May 082025
 
eric church clap hands

“Clap Hands” is the second track on Tom Waits‘ ninth album, Rain Dogs, the second album that got took him in far weirder directions than his more traditional singer-songwriter-with-a-jazzbo-flair early work. “Clap Hands” is typical of this then new sound, as it is powered mostly by marimbas, with the acoustic guitar buried in the mix, and features an arty guitar solo by Marc Ribot. (Curiously, the song does not feature clapping hands.) Though it is not one of Waits’ most famous songs, it does get its fair share of covers.

Country star Eric Church has a brand new album out. That album departs somewhat from his sound, and country more broadly. One pretty clear indication of that is that he not only covered Tom Waits on it, but he covered a particularly Waitsian song in “Clap Hands.”

Percussion is still a prominent part of Church’s version of the song, only this time it’s programmed drums, some percussive string stabs early on and, appropriately, processed hand claps. Church’s guitar is a little more prominent in the mix, for parts of it, but this is a much denser mix than the original. And that’s because Church has vastly expanded the instrumental palette of what was originally a relatively simple song. In addition to the acoustic guitar, percussion and vocal of the original Church adds a full orchestra and a gospel choir. There are electric guitar solos in both but the electric in Church’s version hangs around after the solo.

The result is something that is still unmistakably the Tom Waits song but filtered through an extremely different lens. Church’s voice remains pure country, and gospel singers and orchestra take the song to places Waits never would. (Well, 1970s Waits might have had the orchestra, but it would have sounded a lot more traditional than this arrangement.) It’s a neat cover that is both fairly faithful and also quite distinct at the same time.

Apr 302024
 
best cover songs
The Dirty Nil — Total Eclipse of the Heart (Bonnie Tyler cover)

I’m honestly surprised there weren’t more “Total Eclipse” covers during this month’s total eclipse. Perhaps because our total eclipse was of the sun, rather than the heart. Or, more likely, because this song is hard as hell to sing. Best of the bunch came this garage-rocking version from Ontario trio The Dirty Nil. Gritty and raw, and singer Luke Bentham sells the hell out of it. Continue reading »

Jan 312024
 
best cover songs january
BABii — Lovefool (The Cardigans cover)

Brent Amaker And The Rodeo – Gut Feeling (Devo cover)

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Apr 112023
 

Does the world actually need another countrified tribute to the Rolling Stones? We’ve already seen 1997’s Stone Country and 2011’s more alt-country focused Paint It Black, not to mention the myriad one-off covers stemming out of Nashville and Texas. (I dare say we mentioned many of them here.) Now we’ve got Stoned Cold Country, and you’re probably thinking you know just what it’s going to sound like. And you’re probably right. So I’ll ask again: Do we need this?

Frankly, the answer is probably immaterial, as I share the view that you can’t have too much of a good thing, even, if, to coin a phrase, you can’t always get what you want. And it’s always good to see some young cubs getting to take a bite at the Jagger-Richards canon. Let’s see if it’s any good.
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Nov 262021
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Harvest covers

Harvest is the one Neil Young album that everybody knows of. The reason? Almost undoubtedly “Heart of Gold,” that era-defining song of the early ’70s, all acoustic whimsy, swaying on a stool. Of course it is a terrific song, if a little diminished by ubiquity, but not hugely typical of, at least, Young’s latter-day work, especially when he saddles up with Crazy Horse.

But, by golly, that sweet acoustic ditty has done ol’ Shakey well. At last count there were over a hundred “Heart of Gold” covers, some of them good enough to warrant a yearly check of no small size passing through his mail slot. It did pretty well in its author’s iteration too, mind, hitting the coveted number one spot in the US singles chart (Young’s only sojourn there) and top ten in many other territories. Considering Young had only started dabbling with acoustic songs in response to a back injury, necessitating his sitting to play, how serendipitous must that fall have been? Mind you, his own comments as to where it took him were less than generous: “This song put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch.”

On the back of the single, so too did Harvest flourish, likewise becoming a chart topper with Young’s biggest LP sales to date. Characteristically, given the sheer cussedness of the man, it contains a number of styles, some harking back to previous album After the Gold Rush, some more akin to future more country-inflected excursions. This reflected the musicians recruited, largely country session men making their first outing as the Stray Gators. Pedal steel player Ben Keith, bassist Tim Drummond, and drummer Kenny Buttrey helped shape Harvest‘s sound. So did Jack Nitzsche, the producer and pianist who also played a part with Crazy Horse. Nitzsche decided to orchestrate a couple of the songs as well, an odd move at the time for an artist in other than easy-listening territory. And then there was the stark and bleak beauty of “The Needle and the Damage Done,” gaunt in its unadorned voice and guitar, a song as chilling as Bert Jansch’s clearly influential “Needle of Death.”

A year shy of its half century, how, then, has Harvest fared? How well have the songs lasted? How do they fit into the differing tastes of this century? These more recent interpretations help reveal the answer: better than expected. The original Harvest is an album I listen to for a wallow in nostalgia; these ten covers stand on wholly different ground.
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Aug 022021
 

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

billy joel covers

When Bruce Springsteen invited Billy Joel to play with him at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 40th anniversary concert, he described their meeting as the “Bridge and Tunnel Summit.” This crossover surprised no one; the two artists are similar in many ways, riding careers that exploded from modest singer-songwriter origins playing dive bars to filling stadiums across the world. But one of the ways their trajectories have diverged: The Tunnel side of that equation (that’s Bruce from New Jersey) is about 100 times cooler than the Bridge side (Billy from Long Island). As a result, Springsteen songs have been covered far more often than Joel tunes, despite both having quite a few household-name hits under their belt.

Or maybe they’ve just been covered differently. When we did our Springsteen list, we had an abundance of genre-spanning covers to choose from, the hippest artists around finding meaning in Bruce’s work from every conceivable direction. Doing this month’s Joel list, we had an abundance too – of lounge piano. So much lounge piano.

Joel’s songs deserve better treatment than they often get. So we had to dig deep for this list, sifting through the schlock. There’s a little jazzy piano sprinkled in here and there, sure, but there’s also hardcore punk, ’90s R&B, spectral folk, robot electronica, south-of-the-border disco, and more. Turns out there are plenty of revelatory Billy Joel covers out there; they’re just lurking a little below the surface.

Dive in.

The list begins on Page 2.