Devo Archives - Cover Me

The Best Cover Songs of March 2025

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:14 pm 1 Response »

Mar 312025

Cher — Walking in Memphis (Marc Cohn cover)

Cher’s pushing 80, but, as seen most recent on the SNL 50th concert, she can still command a stage like nobody’s business. At the recent Love Rocks benefit concert in NYC, she reprised her ‘90s “Walking in Memphis” cover, complete with full Elvis costume, pompadour very much included.

Dååth ft. Paul Masvidal from Cynic – Run (Air cover)

A heavy-metal cover of the least heavy group of all time (they are French, after all): Air. Dååth (you “know it’s heavy with that punctuation in the name) writes: “Our version of “Run” has been a long time coming. It’s a creepy, weird song I’ve wanted to cover since I first heard it… This is a weird song. If you haven’t heard it, listen to the original, then ours. To do it justice, we needed an unconventional mix that could also go full metal. Gautier Serre, of Igorrr, was the obvious choice. If he can handle Igorrr, he can handle this—and being French, he already knew the song. The result is truly unique. If you’re expecting pure extreme metal, you might be disappointed—and that’s fine, because we do what we want.” Continue reading »

The Mary Tyler Whores Release Punk Cover of “Whip It”

Posted by Riley Haas at 9:26 am 1 Response »

Mar 242025

For many people, DEVO are a one-hit wonder. And while they’ve had a long career, that’s technically true. “Whip It” isn’t just their only Top 15 single on the Hot 100 in the US, it’s their only Top 40 single. (They have had a couple of Top 40 hits on the, um, dance chart.) It’s not a surprise “Whip It” is their most covered song. Continue reading »

The 50 Best Cover Songs of 2024

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 4 Responses »

Dec 202024

Follow all our Best of 2024 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

Welcome to the 50 Best Tom Petty Covers of 2024!

We kid, of course. But for whatever reason, this year’s big trend in covers was: Tom Petty. At one point there were something like 20 Petty covers on our longlist. Many came from two all-star tribute albums that dropped, entirely coincidentally, the same year (they both made our Best Albums list). We narrowed it down, of course. Three Petty covers ended up in this Top 50, one not even from those albums. Then, just this week, another high-profile Petty cover dropped: Snoop and Jelly Roll reworking “Last Dance for Mary Jane”! Suffice to say that one wouldn’t have been a contender even if it hadn’t arrived too late.

That was the big surprise trend in 2024 covers. The less-surprising trend you could have called from a mile out: The new wave of young pop divas—Chappell, Sabrina, Charli—got covered a lot. We could have done an entire 50-song list of their covers, too (the “Good Luck Babe”s alone!). But, if we had, we would have missed out on gospel R.E.M. and country The Weeknd and electropop Mott the Hoople and soul Green Day and… you know what, just read the list.

(Moo-chas gracias and Deng-ke schoen to Hope Silverman for this year’s tiny-hippo art.)

Snooper Release Punk Cover of Unreleased DEVO Track

Posted by Riley Haas at 9:00 am No Responses »

Jun 032024

Most of the time when we write about covers here at Cover Me, we write about covers of big hits. Occasionally, it’s deep cuts from albums or b-sides that are known to only the most dedicated fans of an artist or band. Well, today we have a cover of song so deep in a band’s catalogue, it was never officially released. “I Think I’m Falling in In Love Again” is an early DEVO song that has appeared in different versions on the internet over the years. There is a slower demo version from 1975-ish that only sort of sounds like the band, and there’s a far peppier version from a live show in 1977 which sounds substantially more like DEVO. It’s never been put out by the band, so there are just these lo-fi bootlegs. Continue reading »

Cover Songs Recorded By Steve Albini

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:01 pm 1 Response »

May 082024

Steve Albini died today. In addition to being a musician in his own right, he was a legendary engineer (he refused to be credited as “producer”) who recorded Nirvana’s In Utero, Pixies’ Surfer Rosa, and many others. He recorded hundreds of albums, for bands big and small, right up through his passing.

There are a million ways to honor him, but, for now, I thought I’d share some covers that he ~~produced~~ recorded. Not for his own bands like Big Black and Shellac—we may have a separate post devoted to that—but for other people’s.

The first couple covers are iconic, mainstays of “The Best Covers of All Time” type lists. The rest are more obscure. But they all have the Albini touch—which, as he would be the first to point out, was a light one. These lean towards the alt-rock and punk, with some weird-folk excursions, but ultimately as an engineer he worked to help the bands get the sounds they wanted. Including when they wanted to do covers. Continue reading »