One Great Cover: The White Stripes’ “John The Revelator”

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Nov 052025
 

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

The White Stripes' “John The Revelator”

In the documentary It Might Get Loud, Jack White is shown putting a record on a turntable. He sits, listening intently, as we hear Son House’s “Grinnin’ in Your Face.” After a few bars the camera zooms in on the record cover and we hear Jack’s voiceover: “By the time I was about 18, somebody played me Son House. That was it for me.”

He elaborates that the song has been his favorite since the first time he heard it, and he was taken in by the simplicity of the music. “I didn’t know that you could do that, just singing and clapping.” Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of February 2025

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Mar 032025
 
best covers of february 2025
Bring Me the Horizon — Wonderwall (Oasis cover)

Screamo Oasis? That’s sure to piss some people off! Can’t wait for the Gallagher brothers to weigh in. This reminds me of Biffy Clyro’s highly divisive “Modern Love” a few years back. Not generally my genre of music, but I do love when a band takes a swing like this.

The Great Leslie — Fix You (Coldplay cover)

For a couple weeks this months, my Google Alerts were taken over by some TV-performance show called Chefsache ESC 2025. Which I’d never heard of, and still only vaguely understand what it is (some sort of Germany-only Eurovision?). It produced some wild covers though. The Feuerschwanz medieval-metal version of “Dragostea Din Tei” must be seen to be believed. But we’ve written about that song before—they released it on an album a couple years ago—so, instead, here’s a group called The Great Leslie performing Coldplay like they’re Franz Ferdinand. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of May 2023

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May 312023
 
best cover songs may 2023
Beck – Hands on the Wheel (Willie Nelson cover)

Willie Nelson’s giant 90th birthday concert in Los Angeles featured a whole host of covers. Some of them featured the man himself. Admittedly, that makes those not really covers, so we’ll feature a couple Willie-less Willie tunes. First up, Beck tackles Willie’s Red Headed Stranger classic “Hands on the Wheel.” (Find another cover of this song in the Best of the Rest list.) Continue reading »

Watch: The Highwomen, Jack White, George Strait, More Cover Loretta Lynn at Nashville Tribute

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Nov 102022
 
loretta lynn tribute

Last weekend, CMT broadcast “A Celebration of the Life and Music of Loretta Lynn” at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House. A host of country music royalty turned up to play her songs, from veteran industries stars like George Strait and Tanya Tucker to newer outlaws like The Highwomen and Margo Price. Jack White sang “Van Lear Rose,” off the album of the same name he produced for Lynn in 2004. Keith Urban busted out a banjo-guitar for “You’re Lookin’ at Country,” Lynn’s 1971 hit. Strait tackled early chart-topper “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind).” Her tracks pushing at the conservative country establishment got airings too: Price performed the pioneering birth control song “The Pill” – a song the Opry, where this show took place, once tried to ban – and Darius Rucker (of all people) performed the feminist anthem “Fist City.” Continue reading »

Jack White Played a Wild National Anthem at Detroit Tigers Opening Day

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Apr 122022
 
Jack White National Anthem Detroit Tigers

Jack White is coming off a gangbusters weekend. Last Friday saw the release of Fear of the Dawn, White’s first of two solo albums that will be released this year. He also kicked off his Supply Chain Issues Tour, supporting the new record with a sold-out hometown show at the Detroit Masonic Temple (where a side auditorium bears his name in tribute). As reported by the Detroit Free Press, he also got married on stage on Friday night to his longtime girlfriend, the musician and songwriter Olivia Jean (in the wake of a performance of The White Stripes’ matrimonially-minded “Hotel Yorba” and just a few miles down the road from the song’s namesake). If this all weren’t enough, Jack White also made a midday appearance at Detroit’s Comerica Park baseball stadium on the very same day — playing his first cover of the National Anthem for the Detroit Tigers Opening Day game. Continue reading »

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