Oct 272023
 

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

Velvet Underground and Nico

On October 27, 2013, ten years ago today, Lou Reed died. I happened to be in New York City at the time, and his passing was a lead story on the 11 o’clock news. It was as though a part of the city itself had died. Which, inescapably, it had. Reed embodied NYC, from its seedy back rooms to its secret heart, in a way few other people, let alone musicians, ever did.

While Reed’s solo career is highly and deservingly accoladed, it still got overshadowed by the Velvet Underground. Reed’s first band featured Welsh musician John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen Tucker, with Nico singing on the first album and Doug Yule replacing Cale in 1968. The band’s four studio albums started ripples that turned into tsunamis; they went from secret-handshake status to Hall of Fame giants, their influence right up there with the Beatles.

We’re honoring Lou and Company with this collection of covers. Some covers couldn’t hold a candle to the original (you’ll find no “Heroin” here), but many of the originals were receptive to another artist’s distinctive stamp. Whether you prefer the first or what followed, you’ll hear the sound of immortality as it opens yet another path of discovery.

–Patrick Robbins, Features Editor

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Aug 232023
 
Lavalove

“Lithium” is the third single from Nirvana’s Nevermind. Though less of a hit than the two previous singles, it is the band’s fourth-most streamed song to date, and is one of their most covered. The one-word chorus probably helps with that.

Lavalove are a California self-styled indie pop band that just released their debut album this spring.  But their cover of “Lithium” is not what you think of when you think of “indie pop.”

They begin the song pretty close to the original, but with a faster pace. The biggest difference at first is lead singer Tealarose Coy’s voice, which is bratty and a little affected in a way that doesn’t really fit the otherwise faithful grunge sound of the verse. (Coy’s professional name does justice to her delivery.) In the chorus, she is joined by backing vocals that, along with a double beat, give the song a bit of a pop-punk feel.

But the real departure, and the reason the cover is really fun, is what they do in the bridges. For the first iteration of the bridge, the distortion drops out the band vamps. Coy drops the “I’m not gonna crack” refrain from this section, just singing the first part of each line. She and the guitar drop out at the end, before the return to the verse. For the second bridge, there’s utter cacophony from distorted voices, one bringing back in the “I’m not gonna crack” refrain, and one that is indecipherable (and sounds like an atonal saxophone). It’s almost like a tribute to the noisier side of Nirvana.

It’s a far cry from “indie pop” – a cover that starts out sounding fairly faithful but then going off in some weird, abrasive directions in the bridge.

Jul 262023
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

sinead o'connor covers

When we do our monthly Best Covers Ever countdowns, paying tribute to different versions of a given artist’s songs, it’s fun to surprise people with something unexpected. But a couple months ago, when we counted down covers of Prince, it was only ever a race for number two. The best cover of Prince is, in this case, also the most famous. Most famous for a reason. I’m talking, of course, about Sinead O’Connor singing “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Here’s a bit of Seuras Og’s writeup from that list:

“Arguably a pretty slim item in the hands of its composer, O’Connor gave it a remarkable polish, inhabiting the lyric and bleeding out the meaning. OK, she had, and still has, the vocal chops to squeeze emotion into and out of almost anything, and this song is a masterclass in voice control, of volume and microphone technique. The video, especially as she sheds unprompted tears, clearly adds to the overall heft, but even without that visual, still the power is immense. Completeness also insists on showing how timeless her ownership of the song has been, with a live performance or two, decades apart, each as striking, in different ways, as the other.”

But Sinead O’Connor had a lot more to offer than just her one big hit—and that’s even just limiting ourselves to the covers world. Sure, she topped our Best Prince Covers list, but she also appeared on our Best Elton John Covers list, our Best ABBA Covers list, our Best Dolly Parton Covers list, our Best Nirvana Covers list. How’s that for range?
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Cover Genres: Box

 Posted by at 12:00 pm  1 Response »
Jun 092023
 

Cover Genres takes a look at cover songs in a very specific musical style.

box

Herewith the last in the unholy triumvirate of banjo, bagpipes, and box. Time now to unwrap the wonders of melodeon, accordion, concertina, bandoneon and all their squeezy family upon your eager ears. Actually (maybe) a primitive  precursor of the synthesizer, the squeezebox family started life as a way of letting one player give a more orchestral sound to proceedings, the rich textures replicating the play of a whole bevy of musicians. Indeed, in the same way as the Musician’s Union decried the synthesizer, so too will the equivalent of its day have decried the box, taking work away from honest pipe’n’taborists.

This family of instruments casts, arguably, far wider a net than the two B’s that have preceded it here, banjo and bagpipes, with a right of place across very many cultures and categories. Broadly occupying a space in ethnic roots traditions, this has never stopped appearances crossing over into territories that might be more squeeze-averse. Which to me is the joy.
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Oct 072022
 

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

“I didn’t screw it up, did I?” Kurt Cobain, November 18, 1993

The Man Who Sold the World” is a David Bowie narrative song concerned with, not the anguish of spaceflight, but the anguish of a fractured personality. Yet few people noticed when it was released in 1970 on the poor-selling album of the same name, as the singer struggled to follow through on the success of his “Space Oddity” hit of 1969. It wasn’t released as a single. And it was soon vastly overshadowed by the mighty glam-rock chart attack that came of Bowie doppelgangers Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane: “Starman,” “John, I’m Only Dancing,” “The Jean Genie.”

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Jul 182022
 
Mike Dawes and Tommy Emmanuel

Mike Dawes is a finger-style guitarist who has become rather legendary for his performances on YouTube, some of which we’ve written up here. Tommy Emmanuel is a legendary Australian acoustic guitarist from an earlier generation, known for both his finger-picking and his playing with a pick. They’ve joined together for Emmanuel’s latest Accomplice series, Vol. 3. Continue reading »