Oct 042024
 

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

Help Me Make It Through the Night covers

Kris Kristofferson’s resume may be one of the most remarkable documents of 20th century music. With his passing earlier this week at the age of 88, it was de rigueur for all In Memoriam pieces to bring it up. The man was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves boxer, and a prizewinning short story writer. He was a US Army veteran, a helicopter pilot, and an award-winning actor. He could quote William Blake from memory, and he could rip Toby Keith a blistered new one. And, of course, he gifted the world with truly classic songs, plain poetry that dazzled in its simplicity and its emotional heft. He truly was, as he wrote in “The Pilgrim Chapter 33,” a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.

“I’m for anything that gets you through the night,” said Frank Sinatra in a 1963 interview with Playboy, “be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” Kristofferson, struggling to finish writing a song in the Gulf of Mexico, came back to that line and used it as the linchpin for “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” The song was about a one-night stand and therefore wore controversy on its back like a target. But the words were so plainspoken and intimate, the need far more naked than the girl, that people fell over themselves running to cover the story of a man all alone with his heart, no matter who else was in the room.

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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.
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Oct 052020
 
best tribute albums

Over our time tracking cover songs (13 years this month!), we’ve written about hundreds of new tribute albums, across reviews, news stories, and, when they’re good enough, our best-of-the-year lists. We also have looked back on plenty of great tribute albums from the past in our Cover Classics series. But we’ve never pulled it all together – until now. Continue reading »

May 042020
 

Danzig

Glenn Allen Anzalone, better known to the music universe as Glenn Danzig, has always been a fan of Elvis Aaron Presley.

“I got into Elvis because I hated going to school, so I would play hooky a lot or cut school, and I’d stay home and watch old movies,” he recently told Rolling Stone. “I remember one day watching Jailhouse Rock. And just going, ‘Whoa.’ By the end of the movie, I was like, ‘This guy’s cool. This is what I want to do’.” He recently paid tribute to his hero by releasing an album of Elvis covers, aptly titled Danzig Sings Elvis.

Danzig first came to prominence in the ‘80s as the frontman and founder of the Misfits. He then went on to lead the band that bears his name, Danzig. With this group, he scored a series of hard rock hits in the ‘80s and ‘90s and was just as famous for his well-greased pecs as his music.

There’s nothing particularly punk or metal about the new record. It’s a collection of root-music-style covers one would usually attribute to the likes of Steve Earle or Marty Stuart. At times, it feels like Danzig is auditioning for an Elvis tribute act. He does his best to channel Elvis’ baritone-heavy vocal style. Danzig mostly eschews Elvis’ greatest hits and instead plays some deeper cuts. Given that Elvis released many covers throughout his career, a better name for this album might have been Danzig Sings Songs Elvis Covered. Although uneven at times, the record serves as a solid tribute to the man who inspired countless artists across the rock n’ roll spectrum.

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Sep 142018
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

Airborne Toxic Event covers

It’s been a while since the Airborne Toxic Event has raised its collective voice. They’ve made many hints about an upcoming album, but no soap radio. They’ve played just half a dozen gigs in the last two and a half years. Founder Mikel Jollett keeps up a steady stream on his Twitter page, but the band’s tweets have slowed to a trickle. Last month they did note the tenth anniversary of the release of their debut album, which prompted one reader to ask if they’d ever release any new music. “Yes,” came the response, but with no elaboration. It’s enough to give the heebie jeebie jitters to the band’s sizable cult, who want to know what they’re going to do next and when they’re going to do it… if at all.

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Oct 262017
 
free covers album

Ten years ago today, I had a whim.

I was studying abroad one semester and found myself with a lot of free time – school work was light, and a college student’s budget limited my international explorations – so I decided to start a blog. A second blog actually, since for several years I had run a personal blog of concert reviews and bootleg downloads called Dylan, Etc (it had more “Dylan” than it did “Etc”). I’d fallen in love with the cover song after hearing Bob Dylan (who else) play a revelatory cover of “Summertime” on his short-lived radio show. I’d already hosted a Cover Me college radio show, and decided to expand us to the World Wide Web.

These were the days of the so-called “MP3 blog,” which included a vibrant subgenre of cover-songs blogs. That’s right, I’d like to claim credit for inventing the category, but I didn’t – not even close. RIP to Copy Right?, Cover Freak, Fong Songs, and the rest of the pioneers – and shoutout to our fellow survivors from that era, Coverville, which was releasing podcasts before most people knew what that word meant, and the folk blog Cover Lay Down, which began around the same time as us.

A lot has changed over the past decade. We’ve published 3,564 posts as of this one. Oh, and did you notice the pronoun change there? Cover Me is no longer an “I” – it’s a “we”, with over 60 writers contributing over the years. We’ve grown from an ugly Blogspot to our spiffy own domain (which is overdue for a redesign itself, frankly). And in case the large banner ads all over the site weren’t clue enough, I just released a book also called Cover Me, which – back-patting alert – Variety called “one of the best multi-subject music books to come down the pike in years.”

We wanted to do something special to celebrate our tenth birthday. And we wanted to celebrate not just ourselves, but celebrate the cover song itself. So we put together this little album Cover Me Turns 10: A Covers Tribute to Covers as a gift to our readers. We contacted several dozen of our musician friends and asked them to cover a cover. That is, to honor the many great songs we might not even know without an iconic cover – Aretha Franklin reinventing Otis Redding’s “Respect,” Quiet Riot amplifying Slade’s call to feel the noize, Prince learning that nothing compares 2 Sinéad O’Connor.

We’re honored that so many of our favorite musicians contributed, and frankly speechless at how great a job they did. So speechless, in fact, that we asked them all to introduce their own work with a few sentences. A million thanks to all of them, and also to Cover Me writer and art whiz Sean Balkwill for designing the lovely – ahem – cover. The whole thing is free to download at Bandcamp until downloads run out, and free to stream forever.

Enough chatter from me. For ten years this blog has been all about celebrating the music and we’re not going to stop now. Thanks for taking this journey with us.

– Ray Padgett
Cover Me Founder Continue reading »