Japanese Breakfast Archives

The Best Cover Songs of March 2025

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:14 pm 1 Response »

Mar 312025

Cher — Walking in Memphis (Marc Cohn cover)

Cher’s pushing 80, but, as seen most recent on the SNL 50th concert, she can still command a stage like nobody’s business. At the recent Love Rocks benefit concert in NYC, she reprised her ‘90s “Walking in Memphis” cover, complete with full Elvis costume, pompadour very much included.

Dååth ft. Paul Masvidal from Cynic – Run (Air cover)

A heavy-metal cover of the least heavy group of all time (they are French, after all): Air. Dååth (you “know it’s heavy with that punctuation in the name) writes: “Our version of “Run” has been a long time coming. It’s a creepy, weird song I’ve wanted to cover since I first heard it… This is a weird song. If you haven’t heard it, listen to the original, then ours. To do it justice, we needed an unconventional mix that could also go full metal. Gautier Serre, of Igorrr, was the obvious choice. If he can handle Igorrr, he can handle this—and being French, he already knew the song. The result is truly unique. If you’re expecting pure extreme metal, you might be disappointed—and that’s fine, because we do what we want.” Continue reading »

Japanese Breakfast Delights with “The Only Living Boy In New York” Cover

Posted by Brendan Shanahan at 9:00 am No Responses »

Oct 122023

At their recent show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, indie rockers Japanese Breakfast surprised the sell out crowd with a cover of Simon & Garfunkel‘s “The Only Living Boy in New York”.

The cover itself is pretty straight forward, with little stylistically changed from the original, but this does really highlight the power of frontwoman Michelle Zauner’s voice. The Beatles’ style harmonies from the original are retained, but take on an almost dreamlike quality with Zauner and her keyboardist’s voices mixing in the open air of the hall. I for one will be hoping that a studio recording of this appears soon, or at the very least a live album quality recording.

Check out the cover here (starts at 1:07:04):

The 50 Best Cover Songs of 2022

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 4 Responses »

Dec 162022

Follow all our Best of 2022 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

The big story in 2022 covers came from a song that’s almost 40 years old: “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God).” After Kate Bush’s classic had its Stranger Things moment, every week we got a half dozen new covers. It’s been six months since the show came out, and they’re still coming! This entire list could have been “Running Up That Hill” covers if we’d let it.

We didn’t, and it isn’t. The song makes one appearance, as do a number of other trendy 2022 items: Wet Leg, GAYLE, and Beabadoobee; the latest Cat Power covers project; posthumous releases (Dr. John, Levon Helm); songs that tie into coming out of pandemic isolation.

But, as always, a joy of our list is all the covers that tie into nothing, and that you won’t find anywhere else. Doom-metal Townes Van Zandt? Bluegrass Eminem? Ska Eddie Murphy? Folk Björk? Psych-rock Groucho Marx? Those are just five of the fifty killer covers on this year’s countdown. So run up that road, run up that hill, run up that building, and read on at the link below.

The 40 Best Dolly Parton Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am No Responses »

Nov 042022

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

Dolly Parton is a singer and a songwriter. I mention that obvious truth because these days it tends to get overshadowed by her other titles: Icon. Inspiration. National Treasure. The Only Human Being Alive Everyone Agrees On (Radiolab produced an entire nine-part radio series based on that premise). And she is all those things, but first and foremost she’s a working 9-to-5 musician who has been perfecting her craft for seven decades.

Parton says she wrote her first song as a five year-old in 1952. She hasn’t stopped writing songs since. She once estimated she’s amassed 10,000. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but the verifiable numbers speak for themselves: 52 studio albums, 25 Number One songs, 100 million records sold worldwide. Just as important a tribute to her gifts, though, are how often her songs get covered. Not just the obvious ones, the “Jolene”s and “I Will Always Love You”s (though plenty of those, lord knows), but the album cuts, the singles that didn’t top the charts, and the songs she didn’t write herself but made into Dolly Parton songs anyway.

Some of the below covers sound a little bit like Dolly’s own music. Most do not. She considers herself straight country, not, as she made clear when first nominated for the Rock Hall earlier this year, rock and roll. But, in this list, she is rock and roll. And folk and pop and hip-hop and soul and a whole host of other genres. Dolly Parton may indeed be the only human being everyone agrees on. What a way to make a living.

The Best Cover Songs of April 2022

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:42 pm 2 Responses »

Apr 292022

Aimee Mann – Brooklyn (Steely Dan cover)

If you missed the whole brouhaha when Steely Dan dropped Aimee Mann as their opening act, it’s too long to recap here. To skip to the end, Mann tweeted, “All is forgiven if Donald [Fagan] just tells me what Brooklyn is about.” And he did! So, at a recent show at City Winery, she covered it. All does indeed appear to be forgiven. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of February 2022

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:12 pm No Responses »

Feb 282022

Blacktop Mojo – My Girl (The Temptations cover)

You may listen to the gentle plucking when this begins and thing, boy that’s not what I expected from that band photo. Is this an acoustic flying V? Blacktop Mojo’s “My Girl” stays pretty and meditative for over half the run time, turning the oldies classic into a pretty folk-rock ballad. Eventually, though, true to that long-hair-and-leather image, the heads start banging and axes start shredding. Continue reading »