Donna Summer Archives

Jade Thirlwall Combines “Hot Stuff” and “Knock on Wood” in Showstopping Disco Medley

Posted by Mike Tobyn at 9:00 am No Responses »

Jan 152025

What better way to bring in the New Year than with fresh tunes, if you’re a music fan? This simple proposition has made The Jools Holland Hootenanny an institution in the United Kingdom. Presented as live, but recorded a few days before, it allows Holland’s showbiz friends from his 50 years in the business to hang out and play. However he, or his bookers, also find newer artists to showcase. This year two particular highlights of the show were cover versions by younger artists. CMAT’s memorable ‘Without You’ was a showstopper. Former girl band star JADE’s showpiece dynamic disco medley of “Hot Stuff” and “Knock On Wood” was a floor-filling tribute to two divas of the past, in the presence of a third, as Kathy Sledge was also in the lineup for the night. Continue reading »

The 25 Best Goth Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 11:00 am 4 Responses »

May 312024

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

As regular readers know, here at Cover Me we put together a Best Covers Ever list every month for a celebrated artist. We’ve recently done the Pet Shop Boys and Sheryl Crow. And before them we did the biggie – The Beatles – and before them, Bob Dylan! But every now and again, there’s a particular genre that’s crying out for the Best Covers Ever treatment – and this month it’s the Dark Genre. It’s goth!

So why now, you ask? Are goth covers really a thing? And why don’t Alien Sex Fiend or Fields of the Nephilim have their own Best Covers Ever features?

Fair questions, all. First off, goth music is everywhere right now. It may have emerged out of the UK post-punk scene and enjoyed its most innovative period from 1980 to 1982, but it’s now the reason we have Whitby Goth Weekends in April and November (well, that and Count Dracula), World Goth Day on May 22, and goth nights down the Hatchet Inn in Bristol most nights, particularly Thursday. It’s also why we have heaps of goth books on the market right now, from John Robb’s The Art of Darkness to Lol Tolhurst’s Goth: A History and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch, all trying to explain goth’s lasting influence as a musical subculture: the fixation with death, the dark theatricality, the Victorian melodrama, the leather, the thick black eyeliner, the fishnet tights, the deviance, the sex, the deviant sex, and, of course, spiders. Continue reading »

One Great Cover: Donna Summer’s “State of Independence”

Posted by Tom McDonald at 2:00 pm No Responses »

Jul 052023

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Progressive rock band Yes was at the top of its game in 1974 when their keyboardist Rick Wakeman abruptly departed. The band invited an obscure pioneer of electronic music, Vangelis, to replace him. Vangelis shunned the offer, preferring to stay home and compose film scores. Or maybe certain members of Yes shunned Vangelis–accounts differ. In either case, the synth maven hit it off with Yes co-founder, singer, and lyricist Jon Anderson. They collaborated intermittently in the following years, finally forming Jon and Vangelis in 1980.

By the time the second Jon and Vangelis album dropped in 1981–The Friends of Mr Cairo–their individual fortunes had reversed. Vangelis was having a breakout year. He had a smash hit in “Chariots of Fire,” a selection from his sweeping, grandiose full-length score for the film of the same name. The song swept through popular culture, and the film itself went on to win Academy awards for Best Picture and Best Music. By then Vangelis was already at work on the Blade Runner soundtrack. If he noticed that the new Jon and Vangelis album barely sold, and the release of its single “State of Independence” fell flat, it probably didn’t worry him.
Continue reading »

The 50 Best Cover Songs of 2021

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 2 Responses »

Dec 172021

Follow all our Best of 2021 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

To come up with our year-end list, we listened to thousands of covers.

That’s not an exaggeration, or loosely throwing around “thousands” for effect. My iTunes tells me I personally listened to and rated 1,120 new covers in 2021. And I’m just one of a dozen people here. Many of those thousands of covers were very good! But “very good” isn’t good enough for our annual year-end Best Cover Songs list. So when we say these 50 are the cream of the crop, we mean it.

They, as usual, have little in common with each other. A few tie into current events: Artists we lost, social justice concerns, live music’s fitful return. Most don’t. But does a doom metal cover of Donna Summer really need a reason to exist? How about African blues Bob Dylan, New Orleans bounce Lady Gaga, or organ ballad Fleetwood Mac? Nah. We’re just glad they’re here.

So dive into our countdown below – and, if you want us to send you a couple hundred Honorable Mentions culled from those thousands, join the Cover Me Patreon.

– Ray Padgett, Editor in Chief

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Reinvent Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” as Sludge Metal

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

Nov 022021

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs hot stuff

UK psych rockers Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs are not the first band you would think of to cover an iconic disco hit like Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.” The song opens with super slow doom metal guitars before it breaks out. Gone is that instantly identifiable synth hook, replaced instead by super sludgy distorted guitars. Lead singer Matthew Baty shouts the lyrics like he’s in a proto punk band. On the chorus he’s replaced by Holly Ross of the Lovely Eggs, also shouting, with her voice slightly distorted. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of October

Posted by Ray Padgett at 9:00 am No Responses »

Nov 012021

Andrew VanWyngarden – Dance Monkey (Tones and I cover)

One of the biggest one-hit wonders of the last few years, pop singer Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey” emerged out of seeming nowhere to top charts across the world last year. In her home country of Australia, it is the longest chart-topper ever, breaking a record held by Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”! Despite its ubiquity, however, major covers have been sparse (perhaps because many people find the song, you know, annoying). Never one to shy away from putting off his audience, though, MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden gave it a trippy psychedelic-folk cover as part of a radio station fundraising challenge. Continue reading »