May 162020
 

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

britney spears covers

Last year, Rob Sheffield called 1999 “the year music exploded, the year when nothing made any damn sense, the year fans had to throw out any old-school rules for how pop worked.” If that’s true, then 2000 was the year when those new trends became the accepted norm. Back in January, we looked at covers of one of the year’s defining phenomenons – boy bands – and this month was tackle another: Britney, a pop supernova so massive she didn’t need a last name.

Her sophomore album Oops!… I Did It Again came out 20 years ago today, setting the record for the highest debut-week album sales by a female artist (it held for 15 years, until Adele’s 25). Though Spears was primarily a singles artist, her albums sold so much that even the deep cuts wormed their way into millions of teenage brains. When we compiled this list, I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t just the half-dozen biggest hits being covered. Those songs got covered plenty, and still do (our number-four best cover of 2019 was a “Baby One More Time” – not a bad lifespan for a song written by a Swede whose grasp of English was a little rough), but musicians also dig into the album tracks and the singles that flopped.

Spears has shifted into the Vegas-residency stage of her career in recent years (not to mention Instagram star and cause-celebre hashtag). But even if she doesn’t have any more world-conquering hits in her, other artists are keeping her songs alive. Of the thousands of covers out there, here are the 25 best.

The list begins on Page 2.

Mar 282018
 

“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty years.

hold it against me covers

This fourth installment of “Covering the Hits” marks a first: the first time one of these was a hit during Cover Me’s lifetime. Britney Spears’ “Hold It Against Me” topped the charts in 2011, well within this blog’s ten-year history. In fact, we wrote a feature on the song when it first came out. This is hardly a cut we’re dusting off from the archives of music history. Continue reading »

Jul 012011
 

Dublin’s Carosel (now based in Paris) set a high bar for their acoustic covers earlier this year with their startlingly beautiful, yearning take on Britney Spears’ “Hold It Against Me.” The question, then, became whether they could bring the same kind of heartfelt, subtle beauty to a song that was already full of emotion, rather than simply switching things up on a pop hit. Continue reading »

Feb 232011
 

Quickies rounds up new can’t-miss covers. Download ‘em below.

Australia’s Triple J radio is on a roll. Last week found them recording Yeasayer’s infectious Seal cover and this week Kate Nash hit the studio to perform Denise Williams’ Footloose smash “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.”
MP3: Kate Nash – Let’s Hear It for the Boy (Denise Williams cover) Continue reading »