Electric Six, the disco-punk band from Detroit, MI, is releasing the first-ever vinyl pressing of their fourth album, I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being the Master and they’ll be including a cover of a Harry Nilsson classic. Continue reading »
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
This weekend, Warren Zevon gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after decades of eligibility. So, as the culmination of a week-long tribute to the 2025 Rock Hall class where we posted covers of every artist (catch up here), we are sharing a countdown of the 30 best Zevon covers ever.
Warren Zevon is one of those musicians that other musicians love, so he bats way above his commercial weight in cover songs. The most casual person probably only knows one Zevon song—and it’s appropriate this list is posting just after Halloween. Many music nerds, though, including many musicians, revere the full catalog. Artists way more famous than Zevon, from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen, have paid tribute, as have a host of younger acts that consider him a primary influence.
So whether you always hum along with the air conditioner in “Desperados Under the Eaves” or just like aah-ooo-ing to “Werewolves of London,” dive into the Zevon catalog via thirty amazing versions of his songs.
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Love was definitively a band of and for the ’60s. Formed in 1965, their incandescent flame shone bright only until the turn of the decade, their legacy thereafter diminishing, not least as founder Arthur Lee became last man standing. Indeed, such was Lee’s imprint that he was able to trade on the name and past glories for the rest of his career and the rest of his life, even if it was mainly the first three albums – Love, Da Capo and Forever Changes – audiences wished and needed to hear.
The extravagant meshwork of styles and influences Love’s original lineup brought collectively into the mix, defied any one attempt to restrict the resultant style to any one genre. There were elements of almost raw garage rock, cheek by jowl with pastoral and orchestral interludes, with folk influences and whiffs of psychedelia elsewhere.
Lee kept the b(r)and going, on and off, more or less until his death, in 2006. Bryan MacLean, who had parted from the band acrimoniously, died in 1998, a few months after Ken Forssi did the same. Snoopy Pfisterer has long since retreated to idyllic rural isolation, with little lasting involvement in the music industry, but Johnny Echols has continued to hold a candle for the band, re-igniting the name and touring a version of the band since 2009, the show usually reliant on playing the material from those first three albums.
As for Forever Changes, it’s become a staple in the best-of lists pumped out by your Rolling Stones, your Pastes and others of that ilk. Along with a select few, such as Pet Sounds, Blonde On Blonde, Astral Weeks and Revolver, Forever Changes has become of and beyond its time, a beautiful bad trip seeing off many of the newcomers begging for comparison and subsequent attention.
Continue reading »
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
There is no Queen without Freddie Mercury. On a fundamental level, we all agree that is true. But, if you want to be literal about it, there is Queen without Freddie Mercury. Thirty years after Freddie’s death, the show must go on, and so the band still exists. Adam Lambert now sings Freddie’s parts on tour, just as Paul Rodgers did before him. The Bohemian Rhapsody movie included some new vocal recordings – not by star Rami Malek, but by Canadian singer Marc Martel. And then of course there are the many singers who fronted Queen at the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, broadcast to an audience of up to one billion people. (If you haven’t watched George Michael singing “Somebody to Love” or Annie Lennox joining David Bowie for “Under Pressure,” go do that now, then come back.)
Suffice to say, millions if not billions of people have heard Queen songs sung by singers other than Freddie Mercury. But none of those we just mentioned are covers, strictly speaking, since they feature most or all of the band’s three surviving members. Bassist John Deacon has since departed – and his joining Queen fifty years ago this month, solidifying the lineup, marks the anniversary we’re pegging this post to – but guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor have kept the Queen name alive. No doubt, when touring becomes a thing again, Queen will be back on the road once again.
The forty actual covers on our list do not feature any members of Queen. As such, they’re free to roam much further afield than Adam Lambert or George Michael, turning the band’s hits and the occasional deep cut into genres from polka to punk, a cappella to acoustic instrumental. Queen dabbled in so many different genres during their time – I mean, “Bohemian Rhapsody” alone! – I think they’d appreciate how malleable their songs can be. Even when they’re not the ones performing their songs, Queen will rock you.
Or, in one case, polka you.
The list begins on Page 2.
On Friday, we rounded up some of the early Christmas covers, but today they begin in earnest. The A.V. Club returns today with another season of Holiday Undercover, which last year featured covers by the Dresden Dolls, Shearwater, the Walkmen, and a particularly memorable duet between Andrew W.K. and a mailman. Season two kicks off to a fine start with Electric Six covering “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” Continue reading »
Many people only know Electric Six for their enduring dance-punk gem “Danger! High Voltage!” A Jack White cameo never hurts and that glowing-crotch video certainly was memorable. They’ve since released six albums though and have a seventh on the docket: Zodiac, dropping September 28th.
In addition to fantastically-titled originals like “Jam It in the Hole” and “I Am a Song!,” the band reimagined the Spinners’ 1976 soul hit “The Rubberband Man.” The Detroit band fuses their hometown’s two legendary sounds, Motown horns and dirty grunge joining forces on one you won’t be able to get out of your head.
“I’ve always loved the song and I’ve felt for a long time that our band could pull it off,” singer Dick Valentine said in a press release. “The first time I remember being cognizant of it was the mud wrestling scene from [the Bill Murray film] Stripes. I don’t think anyone in our band is a rabid fan of Motown, per se, but I’ve always felt The Spinners kind of stood out in that they had much poppier songs than a lot of other acts in that genre.” Continue reading »