On September 2, 2014, Ray gave the go on my first news article and published it to Cover Me (unbeknownst to him, it was also my birthday). It’s been nothing but great fun working with the crew here and this fall we celebrate our Aluminum Anniversary by asking our team to compile a list of covers they hold dear.
Down below, in no particular order of importance, are my picks. Enjoy! Continue reading »
Follow all our Best of 2014 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
A few months ago, I read an interesting interview with an artist named Nouela. You probably haven’t heard of her, but you may have heard her music. She’s become a specialist in a weird but growing niche: covers recorded for movie and television trailers. Whether doing a piano “Sound of Silence” to promote a new HBO show or a brooding “Black Hole Sun” to promote Liam Neeson punching people, she’s found a quickly-growing way of getting her covers out there.
It struck me as part of a growing trend we’ve seen. More and more great covers seem to come from unexpected places. Sure, you’ve got still your standby sources, your b-sides, tribute albums, and radio shows. But new avenues for covers have increasingly crept in. This year saw a Sam Smith cover that is only available to hear under Grey’s Anatomy dialog (thankfully he’s recorded a few live versions too) and a whole covers album recorded to plug a Canadian TV show. Brands have fully embraced covers too, most recently My Morning Jacket’s “This Land Is Your Land” recorded for North Face ads, or Charli XCX and Bleachers trading covers for Kia.
We don’t care where they originated when we make our year-end lists, though, and we would up with some of everything. In our top five alone, we’ve got a live radio session, a deluxe-edition bonus track, and a cover hiding in plain sight on one of the most acclaimed country records of the year. You have to keep an eye on more places than ever to spot the best covers these days. Wherever they come from, we’re glad to have ’em.
Click on over to page two to begin our countdown, and thanks for reading.
– Ray Padgett, Editor in Chief
(Illustration by Sarah Parkinson)
Follow all our Best of 2014 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
Back when we redesigned the site in 2010, we created basic star icons to represent the ratings we’d give an album when we reviewed it. 2 stars, 3.5 stars, etc. When we posted an album review, we’d find the corresponding icon where we last uploaded it. However, earlier this year we couldn’t find one of the icons we were looking for. Why? It turns out we’d never used it. We’d never before given an album a perfect five stars.
This year, for the first time, we did. Which should suffice to say it’s been an excellent year for cover albums. True, a few of the marquee tributes we most eagerly anticipated fell flat, either too formulaic (The Art of McCartney) or too out-there (that Flaming Lips’ Sgt. Peppers tribute we’ll never speak of again). But in the cracks and under the radar, cover and tribute albums thrived.
In our list of the twenty best, we’ve got everything from big names on major labels to DIY projects thrown up on Bandcamp. We’ve got New Orleans jazz, Parisian dub reggae, and songs that were popular when your great-great-great-great grandfather was calling town dances. Something for everyone, I guess. Something for all our fwends (sorry, that was the last time, promise).
There’s simply no arguing against it: “Something About Us” is a feel-good song – one that’s tinged with memories of summer nights, first loves and last minute road trips.With this tune, Daft Punk masterfully crafts a song for the ages. And boy does Spazzkid do it justice.Continue reading »
I have a tendency to skirt around Daft Punk covers. It’s not that the covers fail to impress, it’s just that Daft Punk’s that good – it’s kind of hard to listen to a cover when the original perfectly satisfies what you need.Continue reading »
I first became aware of Mato due to his excellent reggae remix of Mayer Hawthorne’s hit cover of The New Holiday’s ‘Maybe So, Maybe No’. I delved a little deeper and found many more re-fixes and re-jiggles he had done. His speciality involves taking the acapella of many a hip-hop classic and giving it a new life with a fresh reggae/dub bedding.Continue reading »
