Feb 232024
 

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

beatles covers

Sixty years ago this month, The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show. You don’t need us to tell you what a momentous occasion this was; entire books have been written on the subject. Suffice to say we’re using the anniversary as our excuse to finally devote a Best Covers Ever to perhaps the biggest band of them all. We’ve done Dylan. We’ve done the Stones. We’ve done Dolly and Springsteen and Prince. But there was one last giant remaining.

Though it’s difficult to measure this precisely, The Beatles are the most-covered artist of all time according to the two biggest covers databases on the internet (SecondHandSongs, WhoSampled). And that certainly feels right. “Yesterday” is often cited as the most-covered song of all time, though that needs qualifiers (a ton of Christmas standards would beat it). But, again, it feels right. The Beatles were ubiquitous in their day, and they’ve been ubiquitous ever since. They just had a chart-topping single last month, the A.I.-assisted “Now and Then,” which was duly covered widely. If “Carnival of Light” ever surfaces, no doubt a carnival of covers will soon follow. Continue reading »

Jun 182022
 

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

paul mccartney covers

There are a lot of weird and wacky images within Alan Aldridge’s 1969 cult classic book The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. One of the most memorable is a drawing imagining what John, Paul, George, and Ringo will look like as senior citizens. In this fantastical portrait, John and George are depicted as eccentric elders. Ringo, in keeping with his everyman persona, is shown as a shopworn sad sack. But it is Paul McCartney who offers the most disturbing vision of the future. “The cute one” appears as a conservative besuited and well-fed bank manager. His smug grin suggests he is proud to have finally outgrown all that silly pop music nonsense. Continue reading »

Nov 042016
 

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

Doors

When the Doors went to number one with “Hello, I Love You,” many of their fans called them sellouts. Never mind they’d already gotten to number one with “Light My Fire” the year before; this time around, the thinking went, they were out to write a hit single and leave their darker stuff behind. More than half a century has passed since Jim Morrison wrote about that dusky jewel walking across the California beach sands, and while you can count the number of people who hum “Horse Latitudes” these days on the thumb of one hand, “Hello, I Love You” has maintained its status as a much-beloved classic of the sixties.
Continue reading »

Feb 082014
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

Joe Raposo taught America’s children how to sing. – Charles Kuralt

Joe Raposo died a quarter century ago this week; today would have been his 77th birthday. The name might not ring a bell, but the music sure does – he was the very first person to ask, “Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?”

Yes, Raposo’s songs helped many a sunny day sweep the clouds away, whether they were performed by Cookie Monster or Frank Sinatra (who called Raposo “the genius”). His melodies were catchy and uplifting, while his lyrics were simple enough for kids to grasp, but sophisticated enough that adults could find true meaning in them. Put together, they defied you to not sing along.
Continue reading »

Jun 272012
 

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

John wanted to write about an affair he had without letting his wife know. Paul suggested ending the song with the protagonist burning the house down. George thought the song needed something special, and spontaneously picked up the sitar he’d recently bought. Ringo laid off the drums and gave the song the gentler percussion it needed. Together, they crafted “Norwegian Wood,” one of the highlights of Rubber Soul and the entire catalog of the Beatles. Continue reading »