Metronomy drummer Anna Prior is back with a new EP, Firefly. The first single is a cover of the Mary J Blige classic. “I’ve wanted to do a cover song for a long time and I just never found the right one that fit with my sound,” Prior wrote. “The overall tone and feeling of the original fit so well with the ‘A minor’ theme of the EP that I just couldn’t resist. It’s a song that shaped my late teenage years and I really hope I’ve done it justice and I don’t get sued.” [Editor’s note: You won’t. That’s not how covers work…]
Bonnie “Prince” Billy — Trustfall (Pink cover)
Last December, the prolific Bonnie “Prince” Billy hopped onstage with Yo La Tengo to cover—of all people—current Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee Pink. The song was a pretty deep cut too, a single from 2023. Will Oldham must really like that song, because he’s returned to it again in a solo incarnation. As if that combo wasn’t wild enough, add this one: This video was recorded at the early 18th-century pub The Lamb in Bloomsbury London, regular haunt of Charles Dickens.Continue reading »
Before Bon Iver played “Who Is It?” one night in Washington, D.C., frontman Justin Vernon told the crowd they were about to cover Björk. Then he added, “Somebody told me that we’re doing a Björk cover because it’s so hip to do Björk covers. I just kinda like good music.”
He’s right on both counts. It is good music, and it is hip to do Björk covers. Has any other artist been covered by both Radiohead and Robyn? Not to mention Death Cab, The Decemberists, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the aforementioned Bon Iver. If they were all over Pitchfork in the 2000s, they’ve probably covered Björk. (Or, maybe more to the point, all over Stereogum, which curated an entire Björk tribute album with the buzziest indie-rock bands of the moment like Dirty Projectors, Liars, and Atlas Sound.)
Björk seems to fall at that sweet spot for forward-thinking indie or “alternative” artists. She’s innovative, experimental, and downright weird… but she’s also really really popular! Her strange and inventive videos were on constant rotation on MTV in the 1990s. She’s got a ton of amazing deep cuts to mine, but she also has household-name hits too. As Justin Vernon said, it’s just good music.
35. Thao with Secret Sidewalk — Human Behaviour
After all these years, “Human Behaviour” might remain Björk’s signature song. It’s one of those songs that, even though it’s very much of its time, it’s so distinctly Björk that it almost sounds out of time. It’s closely tied to her and her distinct voice and vocalizations, but also to the electronic sounds around her voice.
American singer-songwriter Thao decided she should do a band version. Well, sort of. She enlists a saxophonist, with her taking guitar, and with a drummer joining. Most of the electronic elements remain, courtesy of a DJ, so for the first two minutes the song is remarkably similar, despite the live instrumentation and two instruments not present in the original recording.
But then they take the song to a radical place, vamping during a bridge that feels improvised. When they return to beats and melody, they are less faithful as the song slows and Thao chants some of the lyrics as she solos. To complete the transformation, there’s a brief saxophone solo after Thao’s solo. It’s still recognizable as “Human Behaviour” at the beginning and mostly at the end, but it gets way out there in the middle. — Riley Haas
34. RIAYA feat. John Mark McMillan — Hunter
As you can probably tell from its epic, over-the-top vibe, this cover of “Hunter” was created for use in a movie, specifically 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate. You can practically smell the popcorn as it plays. Alas, it only ended up featuring in the trailer. All kidding aside, there is something so wonderfully glorious and earnest about this “Hunter.” It sounds less futuristic than was probably intended and more like music to wave your sword to, as you lead your “Army of Me’s” over the hill. It’s hard not to smile during the cover’s climax, where McMillan and the piano stand alone on their sonic mountain and presumably look over the horizon. “I’m the Hunter” indeed. Onward!— Hope Silverman
33. Emily Hope Price — Come to Me
Björk’s “Come To Me” is somehow both alluring and maternal, warding off any acknowledgement of love while at the same time making it clear that love is what’s making her sing these words. The musical bed she gives it is sort of Bond goes Bollywood in zero-G, with strings, synths and tabla creating their own atmosphere.
Cellist Emily Hope Price’s cover takes all the quilts, blankets, and pillows off that bed, rendering it spare but still rich and luxuriant in its own way. Even her intakes of breath provide their own sense of lushness, and her vocal is that of someone who wants and needs more than to care for someone. She needs that someone, and you can feel her pain at that someone being just out of reach. — Patrick Robbins
32. Bartok v Björk — Bachelorette
A child who could make music from an early age. Fully trained in the art and method of classical music, but also deeply linked to the folklore and folk music of their homeland. Someone whose defiance of convention led to being pilloried by some critics, but lauded by others. Someone who refused to be silenced when they saw what they believed to be injustice.
No, I’m not talking about Björk. I’m talking about Béla Bartók. Bartók’s journey was a more painful one, ending in exile, and he never saw the widest recognition of his genius, but he is nevertheless a good pairing for Iceland’s great musical gift to the world.
