Jeff Tweedy Covers Neil Young at Ventura Tour Stop

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Apr 062026
 
Jeff Tweedy Covers Neil Young

Jeff Tweedy is currently on-tour with his band (which includes his two sons), promoting his triple-album, Twilight Override. Each night, during the encore, Tweedy likes to include a cover. (Recent shows have seen The Doobie Brothers‘ “What a Fool Believes,” and The Go-Go’s “Our Lips are Sealed.”) At a tour stop in Ventura, CA this past weekend, Tweedy’s choice cover was Neil Young‘s classic “After the Gold Rush.”

The song started with keyboardist Sima Cunningham picking out the melody of the song, to be joined by Sammy Tweedy on lead vocals. The rest of the band slowly joins in. (Though drummer Spencer Tweedy doesn’t play, he adds harmonies.) In the video below, you can watch the cover, which is then followed up with a rare version of the Uncle Tupelo song, “The Long Cut.”

Tweedy has one more month of shows on this tour before playing a few solo gigs in Chicago. Meanwhile, Wilco (Tweedy’s other band) hits the road shortly after that.

MJ Lenderman and J Mascis Cover Neil Young’s “Lotta Love” Live

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Jan 262026
 

MJ Lenderman and his band The Wind played a Friday night slot at Wilco‘s “Sky Blue Sky” festival in Mexico, and brought a few covers to his set.

Lenderman invited J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr to join him on a cover of Neil Young‘s “Lotta Love.” The song, which comes from Young’s 1978 album Comes a Time, originally ran 2:37. However, in Lenderman and Mascis’ hands, the song ran for over 8 minutes and featured both trading off leads. It is as much fun to watch as that sounds. (You can catch the whole thing below.) Continue reading »

The 50 Best Cover Songs of 2025

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Dec 192025
 

Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

Last year’s unexpected theme was Tom Petty covers. For no obvious reason, he popped up again and again on our 2024 year-end list. And whaddya know, Tom’s back this year, with two more Petty covers on our list. This year, however, he is not the most-covered artist on our list.

That’s a tie between two artists, one extremely of-the-moment, one timeless. With three covers apiece, Chappell Roan and Neil Young share the most-best-covered crown. (Artists with two covers apiece this year, in addition to Petty, are Gillian Welch, John Prine, and—this one’s surprising—Nelly Furtado!)

Spoiler alert: None of those appears in the number-one position. Number one covers an artist who I don’t think has ever appeared on one of our year-end lists. But don’t skip ahead. There are 49 equally (well, almost) as good covers to get through first, spanning genres and sounds and eras and ages. Here we go.

Cover art by Hope Silverman

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The Best Cover and Tribute Albums of 2025

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Dec 152025
 

Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

The Best Cover Albums of 2025

Hip-hop oldies become jazz instrumentals. Cult folk songs become grand spaghetti-western soundscapes. Blink-182 hits become DIY bedroom jams. We’ve got ’90s hardcore bangers shredded on acoustic guitar, Spanglish Latin-pop takes on Air Supply and Elvis, and, maybe most outrageously of all, a wild experiment in turning everyone from Chappell Roan to Smash Mouth into emo/screamo.

It’s an especially unruly set this year, but a rewarding one. Enough preamble. Dive in.

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The Best Cover Songs of October 2025

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Oct 312025
 
The Dollyrots — You Don’t Own Me (Lesley Gore cover)

“It’s My Party” was the bigger hit, but these days it feels like “You Don’t Own Me” gets covered more. It’s become something of a feminist anthem (probably an unlikely future for “It’s My Party”…). Dollyrots singer Kelly Ogden said, in sharing her band’s new revved-up cover, “The song is an anthem for female empowerment, about willing to be defiant in the face of something that’s just plain wrong. Sadly, it’s still just as timely as when Lesley sang it over 60 years ago.”

Folk Bitch Trio — Sex on Fire (Kings of Leon cover)

Remember “Sex on Fire”? Gotta be one of the dumbest singles of the 21st century. Folk Bitch Trio covered it for Like a Version, and they, against all odds, manage to redeem it. “It’s an underrated song,” they said. “It rocks. It’s filthy without you really knowing. The Folk Bitch Trio twist is kind of easy: We just sing it in three-part harmony, lock in, look at each other and we’re there.” Continue reading »

Phil Spector’s Gun Release Dissonant Grunge Cover of “The Needle and the Damage Done”

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Jun 182025
 
phil spector's gun

“The Needle and the Damage Done” is one of Neil Young’s most obviously personal songs, infamously written about his friends he knew who used heroin and recorded before Crazy Horse lead singer Danny Whitten died of heroin. Released on his most successful record, Harvest, Young chose a live solo performance to include on that studio album instead of recording a proper studio version during either the Nashville or California sessions that made up that album.

Phil Spector’s Gun are a noisy Philadelphia rock quartet who put out their debut album in autumn 2023. For the b-side of their latest single, they’ve recorded a cover of “The Needle and the Damage Done.”

Their covers opens with a pretty faithful performance of the opening of the the song, only played on electric rather than acoustic. But, almost immediately, the full band kicks in, including what sounds like a small, detuned string section. The band performance is sloppy and noisy, very much in the spirit of the other side of Neil Young, the Crazy Horse/proto-grunge side. That string section, though – I don’t think there’s much in Neil’s catalogue as aggressively dissonant beyond his own guitar solos.

Lead singer Kevin Brusha sings the lyrics pretty straight, with a similar level of frailty to the original only with a different aesthetic. (There are no signs of folk music in this performance.) The original is quite short and Phil Spector’s Gun jam it out a little bit, as Neil might himself have done if he ever played an electric version. There’s a little bit of Time Fades Away or Tonight’s the Night to this performance, which is very fitting.

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