At the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, Elton John led a tribute to Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson. “We loved each other,” John said, “I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather pay tribute to than Brian Wilson and his family with this incredible song.” He then launched into a cover of the 1966 song, “God Only Knows,” with back up from musicians including Don Was on bass and Benmont Tench on piano. (“God Only Knows,” appeared on the Beach Boys record Pet Sounds.)
Describing the first time he met Brian, John said it happened the first time he was in Los Angeles with lyricist Bernie Taupin. “We were scared shitless because he was my idol. He was the one that influenced me more than anybody else when it came to writing songs on the piano. It was an evening we would never forget,” John said. “Meeting someone who was a true genius doesn’t happen very often.”
The emotions were visible on John’s face as he sang the repetitive title line, “God only knows where I’d be without you.”
Brian Wilson passed away in June from cardiac arrest at age 82.
Toni Cornell, daughter of the late Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell, has released a heartfelt studio cover of The Beach Boys classic “God Only Knows.” Cornell might not sound much like her father, who is known for rich, deep vocals. But her vocal control is amazing and sounds stunning layered over an acoustic guitar and tambourine.Continue reading »
Following the death of Brian Wilson, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong decided to release his never-heard-before solo cover of the Beach Boys’ 1964 song. The rocker stated in his Instagram post, “I recorded a cover of ‘I Get Around’ a few years ago… Never got to share it. One of my all-time favorite songs ever.”Continue reading »
In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
Songwriter Brian Wilson in Santa Monica California 1990
God only knows where we’d be without Brian Wilson.
If that sounds glib, a journalistic play on one of his best-known tunes, think it through. The footprint made by Brian Douglas Wilson, who died on June 11, nine days short of his 83rd birthday, is amongst the largest of any single musician from the 1960s, certainly of those born his side of the Atlantic. As a writer and producer his skill was exemplary, but remember also his angelic voice, arguably the second finest in his family (his brother Carl just one step ahead in those stakes, to my mind).
Whilst it had seemed he had been long gone, trapped in his own mind, if still being paraded out by management, friends and family, the pain of his actual departure from this world is both profound and shocking. Few musicians have had as much scrutiny over the years, with books and films aplenty, all documenting the highs and lows of a life lived largely in the public eye. From the start, the bedeviled saga of the Beach Boys has attracted equal parts adoration and opprobrium, the former usually reserved for Wilson, the latter for those who sought to take advantage of his often precarious mental health.
And what highs and what lows there have been. But we at Cover Me have come to praise his genius, rather than rake over those coals; there will be plenty of that elsewhere. One of only two musicians to get two birthday “salutes” from us, here and here, his legacy was also rightly celebrated in our deep dive into the best 40 covers of songs by his band, the Beach Boys. Sure, he didn’t write them all, but certainly had a hand in the vast majority of the best ones.
Add in a welter of album reviews for the myriad tributes to him, personally and/or The Beach Boys, and it is obvious as to quite how well regarded he was, here and everywhere. I typed “Brian Wilson” into our site search engine and it delivered 16 pages, with “Beach Boys” providing 31. Even if you allow for some duplication, that is quite staggering. As such we need, and Brian Wilson deserves, a last hurrah, a valedictory victory parade of the bounty left in his wake, with the Beach Boys and without. Here is a baker’s dozen of his best. Continue reading »
Experimental Elvis. Surf-rock Kraftwerk. Garage-rock Roger Miller. Stoner White Stripes. Twee Beach Boys. Heavy-metal Townes Van Zandt. Retro-soul Merle Haggard.
There was no shortage of ambition, or wild genre-crossing ideas, among this year’s cover albums. Here are the best of the best.
25. Otu Fuzzy Tunes
Finnish doom metal outfit Otu stay on theme (“fuzzy”) throughout this covers album without ever getting boring. Each of the tracks is of a metal or hard rock song, but the style of cover varies each time. Album opener “No One Knows,” a Queens of the Stone Age cover, doesn’t stray terribly far from the original, just a bit heavier and fuzzed out. This is followed by a version of the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl” that sounds almost like an early Nirvana track; the guitar is tuned low enough to sound like a bass, or else it’s a bass guitar playing the main riff. Track 3, a cover of “Iron Man,” is the first on the album to really sound like a true “doom” cover. It reveals that, while the other styles help keep the album from being too one-note, Otu’s strength is the slow, down-tuned, guttural sound of classic doom metal. “Holy Mountain” and “War Pigs” are strong tracks similarly drenched in towering, droning guitars. It’s a fun way to hear some classic tunes and you’ll get the most bang for your buck on this album with some good headphones or loud speakers. – Mike Misch
24. Various Artists Todo Muere SBXV
Todo Muere SBXV celebrates 15 years of the industrial, gothic, experimental record label Sacred Bones (that info will help to decipher the “SBXV”). Things get loud, as when a trio of metal acts Thou, Mizmor, and Emma Ruth Rundle road through Zola Jesus’s “Night.” They also get dreamy, as when ambient artist Hilary Woods warbles “In Heaven” from Eraserhead (that’s right, David Lynch is a Sacred Bones artist).
