They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with covers of his or her songs. Let someone else do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
Today we celebrate the 73rd birthday of a man who has been writing songs about growing old for nearly half a century, Donald Fagen. Fagen is one half of the songwriting duo that calls itself Steely Dan, and he is the band’s reluctant frontman. (The other half of the partnership, Walter Becker, passed away in 2017.)
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In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
It is astonishing that there has never been a post on this site dedicated to Dr. John, aka the Night Tripper, aka Mac Rebbenack, whose candle finally snuffed this week after 77 years. Indeed, it seems positively shameful, given the number of covers he performed, often bringing new life to songs and genres long deemed dead or forgotten, at least by this generation. In the voodoo lore he adopted as his early image, his spirit now has a year and a day to drift free in the wilderness, before ceremonially starting in a new life.
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Cover Classics takes a look at great covers albums of the past, their genesis and their legacies.
Black Friday may have gone, but here’s a twofer bargain.
Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, has produced two near-full album cover classics in her career (so far), which doesn’t even begin to fully address her never-more-quirky approach to the songs of others. Not that she is lost for any words of her own! She’s got a back catalogue stretching across many styles and many genres, from raw scratchy indie through slinky southern soul, a touch of electronica and back again, yet always unmistakably herself. Her career has seen her seemingly beset by internal demons; many had written her off until her triumphant return this fall with Wanderer, containing ten of her own songs, and one contender for our Cover Songs of the Year post.
But it is back to 2000 we first go, to The Covers Record. Allegedly a disappointment to her record company, who had appreciated this was an artiste worth their investment, but even with lackluster promotion it became a slow burning triumph. Praise and plaudits accumulated over the years, not least as box set dramas required ever more diverse musical accompaniments.
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