Aug 022021
 

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

billy joel covers

When Bruce Springsteen invited Billy Joel to play with him at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 40th anniversary concert, he described their meeting as the “Bridge and Tunnel Summit.” This crossover surprised no one; the two artists are similar in many ways, riding careers that exploded from modest singer-songwriter origins playing dive bars to filling stadiums across the world. But one of the ways their trajectories have diverged: The Tunnel side of that equation (that’s Bruce from New Jersey) is about 100 times cooler than the Bridge side (Billy from Long Island). As a result, Springsteen songs have been covered far more often than Joel tunes, despite both having quite a few household-name hits under their belt.

Or maybe they’ve just been covered differently. When we did our Springsteen list, we had an abundance of genre-spanning covers to choose from, the hippest artists around finding meaning in Bruce’s work from every conceivable direction. Doing this month’s Joel list, we had an abundance too – of lounge piano. So much lounge piano.

Joel’s songs deserve better treatment than they often get. So we had to dig deep for this list, sifting through the schlock. There’s a little jazzy piano sprinkled in here and there, sure, but there’s also hardcore punk, ’90s R&B, spectral folk, robot electronica, south-of-the-border disco, and more. Turns out there are plenty of revelatory Billy Joel covers out there; they’re just lurking a little below the surface.

Dive in.

The list begins on Page 2.

Aug 252017
 

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

This week we’re working through the entire six decades that produced over 150 versions of this timeless Burt Bacharach and Hal David classic. You can read what we said about the ’60s, the ’70s, and the ’80s by following the links. Now to end the century in style…

Part IV: The ’90s

The ‘90s were weird. A variety of styles and quality were reflected during the decade. Although the output of verifiable covers more than doubled over the previous 10 years, none would challenge the staying power of Naked Eyes’ ‘83 version. But Mr. Bacharach could have never predicted the popularity of grunge and it would have been hard to envision any of his songs being delivered in that alt rock style or any of its indie/emo/power pop offshoots. The decade brought us that, and as you’ll see, much more. In the ‘90s…
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