The Best Cover Songs of October 2025

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Oct 312025
 
The Dollyrots — You Don’t Own Me (Lesley Gore cover)

“It’s My Party” was the bigger hit, but these days it feels like “You Don’t Own Me” gets covered more. It’s become something of a feminist anthem (probably an unlikely future for “It’s My Party”…). Dollyrots singer Kelly Ogden said, in sharing her band’s new revved-up cover, “The song is an anthem for female empowerment, about willing to be defiant in the face of something that’s just plain wrong. Sadly, it’s still just as timely as when Lesley sang it over 60 years ago.”

Folk Bitch Trio — Sex on Fire (Kings of Leon cover)

Remember “Sex on Fire”? Gotta be one of the dumbest singles of the 21st century. Folk Bitch Trio covered it for Like a Version, and they, against all odds, manage to redeem it. “It’s an underrated song,” they said. “It rocks. It’s filthy without you really knowing. The Folk Bitch Trio twist is kind of easy: We just sing it in three-part harmony, lock in, look at each other and we’re there.” Continue reading »

Cover Genres: Banjo

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Apr 212023
 

Cover Genres takes a look at cover songs in a very specific musical style.

banjo

Yes, it’s true–banjo isn’t really a genre, per se, as it encompasses more than one musical style. Way more. But this category could use a kickstart, and what better instrument to provide the kick with?

Now, I love the banjo, but I know full well how many don’t. Indeed, only the bagpipes and the accordion have been the butt of more jokes. My goal, then, is to take you the reader beyond the backwoods and blue grass, and to show you the other vistas where a banjo can not only play, it can also rule.

So then, banjo, do yer worst!
Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of November 2022

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Nov 302022
 
best cover songs of november 2022
Bob Dylan – I Can’t Seem to Say Goodbye (Jerry Lee Lewis cover)

Bob Dylan doesn’t change his setlists much anymore. In fact, on his recent UK and European tour, he played the exact same setlist every single night…except one. The day it was announced Jerry Lee Lewis passed away, Dylan returned to the stage after his usual finale “Every Grain of Sand.” As anyone who’s read his new book knows, Bob knows his music history. So he skipped the obvious picks and tackled the quite obscure Sun Records-era outtake “I Can’t Seem to Say Goodbye.” Continue reading »

Full Albums: Janis Joplin’s ‘Pearl’

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Sep 022022
 

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

Pearl

The album Pearl saw Janis Joplin working with a strong set of songs, a tight band in Full Tilt Boogie, and a simpatico producer in Paul Rothchild. She may not have known she was making a masterpiece, but there was no disguising how well the sessions were going. They came to the most abrupt end possible, however, on October 4th, 1970, when Joplin died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27. A few months later, Pearl was released, and while her death couldn’t help but overshadow it, over the years that shadow has receded. More than just a final statement, it sealed Joplin’s place as the best female singer of blues and rock ‘n’ roll of her era, and in “Me and Bobby McGee” it contained her signature song, one that still feels good to hear on the radio.
Continue reading »

Rarely Covered Bob Dylan Songs III: 1970s

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May 252022
 

Rarely Covered looks at who’s mining the darkest, dustiest corners of iconic catalogs.

bob dylan 1970s

Part three of our Rarely Covered Dylan Songs series – after the Early and Late 1960s – sees us hit the era of Blood on the Tracks, Desire, and Bob’s first gospel album. But this doesn’t include songs from any of them! As with the first two installments, our definition of what Dylan song could qualify as “rarely covered” starts at “not on a proper album” and expands (or, rather, constricts) from there. So below, covers of outtakes and oddities from Bob’s second decade. Continue reading »

Five Good Covers: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”

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May 012020
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Ada Habershon

Trying to find some positive across this wracked virus-strewn world, and it came, suddenly, in a flash. Actually, it didn’t quite come in a flash, it came as I semi-snoozed this another I don’t know what the hell day it is lockdown day, courtesy the joy of shuffle. I won’t say which version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” I heard, beyond it was one of these, but it caught my ear and set me thinking, feeling the song. In whatsoever version, gospel or secular, it has something to aspire us all to, that aspiration being hope. Continue reading »

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