Blind Melon Archives

The 35 Best Led Zeppelin Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 10:00 am 6 Responses »

Mar 272026

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

Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were veteran session musicians. Robert Plant and John Bonham hadn’t turned 21 yet. The first time the four of them got together, they played “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” and in Jones’s words, “the room just exploded, we could see the grins spreading, and we said, ‘Right. We’re on, this is it, this is going to work!'”

Eleven years and change later, the band released a statement: “We wish it to be known that the loss of our dear friend and the deep respect we have for his family, together with the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager, have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were.”

In between, the band that someone predicted would go over like the world’s biggest lead balloon became the biggest band in the world. Led Zeppelin were pioneers in so many ways. Hard rock, AOR, studio wizardry, stadium touring, album cover design – all saw the band at the forefront. Most importantly, their music was what brought people to them, and what kept them there. All the members were among the best in the world at what they did, and together their alchemy made their songs, whether loud or soft, catch in their listener’s minds and hearts.

When Francis Malofiy called Led Zeppelin “the greatest cover band in all of history,” he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Malofiy was the attorney suing Zeppelin for stealing “Stairway to Heaven”‘s opening riff from the Spirit song “Taurus,” and he certainly wasn’t the first to take the band to court to get songwriting credit. But whether the greatest cover band in all of history synthesized, swiped, or supplanted their influences, the cover bands that came after them were given deep, deep cupboards to plunder, and plunder they did.

We’ve come up with thirty-five top covers of Led Zeppelin songs. Like the band, they branch into blues, country, reggae, folk, and hard rock (and, unlike the band, even jazz). Like the band, they take something great and make it greater. And like Robert, Jimmy, John and John, once you hear it working, your grin is going to spread.

–Patrick Robbins, Features Editor

The 35 Best Velvet Underground Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 10:30 am 8 Responses »

Oct 272023

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

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

The Best Covers of 1990s One Hit Wonders

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 3 Responses »

Sep 082023

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

This month, our ongoing series of One Hit Wonders covers comes to its end. We’ve done the 1950s (think “Earth Angel,” “Tequila”), the 1960s (“96 Tears,” “In A Gadda Da Vida”), the 1970s (“My Sharona,” “Black Betty”), and the 1980s (“You Spin Me Right Round,” “Turning Japanese”). Now we hit the 1990s today and the 2000s next week.

For millennial readers, these will be the songs you remember hearing on the radio and watching on MTV growing up. So many ubiquitous classics of the era like New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” and 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up,” by artists who only had a brief moment in the sun (you might say someone stole their sunshine…). Also some fun flukes, where the artist’s cultural impact goes way beyond “one hit wonder” — but, according to the fickle US pop charts at the time, they qualify on a technicality: Robyn, Fiona Apple, etc. Plus Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” which has to be in the conversation for the most One Hit Wonder to have ever One Hit Wonder-ed. Continue reading »

Full Albums: ‘The Velvet Underground’

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 12:00 pm 2 Responses »

Aug 262021

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

The Velvet Underground are making one of their regular visits to current-events music magazines, what with the Todd Haynes documentary that wowed Cannes and the impending Hal Willner tribute album. Of course, they’ve never left the annals of influence – not since all those few who bought their first album went out and formed bands.

But it’s their third album we’re going to look at today. A complete one-eighty from White Light / White Heat, the album that preceded it, The Velvet Underground saw Lou Reed embracing his inner balladeer, writing and playing slower and so much sweeter. With Doug Yule replacing the singular John Cale, and with Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker both as simpatico with bucolic Lou as brusque Lou, the band was more united than ever, and just as powerful in a whole new way. (Quick aside: Happy birthday to Maureen Tucker, who turns 77 today, and a moment of silence for Sterling Morrison, who was born one August 29 and died one August 30.)
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Cover Classics: ‘Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks’

Posted by Sara Stoudt at 10:00 am 2 Responses »

Apr 272020

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

To this day, I can still sing along with every single Schoolhouse Rock! song, and I’m sure I’m not alone in knowing that knowledge is power. The series was first aired in the ’70s on Saturday mornings on ABC. It continued until entering a hiatus in 1985. The series then returned in 1993 with new content. After another lull starting in 2000, even more content emerged in 2002 and 2009 including a whole new series, Earth Rock, written to tackle the issue of climate change. The box set of Schoolhouse Rock! was even added to the Library of Congress in 2018, which means it is officially deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.”

However, even as a super-fan, I was only recently made aware of this tribute album (whose proceeds partially went to the Children’s Defense Fund). Released in 1996, this album covers a variety of classics across the different series. I confess I was disappointed to not have an “Interjections!” cover. However, this album is now so elusive that I wasn’t able to even listen to some of the songs (I’m itching to hear “Verb: That’s What’s Happening” by Moby and “Conjunction Junction” by Better than Ezra).

Let’s listen to one cover each from Grammar, Multiplication, Science, and America Rock and refresh our memories on some educational basics.

Five Good Covers: Three Is A Magic Number (Schoolhouse Rock)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 5:00 pm 1 Response »

Jan 242014

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

Between Superfriends and Scooby-Doo, Schoolhouse Rock taught ’70s children their parts of speech, times tables, historical events, and more. Those lessons were set to catchy tunes that stuck like flypaper in a honey jar, still well known today to people who saw them forty years ago. The most memorable of the word-based songs was probably “Conjunction Junction,” while “I’m Just a Bill” takes the prize for the history set. When it comes to numbers, it’s hard to debate that any Schoolhouse Rock song has had a more lasting influence than “Three Is A Magic Number.”
Continue reading »