-titled albums, it’s known colloquially by the color on the cover—in this case, Gold. By late-era Weezer standards, reviews are pretty good, but, as showcased in a viral Saturday Night Live sketch a few years back, for many people the first two albums are all that matter.
Is that true for covers? Mostly. Over half of the covers on our list tackle songs from The Blue Album and Pinkerton. The rest are spread among subsequent hits (“Island in the Sun,” “Keep Fishin’”) and a few late-period deep cuts. It probably says something that there are more covers of Blue Album outtakes on this list than there are from like 10 of their albums combined. Though, lest it be said we didn’t dig deep enough, Make Believe, Van Weezer, and even Raditude are all represented.
So dive into the best Weezer covers while you ponder that immortal question: What’s with these homies dissin’ my girl?
25. Mac DeMarco — Undone – The Sweater Song
Before they perform “Undone” on AV Undercover, Mac DeMarco explains they learned it in the car on the drive over. It shows. But such sloppiness is part of Mac DeMarco’s charm. He barely knows the lyrics, and the band constantly sounds like they might fall apart, but that loose energy carries a wildly ramshackle performance. At the end he shrugs as he says to the camera, “That works.” — Ray Padgett
24. Deftones — El Scorcho
Rivers Cuomo got his start in a high school metal band called Avant Garde, so it’s not a surprise that the strains of metal were a key component to the Weezer sound. The Deftones certainly recognized the mashup of metal with alternative – in fact, that was where they reveled. So it makes sense that they would see “El Scorcho” as simpatico with their sound. You can hear them standing on the brake pedal in this recording, working hard to keep the song at its deliberate pace, and that tension serves the cover immeasurably. — Patrick Robbins
23. Jordan D. White — I Need Some Of That
What started as a bombastic, electric guitar-shredding original paying homage to Van Halen becomes a more “fun in the sun” tune here, fitting in with the summertime rewind that the song kicks off with. This ukulele cover is lively, picking up the pace a bit compared to the original. White nails the “need” in “I need some of that,” which is no small feat. Be prepared for this chipper tune to get stuck in your head. — Sara Stoudt
22. Whiskey Shivers — Buddy Holly
Whiskey Shivers plays the kind of music that people get in line to try and name the genre. “Thrashgrass” is the band’s preferred nomenclature; “apocalyptic Americana” and “gutterbilly” have also come up. “This group of 20-somethings plays banjos, fiddles and washboards at breakneck speeds,” wrote the Washington Post, “while singing high, lonesome harmonies about love and video games.” All to say that you may think you know how their take on “Buddy Holly” will sound, but they throw enough curveballs to keep things fun and fresh. — Patrick Robbins
21. Emmy The Great & Tim Wheeler — Island In The Sun (acoustic)
Emmy the Great (with her partner at the time, Ash’s Tim Wheeler) included an acoustic version of “Island in the Sun” on their collaboration This Is Christmas. That’s not an AI hallucination: they honestly made a Christmas album that includes Weezer’s classic song of summer. The cover is a rarity, having only been released as a bonus track on a Japanese edition.
Another worthwhile version is Emmy the Great (who goes by Emma-Lee Moss these days) performing the song on a tour of England in 2011. This performance has some weight to it, as the bassist on the original Weezer recording, Mikey Welsh, had died earlier that day, a suspected drug overdose. Emmy announces the news, takes a breath, and plunges in. Emmy and her band play it in straight-ahead fashion except at the end; they close out the song with an a cappella treatment of the final iteration of the song’s last line: “We’ll never feel bad any more.” A moving moment. — Tom McDonald
Karine Polwart is a not a folk singer. Yes, she performs, arguably, in the folk tradition, but by and large, she sings her own material, covering weighty topics such as sex trafficking and depression, somehow contriving an upbeat mood to these often gloomy subjects. Fiercely intelligent, she is fit to stand alongside other Scottish songwriters, such as Dick Gaughan and Michael Marra. Apart from her own material, it has been from the canon of trad.arr. that she has drawn most inspiration, as well as a hefty number of the songs of Rabbie Burns. So I would say that Polwart’s new album Karine Polwart’s Scottish Songbook has come as a bit of a surprise to most. And it is the modern Scottish songbook she applies herself to, not broadsheets and bothy ballads. Indeed, apart from John Martyn’s 1973 song “Don’t Want to Know,” the earliest song on the album, Songbook draws nothing from any conspicuously folkie background. The catholic selection ranges through the Waterboys and the Blue Nile to current electro-poppers Chvrches and the eccentric oddball poet Ivor Cutler. No Rod Stewart, some may be pleased to recognize.
