Dec 202024
 

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

best cover songs of 2024

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.)

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

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

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Jan 182024
 
forest claudette

Forest Claudette (aka Kobe Hamilton-Reeves) is an Australian R&B/Soul artist who is currently signed to Warner Music. They have been nominated for several notable awards, including Music Victoria and Rolling Stones awards. That’s all to say that Claudette just released their genre-swapped version of the Chili Peppers 2002 single “Can’t Stop.” This iteration of the tune has super-clean production, and takes the tempo down a notch. By chilling out the tempo of the song, it manages to take on a completely different flavor—less excited energy, more sultry than the original—and the lyrics are now crystal clear, too.

The Hype Magazine has called this cover “infectious” and given the smooth panned flutes, resonant held chords, tasty falsetto harmonies, and pulsing percussion…who could resist it? Listen below!

Head here for more great Red Hot Chili Peppers covers!