Jul 152025
 

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

Babybird Covers

You won’t know this one. Well, not unless you read our Good Better Best on The La’s ‘There She Goes‘, where Adam Mason gifted the best to the version from Stephen Jones, aka Babybird. (Or should that be babybird? Citation needed.) This isn’t a dig at taste anyone’s taste or due diligence in capturing all end every cover version in the world, more around the blink and you missed it nature of the release. Covid still very much the story of the day, it snuck out in June of 2021, likely a pointer to how Jones had himself spent lockdown. There were limited hard copies available, on CD, as a single disc, a double, containing a trio of additional revisions, and a special edition, with individually hand finished covers. These all sold out aeons ago, with none of these self-released items accessible even through Discogs. But, luckily for you, if so inclined, you can grab the downloads over on Bandcamp. And they are free! Continue reading »

Jun 042025
 
matt berninger

Matt Berninger of The National is currently on his first solo tour. The same day his new album, Get Sunk, was released, he covered New Order’s “Blue Monday,” adding to the repertoire of covers he’s been doing on the road. Just last we watched him tackle Nirvana, Tom Waits, and Radiohead. Continue reading »

Feb 142025
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

Laura Cantrell

Laura Cantrell is one of the best-known Country Music artists in the United Kingdom. Something about the purity of her voice and the clarity of her vision has a particular appeal to the British. For a quarter of a century, since her debut LP, she has been adopted by the small number of mainstream DJs that cover Country music in the UK, and she has cultivated that opportunity. Any musician who is managing to make a living from their art knows that any audience is something to be appreciated, and Cantrell has reciprocated the love. The crowdfunding for her last recording received disproportionate subscriptions from the UK, and the gratitude when it eventually came out was significant.

Born in Nashville and thus marinaded in America’s art form, Cantrell has spent much of her singing and alternate professional life in another city far from the country mainstream, New York. By choice or circumstance, she has established herself away from musical metropolises of her field, but that does not mean that she does not have a deep knowledge and appreciation of the genre. She also performs and records in Nashville. For many years she hosted a country music show on the radio, and she has a particular knowledge and appreciation of the role of women in country music, the well known pioneers and those whose stories were lost for whatever reason. Her song “Queen of the Coast” is an appreciation of Bonnie Owens, a considerable talent in her own right, but who spent much of her life backup singing and doing domestic duties for her husbands, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens.

Throughout her career, she has mixed her own songs with covers, covering similar stories, of universal themes with personal angles, often with the greats of the music accompanying her.  The stories are familiar but the delivery is unique to her.
Continue reading »

May 312024
 

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

Sisters of Mercy

As regular readers know, here at Cover Me we put together a Best Covers Ever list every month for a celebrated artist. We’ve recently done the Pet Shop Boys and Sheryl Crow. And before them we did the biggie – The Beatles – and before them, Bob Dylan! But every now and again, there’s a particular genre that’s crying out for the Best Covers Ever treatment – and this month it’s the Dark Genre. It’s goth!

So why now, you ask? Are goth covers really a thing? And why don’t Alien Sex Fiend or Fields of the Nephilim have their own Best Covers Ever features?

Fair questions, all. First off, goth music is everywhere right now. It may have emerged out of the UK post-punk scene and enjoyed its most innovative period from 1980 to 1982, but it’s now the reason we have Whitby Goth Weekends in April and November (well, that and Count Dracula), World Goth Day on May 22, and goth nights down the Hatchet Inn in Bristol most nights, particularly Thursday. It’s also why we have heaps of goth books on the market right now, from John Robb’s The Art of Darkness to Lol Tolhurst’s Goth: A History and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch, all trying to explain goth’s lasting influence as a musical subculture: the fixation with death, the dark theatricality, the Victorian melodrama, the leather, the thick black eyeliner, the fishnet tights, the deviance, the sex, the deviant sex, and, of course, spiders. Continue reading »

Jan 312024
 
best cover songs january
BABii — Lovefool (The Cardigans cover)

Brent Amaker And The Rodeo – Gut Feeling (Devo cover)

Continue reading »

Sep 292023
 
best cover songs
Al Green — Perfect Day (Lou Reed cover)

It’s been 15 years since the last Al Green album. Does “Perfect Day” signal the beginning of his comeback? Unclear — I thought so after his last single, another cover, and that was five years ago. But we can hope. “I loved Lou’s original ‘Perfect Day’—the song immediately puts you in a good mood,” Green explained. “We wanted to preserve that spirit, while adding our own sauce and style.” Continue reading »