“All Along the Watchtower” is one of the most famous covers ever. Infamously transformed from its original harmonica- and acoustic guitar-driven story-song from Bob Dylan‘s pivot to country, to one of the iconic psychedelic rock songs of the era. So many people who cover “All Along the Watchtower” are in thrall to the Experience version. Even Dylan. Continue reading »
Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
Last year’s unexpected theme was Tom Petty covers. For no obvious reason, he popped up again and again on our 2024 year-end list. And whaddya know, Tom’s back this year, with two more Petty covers on our list. This year, however, he is not the most-covered artist on our list.
That’s a tie between two artists, one extremely of-the-moment, one timeless. With three covers apiece, Chappell Roan and Neil Young share the most-best-covered crown. (Artists with two covers apiece this year, in addition to Petty, are Gillian Welch, John Prine, and—this one’s surprising—Nelly Furtado!)
Spoiler alert: None of those appears in the number-one position. Number one covers an artist who I don’t think has ever appeared on one of our year-end lists. But don’t skip ahead. There are 49 equally (well, almost) as good covers to get through first, spanning genres and sounds and eras and ages. Here we go.
Cover art by Hope Silverman
Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.
Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).
Today’s question, courtesy of staffer Tom McDonald:
What is your favorite cover of a protest song?
Consider the lowly harmonica. When was the last time the harmonica–aka the mouth organ, the mouth harp, or simply the harp–truly stirred an audience or moved any musical needle in anyway?
Was it the mid-’90s, when John Popper shredded on “Run-Around” and other Blues Traveler hits? Maybe, but that was decades ago. What’s the harp been up to since? And what were other highlights in its pop cultural history?
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Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Jimi Hendrix released Electric Ladyland in 1968, the last of his three lifetime studio releases. Produced by the guitarist himself, it was a double set and featured a veritable panoply of guests, over and above the core trio of Hendrix, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. Notable amongst these were Steve Winwood, Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane), and the drummer in his later band, Buddy Miles. This sometimes led to criticisms of the album being a chaotic overindulgent sprawl, and there are moments that touch upon that, but it did not stop Electric Ladyland‘s swift elevation to bestseller, almost from day one. It attained the number one album slot in the US within a month of release. In the UK, where he had made his name, it fared less well, if still attaining a credible number six. Time has expanded and widened the appeal, winning over many of the initially sniffy critics, who saw it as overlong and muddled. In the year 2000 Rolling Stone ranked it at #53 in their Best 500 Records of All Time, a full 32 years after release. And we haven’t even mentioned the album artwork, which has a whole backstory of its own. Hint: there was a reason the UK cover was different from the US cover. Well, nineteen reasons. (Would you believe thirty-eight?)
But that’s another story for another time. Here we are interested more in covers than covers. We found sixteen of them, one for each song, even the ones where calling it a song is a stretch. You might not like them all – there’s one here that we think is an absolute clinker – but hopefully they evoke the best of Electric Ladyland when you hear them.
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Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Really? As in, surely Cover Me must have talked about “Johnny B. Goode” before? Well, I’ve searched, and it seems “Memphis, Tennessee” is the only Chuck song to show itself on this platform. Of course, it may just feel like we’ve given Johnny the once-over twice on account of ol’ Charles Edward Anderson Berry wrote so many of the standard templates of rock (and roll). I mean, it isn’t as if nobody’s ever tried a cover, it difficult to imagine any guitar band ever not taking a crack at it. Is it not compulsory that every band of spotty youth, convening in a reluctant father’s garage, include it in their nascent set of tunes? Hell, I bet it casts a longer shadow than even “Louie, Louie,” always previously the lodestone at such gatherings. Secondhand Songs, still the wiki for cover lovers, suggests 328 versions, which, given the site’s understandable inability to know or find every single itty bitty rendition, suggests possibly a fair few more. (Indeed, as ever, we rely on you to let us know some more good(e) covers in the responses.)
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