The Best Vampire Weekend Covers Ever

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Jul 262024
 

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

This spring, Vampire Weekend released their fifth album, Only God Was Above Us. Like all their albums, it was extremely well-received (“Universal acclaim,” says Metacritic), and they’re currently in the middle of a year-long tour supporting it. They take so long between albums that we wanted to strike while the iron was hot and celebrate some of the great covers of their work.

To state the obvious, five albums is not a huge discography. Last month we did The Kinks, and they’ve got 26 studio albums to cover songs from, and that’s not even counting all the non-album singles that include many of their biggest hits. But Vampire Weekend are beloved in a way few modern indie-rock bands are. So even though they don’t have that many songs, and even though they’re hardly in the game of making inescapable pop hits, they get covered a fair amount. And often in unexpected, inventive ways. Fitting for one of the most unexpected, inventive bands in the game.

Read on for our favorites.

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Cover Me Q&A: What’s your favorite cover of a one-hit wonder?

 Posted by at 12:00 pm  4 Responses »
Jan 292020
 

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

song at your funeral

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question: What’s your favorite cover of a one-hit wonder?
Continue reading »

Watch Exclusive Snoop Dogg, Righteous Brothers, Marvin Gaye Covers at 2nd ‘Cover Me’ Book Party

 Posted by at 12:39 pm  1 Response »
Nov 032017
 

In October, I held the first release event for the Cover Me book at Paste Magazine’s New York studios, featuring performances by Eli Paperboy Reed, Emel Mathlouthi, and Anthony D’Amato (watch them all here!). And this week I held the second, at Phoenix Books in my old hometown of Burlington, Vermont. The concept was similar: rather than a dry book talk, I would combine some conversation with live covers of songs from the book.

Two of my favorite local bands, Swale and Madaila – both of which I’ve posted about here before – stepped up with some amazing performances. And luckily, like at Paste, we’ve got footage. (More amateur-quality footage, admittedly – iPhones at a bookstore rather than multi-cam at Paste’s recording studio – but the performances are every bit as stunning.)

Swale kicked things off with a tender trio take on “Unchained Melody,” the Righteous Brothers hit first recorded as the theme for the now-forgotten 1955 prison move Unchained. Bobby Hatfield left a pretty high bar for a vocalist to hit, but Swale’s Amanda Gustafson easily cleared it while Eric Olsen (guitar) and Tyler Bolles (bass) gave her a stripped-down acoustic backing. Continue reading »

The Best Cover EPs of 2011

 Posted by at 10:00 am  2 Responses »
Dec 062011
 

I have no hard data to back this up, but I suspect that EPs play a larger role in the world of cover songs than they do elsewhere. In the wider world, EPs tend to be an afterthought, a set of rejects or remixes that may or may not be worthwhile. People pay little attention to EPs, and artists act accordingly, saving their real statements for the full-lengths. In our world, though, we see as many EPs as we do proper albums, and they’re every bit as good. An artist may hesitate to put out a “cover album” – still a loaded term in some circles – but in the age of Garageband and Bandcamp, it’s only too easy to record a half dozen covers and toss ‘em out between albums. Therefore, in honor of the EP’s prominence in our world, we present our favorite EPs of 2011 (with an MP3 from each). Continue reading »

Chamberlin Completes Covers EP with Cults, Vampire Weekend, Foster the People

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Sep 272011
 

As we’ve mentioned, Vermont locals Chamberlin have been working on an EP of stripped-down covers, involving their fans in the process by holding a contest to choose the tracklist and releasing their versions of Passion Pit’s “Little Secrets” and Kanye West’s “Lost in The World” ahead of time. They’ve just released the finished product for purchase, rounding off the 5-song set with their takes on “Go Outside” by Cults, “Giving Up The Gun” by Vampire Weekend, and “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People. Named the Cabin Covers EP after the rural home where they recorded it, the record has taken on a humanitarian role. Hurricane Irene flooded much of the area around the cabin during the recording process and the band decided to donate all the proceeds from the EP to relief efforts. In true Vermont fashion, you can buy the EP alone or bundled with a pound of dark roast coffee Continue reading »

Chamberlin Returns with a Cover of Kanye West’s “Lost In The World”

 Posted by at 3:30 pm  1 Response »
Sep 162011
 

In a project that we’re keeping a close eye on here at Cover Me, Vermont-based folk outfit Chamberlin is putting together an EP of covers that they asked fans to help choose on their website. The voting period ended at the beginning of this week, but you can still check out the contest page to see the eight possible songs, four of which will be chosen for the release. The fruits of their labor are now starting to appear, with their version of Kanye West’s “Lost In The World” hitting the internet this week. Continue reading »

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