Whenever the Grammy Awards roll around, I find myself paying far more attention to the “down-ticket” categories than the main ones. While the endless debates about the artistic merits of Harry Styles versus Beyoncé light up Twitter, a Grammy win for one of the lesser-known artists can do wonders for their career. This year I was especially excited for Molly Tuttle winning the award for Best Bluegrass Album (she was also nominated for Best New Artist). Tuttle is one of the leading bluegrass guitar wizards of our age. Her album, Crooked Tree, featured a solid fusion of country, folk and bluegrass. The deluxe edition included an exceptional cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Dire Wolf.”Continue reading »
Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” is one of the definitive American psychedelic songs (even though it was released on an album of folk rock). Both the Alice in Wonderland-inspired lyrics and the Latin march feel of the song have also led to its heavy use in film whenever someone is trying to portray mental confusion.
But have you ever wanted to hear a bluegrass version? Continue reading »
To come up with our year-end list, we listened to thousands of covers.
That’s not an exaggeration, or loosely throwing around “thousands” for effect. My iTunes tells me I personally listened to and rated 1,120 new covers in 2021. And I’m just one of a dozen people here. Many of those thousands of covers were very good! But “very good” isn’t good enough for our annual year-end Best Cover Songs list. So when we say these 50 are the cream of the crop, we mean it.
They, as usual, have little in common with each other. A few tie into current events: Artists we lost, social justice concerns, live music’s fitful return. Most don’t. But does a doom metal cover of Donna Summer really need a reason to exist? How about African blues Bob Dylan, New Orleans bounce Lady Gaga, or organ ballad Fleetwood Mac? Nah. We’re just glad they’re here.
So dive into our countdown below – and, if you want us to send you a couple hundred Honorable Mentions culled from those thousands, join the Cover Me Patreon.
Amy Speace – Don’t Let Us Get Sick (Warren Zevon cover)
“Don’t Let Us Get Sick” was a moving song even before Warren Zevon got sick, didn’t see a doctor soon enough, and died. After that, the context makes it even more poignant. The canonical cover is Judee Sill’s, but on her new album, Amy Speace gives it a run for its money.Continue reading »
As both Stevie Nicks‘ most famous duet and, unofficially, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers‘ biggest hit, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” might have inspired more than a few covers. But it’s only in the 21st century that people have taken it on, and only occasionally.
Bluegrass singer-songwriter Molly Tuttle is a regular at Cover Me, her covers featuring in a number of our Best-Of lists since the pandemic started. Her album but I’d rather be with you was a highlight of 2020 and it she has a sequel, the new EP but I’d rather be with you, too. It’s for this new EP that she’s taken on the Nicks/Petty classic.Continue reading »
Typically, the world of cover songs does not change that much year-to-year. You can point to big shifts across decades, sure, but the difference between cover songs in 2018 and 2019, broadly speaking? Negligible. But 2020 was – in this as in everything else – very different.
As concerts ground to a sudden halt, musicians turned to live-from-quarantine home performances, first on their social media, then, once some kind of business model got built up, on various paid platforms. And cover songs were a big part of that. Some musicians did themed covers nights, like Ben Gibbard on YouTube early on or Lucinda Williams’ more produced Lu’s Jukebox series more recently. Others just felt the freedom in such an intimate environment to try things out, spontaneously covering influences, inspirations, or even songs they only half knew. We collected dozens of those early home covers in our Quarantine Covers series, and still only hit a small fraction.
Musicians eventually settled in, and productions got a little more elaborate than the staring-at-your-iPhone-camera look. Witness the heavy metal comedy series Two Minutes to Late Night, which transitioned from a long-running live show in New York City to a series of YouTube covers with dozens of metal-scene ringers covering songs from their couches, corpse paint and all. Witness Miley Cyrus’s endless series of killer cover locales, from a fire pit to an empty Whisky a Go Go. Or witness long-running radio covers series like BBC’s Live Lounge or Triple J’s Like a Version – often the source of a song or two on these lists. First they had musicians tape special covers from home, then, in the BBC’s case, they moved to a giant warehouse studio for suitable social distancing. (Triple J’s pretty much back to post-coronavirus business as usual – sure, Australia, rub it in.)
There’s one other major way covers reflected 2020, and it’s almost too painful to think about, so I’ll just list their names. John Prine. Adam Schlesinger. Hal Willner. Charley Pride. So many musicians taken by this virus, many reflected in some of these covers (Pride’s death happened after our list was finalized, but tributes are already rolling in). In a year filled with tragedies, covers offered one place for musicians and fans to find solace.
Many of the songs on our year-end list reflect this terrible year in one way or another. But you know what? Many don’t. Because covers can also offer a fun respite from all the stress. Doom metal Doobie Brothers? Post Malone on mandolin? A viral TikTok hit by a guy who calls himself Ritt Momney? Those have nothing to do with anything! But they’re what we live for.
