They Say It’s Your Birthday: Gillian Welch

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Oct 022021
 
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
gillian welch covers

Happy Birthday to Gillian Welch! She deserves an extra slice of cake this year, her 54th, because the past twelve months have been so surprisingly busy.

For one thing, she won a Grammy in the Best Folk Album category this year, for her all-covers collection All the Good Times, made with her ever-present partner David Rawlings. (We reviewed the album here.) The couple also collaborated with Barry Gibb, the Bee Gee with a taste for the kind of Americana and country music that Welch and Rawlings have helped to popularize. But most importantly, the duo spent the year releasing the 48-song, three volume Lost Songs project, rare bits of good news in those hard and uncertain times. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of April

 Posted by at 9:38 am  1 Response »
Apr 302019
 
best cover songs of april
Beyoncé – Before I Let Go (Maze cover)

Last week, Beyoncé surprised-dropped her live album Homecoming. It accompanied the Netflix film of the same name, which immortalized her lionized 2018 Coachella performance. The biggest surprise of all was the bonus track: a cover of Maze’s 1981 “Before I Let Go.” The original song wasn’t a huge hit when it first came out, but has grown to be referred to sometimes as the “black national anthem.” Beyoncé brings it right up to the present with a big production including marching band, new rap verse, and a sample of New Orleans bounce artist DJ Jubilee. Continue reading »

They Say It’s Your Birthday: Lucinda Williams

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Jan 262013
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

The one and only Lucinda Williams turns sixty years old today. She brought together so many threads of the nation’s musical quilt, added one of the great voices, both as a singer and as a songwriter, and ended up becoming queen of Americana. No other country in the world could produce any Lucindas; the U.S. was lucky to produce just one. (It’s next to impossible to just call her Williams; she’s ineffably, invulnerably Lucinda.)
Continue reading »