Even if you don’t know many of the original songs – and, unless you’re deep in this scene, you probably won’t – the cumulative effect is mesmerizing, moving, and at times a little harrowing. In a good way. – Ray Padgett
23. Jason McNiff Tonight We Ride
Jason McNiff may not be the best known of names, but this hard-working singer and guitarist has hewn himself quite a place in the annals of that awkwardly-titled genre, UK Americana. McNiff earned a degree in French and Russian, but the lure of his first love proved too strong. He immersed himself in the fingerpicked guitar of folk and blues, in particular the work and style of the late Bert Jansch. McNiff spent his COVID lockdown hunkering down with weekly online gigs, dubbed the “Sundowner” sessions. Exhausting both his own repertoire of songs and those he already loved by others, he had to learn a whole new catalog of material. Tonight We Ride was the logical conclusion: eleven songs encompassing artists McNiff holds the most in reverence. Sure enough, that includes two Jansch songs, alongside The Beatles (“Tomorrow Never Knows”), Leonard Cohen (“Moving On”), and a couple Dylan tunes too. – Seuras Og
22. AWOLNATION My Echo, My Shadows, My Covers, & Me
The opener clearly reveals this album as also pandemic-born: “how can we dance when our earth is turning? how do we sleep while our beds are burning?” The genre of this song is closer to that of what you might expect from modern-rock hitmakers AWOLNATION, but that’s where my predictions of what would happen next faltered. AWOLNATION provides a soundtrack for the full pandemic roller coaster featuring just as much electro pop as their signature rock approach, as well a variety of guest collaborators.
Feeling down? Jump right into “Take A Chance On Me,” where you might find yourself second-guessing, “wait this is the ‘Sail’ group?!?” Need to refresh your workout mix? There is “Maniac.” Other mood boosters are “Just a Friend” or “Flagpole Sitta,” which you might never have expected to appear together in an album setting. Lest you think this is only a tongue-in-cheek album, introspective choices are woven throughout, like “Wings of Change” and “Alone Again (Naturally)”.
If I had to pick a pair of favorites, one fun and one more serious, they would be AWOLNATION putting the MMMBop in “Material Girl” with Taylor Hanson and “Eye in the Sky” with Beck (not a song I was familiar with before, but now a tune I can’t get out of my head). – Sara Stoudt
21. Various Artists Stór agnarögn
If you’re Icelandic, you probably know these songs. Ásgeir Trausti’s 2012 album Dýrð í dauðaþögn was a sensation in his home country, the best selling debut ever in the country (sorry, Björk).
But statistically speaking, you are probably not Icelandic. So you don’t know the original versions of these ten songs – and if you do, it’s probably via the John Grant-translated English versions. No matter. Sigur Rós became sensations without anyone understanding what they were saying. Ásgeir’s songs have beautiful melodies, frequently soaring into Bon Iver-channeling falsetto, and they work wonderfully in this collection of his countrymen-and-women’s covers. Even if you don’t understand a single word (I don’t!), the music will carry you away. – Ray Padgett
If you were to look at the charts, the Beach Boys basically stopped having giant hits after 1966’s “Good Vibrations” (with the obvious exception of 1988’s “Kokomo”). They’re a singles band whose singles mostly dried up six years into their sixty-year career. They had a brief run of good-time hits about girls, cars, and surfing, then faded. They’re the band preserved forever in that cornball publicity photo up top.
But that’s not the story these covers tell.
The big hits are here, sure. “Surfer Girl” and “Fun Fun Fun” and “I Get Around” etc. But so are many now-iconic tunes that weren’t hits. “God Only Knows,” the Beach Boys’ most covered song, peaked at #39. By their standards, that’s a straight-up flop. Many other covered songs didn’t even make it that high. But “God Only Knows” has of course belatedly been recognized as one of the great pop songs of the 20th century. As has the album it came off of, Pet Sounds, itself a relative commercial failure.
Pet Sounds, of course, has long since been recognized as a classic. So some artists dig even deeper. “Lonely Sea” is an album cut off their 1963 album Surfin’ U.S.A. “Trader” comes off the 1973 album Holland. Three separate songs here originally came off Surf’s Up, now the go-to pick for artists who want to show they know more than Pet Sounds. Even a song not released until the ‘90s, “Still I Dream of It,” gets a killer cover.
You can trace the story of the Beach Boys’ reputation through these covers. A group once perceived as a lightweight singles act have been fully embraced as musical geniuses, all the way from the hits of the ’60s through the then-overlooked gems of the ‘70s and beyond. Some of these songs below you probably won’t know. Others you will know every single word of…but you’ve never heard them sung like this.
25. Otu
24. Various Artists
23. Jason McNiff
22. AWOLNATION
21. Various Artists