Feb 282025
 

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

John Lennon Covers

Fifty years ago this month, John Lennon released his covers album Rock ‘n’ Roll, in which he tackled a bunch of pre-Beatles rock and roll classics by folks like Gene Vincent and Fats Domino. Admittedly, the album isn’t all that good. It was done under legal pressure, and sounds like it. But the anniversary is a good enough is excuse to celebrate Lennon covers our own way: Not covers by John, but covers of John.

We should our one rule state up front: No Beatles songs! We did a giant 75-song Beatles covers list last year, which, naturally, included a bunch of John songs. So, for this list, as we did with Paul McCartney a few years back, we’re focusing entirely on his solo output. “Solo” loosely defined as anything post-Beatles: co-billed with Yoko, officially backed by Plastic Ono Band, etc.

If you think the no-Beatles rule adds a pretty strict limitation, think again. There was no shortage of solo-Lennon song covers to choose from. And it’s not 50% “Imagine” covers either; in fact, on our list of 40 covers, only two “Imagine”s make the cut. Most “Imagine” covers are pretty damn saccharine, not a word often associated with the most caustic Beatle. But just about every other mood and sound appears below.

Click to the next page to get started. All we are saying is give these a chance.

– Ray Padgett, Cover Me Founder/Editor

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Jun 152018
 
best cover songs 1978

Welcome to the third installment in our Best Cover Songs of Yesteryear countdown, where we act like we were compiling our usual year-end list from a year before we – or the internet – existed. Compared to the first two, this one has significantly less grunge than 1996 and less post-punk than 1987. It’s hard to have post-punk, after all, before you have punk, a new genre starting to hit its peak in 1978. And don’t forget the other big late-’70s sound: disco. Both genres were relatively new, and super divisive among music fans. Lucky for us, both genres were also big on covers.

Disco, in particular, generated some hilariously ill-advised cover songs. We won’t list them all here – this is the Best 1978 covers, not the Most 1978 covers. If you want a taste (and think carefully about whether you really do), this bonkers take on a Yardbirds classic serves as a perfect example of what a good portion of the year’s cover songs looked and sounded like: Continue reading »

Nov 302010
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

It’s hard to imagine the 1980s music scene without Billy Idol. Just as MTV gained a foothold in the collective consciousness, along came a punk-rock James Dean, all bleach-blonde spikes and hundred-mile snarl. Sure, he’d gained some renown in Generation X and, briefly, Siouxsie and the Banshees, but it wasn’t ‘til “White Wedding” hit television screens in 1982 that Idol catapulted to superstar status. The black latex, gothic cathedral, and weird doctor/necromancer enraptured kids and enraged their parents. No one unwraps a headscarf quite like Billy Idol.

His star may have sunk a little – that holiday album didn’t help – but for a full decade no one bettered Billy Idol. For an artist so tied to his time, though, the songs have aged surprisingly well. So today we celebrate Billy’s 55th with five covers of his hits: Continue reading »