On his new covers album High Drama, Adam Lambert didn’t pick one of the obvious Billie Eilish songs to cover (“Bad Guy,” “Everything I Wanted,” etc). He goes for relative deep cut “Getting Older,” off her 2021 album Happier Than Ever. Eilish’s original was fairly minimalist. Lambert doesn’t do “minimalist.” His “glam” version, as he describes it, makes the song sound like a much bigger hit than it was. Continue reading »
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: What’s your favorite cover performed by a child?
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One of the biggest one-hit wonders of the last few years, pop singer Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey” emerged out of seeming nowhere to top charts across the world last year. In her home country of Australia, it is the longest chart-topper ever, breaking a record held by Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”! Despite its ubiquity, however, major covers have been sparse (perhaps because many people find the song, you know, annoying). Never one to shy away from putting off his audience, though, MGMT frontman Andrew VanWyngarden gave it a trippy psychedelic-folk cover as part of a radio station fundraising challenge. Continue reading »
If you’re expecting the “Time to Pretend” you knew and loved a decade ago, think again. UK post-punkers Black Country, New Road, one of the buzziest bands of the new year, deconstruct the song entirely. It starts pretty sane, then gradually veers off the tracks into chaos. By the end there’s a free-jazz sax solo leading a wall of noise only barely identifiable as this, or any, song. Continue reading »
Still Woozy’s new take on MGMT’s “Electric Feel” may not shock you like an electric eel, but it will beckon you with its funky melody and warm embrace. Rather than sliding in on an explosive opening note, the familiar tune arrives subtly on the strings of an acoustic guitar. Harmony is added through a delicate piano adding mostly to the ambiance and feel of the song. The bassline and drums cannonball into the tune filling out the instrumental set. “Electric Feel” pulses forward infectiously, and Still Woozy smooths out some of the jauntiness of the song and tightens some of the pauses in vocals. Continue reading »
MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden has shared a cover of Biff Rose’s “Never Mind” from a recording session in January 2015 with James Richardson, Josh da Costa, and engineering by Al Carlson. VanWyngarden’s cover turns Rose’s 1970 classic into something that sounds like an underground ’80s synth-pop treasure. The lyrics tell a sad story, but in a reassuring way; the cover is too dreamy to be melancholic. The replacement of piano with an orchestra of synths makes the song mellow, less bright, and more comforting. Both versions will surely cause foot-tapping, but where the original will incite dancing, the cover encourages swaying in the moonlight. Continue reading »