Composer Steve Hackman’s fusions between classical and modern work are a bridge of sorts, but the Björk vs Bartók project is particularly inspired. The show tours regularly, with top-class musicianship on display. Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra is one of the great works of 20th-century classical music, and, when combined with words from Björk’s first three albums, there are great musical and personal stories to be heard.
The entire show is available online, but the version of “Bachelorette” captures some of the best features of the work as a whole. The French horns and brass section do some great work, and the three vocalists are mesmerizing. Whether by design or as a feat of acting they attempt to embody, in addition to the sound, the emotions of the creator of these songs. Steely determination. Awe at what they are producing. Fear that the work will go off the rails. Singers and Muses. — Mike Tobyn
31. Madison Cunningham — Army of Me
Much of Björk’s appeal is based around the contrast between the light and airy vocal against the dense hum of electronica she places beneath it. Madison Cunningham doesn’t deal in such, preferring organic sounds, conventional instrumentation and orchestration. How is it, then, that she manages to find equivalent eeriness in this haunting song? Her voice is cold and dispassionate, which renders further the eldritch spirit of the original, the absence of emotion, all the more chilling. As the orchestra swirls and the timpani clatter, you know the battle, and any resistance, is lost. — Seuras Og
One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.
I almost regret doing it.
— Bjork, 2002
Bjork‘s “It’s Oh So Quiet” is a rare example of a cover song being way more successful than the cover artist would have wished. The Icelandic singer-songwriter recorded the old Betty Hutton jazz hit in 1995, only as “sort of a joke.” She didn’t expect it to be her most successful single as a solo artist. She didn’t expect it to outperform her innovative Top 40 originals: “Venus as a Boy,” “Big Time Sensuality,” “Play Dead,” and “Army of Me.” She didn’t expect it to be a Christmas favorite, or to catapult her to a level of fame that involved physically attacking an invasive reporter at a Bangkok airport. And she almost certainly didn’t expect it to be considered “quintessential Bjork” in all its whimsicality, or to go down in history as the most recognizable showcasing of her acrobatic vocals.
“It’s ironic ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ became my biggest song,” Bjork said in 2002, the same year she agreed with her fans to omit it from her Greatest Hits album. She deemed it a track she’d put the least creative effort into, and one that didn’t represent her at all, as if its immense popularity was entirely out of her hands and an abomination in her catalog. She made perfectly clear that she was embarrassed by it; that she disowned it. She therefore left us asking the important question: Who or what is to, erm, blame for this One Great Cover?
“Pagan Poetry” is the second single from Björk’s Vespertine, her fourth album and a bit of a musical departure from previous records. The album features a lot of sounds assembled from unusual instruments, most notably music boxes. This song is pretty representative of the more subdued sound of the record.
Her New Knife are a Philadelphia-based indie rock band whose sound is often described as shoegaze. However, that descriptor that will not prepare you at all for this new Björk cover of theirs. It is not remotely shoegaze, it’s weirder than that.
The original stars with a harp melody and when her voice comes in, there is a pretty insistent, simple bassline. Her Knew Knife echo the opening harp part with detuned guitar but that bassline never comes in to anchor the song. Instead, lead vocalist Edgar Atencio’s voice just floats over top of the various guitar parts that come in and out of the mix, only occasionally fully playing the harp part. The backing vocals are relatively familiar if you
Some distant percussion joins part way through the track before giving way to a spanish guitar-esque break with Atencio’s voice even more unmoored than before. More instruments return as the cover builds towards the final refrain. Much like in the original, the lead vocal for the refrain is A Capella first before backing vocals and instrumentation join it. It is only at this point there is the tiniest bit of bass.
Never does the track once approach the gentleness of the original, nor does it ever approach the noise conjured by the term “shoegaze.” Instead, everything but that one acoustic guitar is frail and brittle. And the whole performance sounds like it could completely fall apart at any moment.
“Big Time Sensuality” is the fourth single from Björk‘s first adult album, the appropriately titled Debut. It was her third Icelandic #1, her second Top 20 UK hit and her first charting song in the US, so it’s a bit of a milestone for her career. Unlike the first three singles, musically “Big Time Sensuality” is a more traditionally up-tempo house number – though it takes a bit to get going and it has a distinct chorus that seems to disappear into the song. Like much of her music from this time, it shows off the full range of both her voice and her vocal techniques.
Dear Evangeline are an all-woman metal band from Brampton, a suburb of Toronto. They put out their debut EP last year. Their sound blends elements of sludge metal with metalcore, nu metal, alternative metal and post-hardcore. So they’re an obvious choice for a Björk cover.
Dear Evangeline’s cover begins with a sample of Björk being Björk from some kind of promo (presumably MTV). And then the sludgy assault begins. One of the singers (there are two) shouts/screams the verses and they sing the chorus (though they scream the title), giving a real contrast to the two sets of lyrics, unlike in the original. Meanwhile the bass plods underneath and the lead guitar runs around in the background. The band slows everything down for the final stanza, fully leaning into the sludge.
The vocals are very metalcore while the band is very sludgy. It’s a long way from house music but features an extreme vocal performance just like the original, even if it’s a very different kind of extreme. It’s fun and, if you like this kind of metal, it just might be for you.
