Did you know that Avenged Sevenfold releases a Misfits tune every year? As the rockers video description puts it, “It’s that time of year where Zacky, Johnny, and Brooks transform into fiends to bring you a new take on a classic Misfits song. Enjoy?” Continue reading »
Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.
Let’s start with the chorus. “Where Eagles Dare” by the Misfits has one of the most insanely catchy choruses ever written, one that demands to be sung at the top of one’s lungs. Ironically, it’s a chorus that you’ll never hear on commercial radio, what with its using swear words (no matter what Archie Bunker says). But when you do hear this song, whether in a club or a set of headphones, just try not to bang your head or punch the air.
Seeing as how it’s impossible not to sing along, you can be sure it’s not impossible to find covers of “Where Eagles Dare.” Many of them are musical soundalikes, landing their punches just as hard as the original did (and does). But, as always, the ones we’re most interested in are the ones that take the song to another place. Of these…
“Some Kinda Hate”, by hardcore punk pioneers Misfits, is a song that’s ripe for reinvention. Recorded for the band’s shelved Static Age album in 1978, an overdubbed version of the track was released on the outtakes collection Legacy of Brutality in 1985. The unedited version stayed in the vaults until the entire Static Age album was finally released in 1996. Since then, “Some Kinda Hate” has been covered numerous times, but rarely in a way that deviates far from the original. Continue reading »
As regular readers know, every year, at the end of the year, we do a big year-end covers list. This tradition started in 2007 and will continue in a couple months with the best covers of 2021.
But there are so many years before 2007 where we weren’t doing year-end covers lists (and, as far as I’m aware, no one else was either). So once a year, we do a big anniversary post tackling the best covers of a year before Cover Me was born. So far we’ve done 1969, 1978, 1987, 1996, and, last year, 2000.
And for 2021, we look back thirty years, to the heady days of 1991. The days of grunge and acid house, of parachute pants and ripped denim, of The Gulf War and Home Alone. Country music and hip-hop increased their cultural dominance (or really just making their existing dominance known; 1991 is also the year Soundscan made the Billboard charts more authoritative). In a single day, Nirvana released Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers released Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and A Tribe Called Quest released The Low End Theory. Think that’s a fluke? The week before saw massive albums from Mariah Carey, Hole, and Guns ‘n’ Roses (two albums, no less). The week before that came Garth Brooks, Talk Talk, and Saint Etienne.
All of those trends are reflected in the list below. Many of these covers scream “1991!” LL Cool J raps Disney. Courtney Love shrieks Joni. Aretha Franklin tries to new jack swing. A spate of early tribute albums (in fact, last year I wrote a 33 1/3 book about a 1991 tribute album). Other covers are more timeless, from veteran artists doing great work several decades into their careers, or way-underground artists who never even approached the mainstream. The only criteria was quality. Thirty years later, these 50 covers Hole-d up the best.
Check out the list starting on Page 2, and stay tuned for the best covers of this year coming in December.
The list begins on Page 2.
Check out the best covers of past months here.
Misfits go mariachi! Adam Green, best known as one half of the Moldy Peaches, plays “All Hell Breaks Loose” like it was “Ring of Fire.” He writes: “In The Misfits and in his glorious solo work, Danzig bridged punk and metal with the blue-eyed soul music of the mid-1960’s like The Righteous Brothers and The Walker Brothers. I’d had an idea for a while to do a Scott Walker / John Franz style production at punk speeds, and the Misfits song ‘All Hell Breaks Loose’ seemed like the perfect vessel for the experiment.” Continue reading »
Alas. Even in a week of riot grrrl posts, we cannot feature every band associated with the riot grrrl era. However, in this post we get to hear a new group of riot grrrls put a fresh take on songs ranging from traditional punk and rock genres to more surprising choices. I’ll give you a hint: you should know better than to cheat a friend.