Pink Floyd were one of the ’70s prog rock bands to embrace epic-length tracks. They started experimenting with the form with the title track to 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, then got more ambitious a few years later with the title track to 1970’s Atom Heart Mother, a side-long composition cowritten with composer Ron Geesin. 1971 brought “Echoes” from Meddle, then they created probably their most famous iteration with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” on 1975’s Wish You Were Here. Continue reading »
Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.
Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).
Today’s question, suggested by staffer Hope Silverman: What’s your favorite cover as performed by a choir?
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In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
It doesn’t seem five minutes since this, less than two years ago, with the publication of his memoir Sing Backwards and Weep seeming a good time to celebrate his apparent immunity to death. Even in a world becoming nervously aware of the pandemic, he seemed then a figure above such inconvenience, a latter-day Keith Richards made flesh, even in recovery. Little then did we know what his second volume would reveal, Devil In a Coma ripping apart that semblance, the Devil possibly in that very coma at the time of that article’s writing. I guess the assumption was that he had fully recovered from that further near-death, making last week’s news all the more astonishing and upsetting. At the time of this writing the cause of his death remains unknown. I hope he went in peace.
Not the place to regale and remind of his derring-do; others have done that better and by more right elsewhere. Here we celebrate, again, his winning way with the songs of others, his uncanny instinct to possess and inhabit the writings of other artists, as if the words had been written solely for his sepulchral tones. I don’t like the Devil comparison, however many coming up against him in their own lives might, preferring the image that he had the voice of God, with no need of any article, indefinite or otherwise. Sure, an older God, a vengeance-is-mine God, where forgiveness has to be earnt, much as he too tried to atone for his past behaviors, a forbidding God not to be taken in vain.
Hyperbole? Why not? Enjoy these ten further covers and sink one in his memory.
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Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Few bands have lost their star and their leader, the writer and singer of their songs, and only then rocketed to stratospheric levels of success. But that’s the main thrust of the Pink Floyd saga. Those two themes—of tragic loss and outsized stardom, absence and success—are at the heart of their 1975 Wish You Were Here album. The “You” in the title refers to Syd Barrett, who led the band until his disintegration in the late ’60s. At the same time, “You” refers to anyone you ever loved and lost, which is part of why the album and its title track are so enduring.
Wish You Were Here had the thankless task of following The Dark Side of the Moon, the success of which is hard to overstate. In its wake, Floyd guitarist David Gilmour called Dark Side “a benevolent noose hanging behind us.” Many a Floyd aficionado loves Wish You Were Here more than its predecessor (even some Pink Floyd members count it as their best), but among the general populace nothing eclipses Dark Side. Just glance at the landscape of cover versions: Dark Side has sprouted all manner of tributes and reinterpretations—some of which have taken on lives of their own, with anniversary reissues and the like—while Wish You Were Here remains practically virgin territory for other musicians to explore.
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Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.
We’ve seen a few different motivations for forming supergroups, but another one is to gather together to pay homage to others. One recent example: the Sylvain Sylvain tribute by Halloween Jack, made up of Gilby Clarke (formally of Guns N’ Roses), Eric Dover (of Jellyfish), Stephen Perkins (of Jane’s Addiction), Dan Shulman (formerly of Garbage), and Steve Stevens (guitarist for Billy Idol)).
Hollywood Vampires is made up of Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp (super in a different way, but showing off his musical skills here), and Joe Perry (of Aerosmith). Although they have since worked on originals, their self-titled first album is (mostly) a cover album where the songs are chosen to pay tribute to rockers who “died from excess” in the 1970s. The irony of this is that the band is named after the drinking club for celebrities formed by Cooper in the ’70s.
Throughout their time playing together, the band has had guest features from other big stars, actors and musicians alike. They have postponed their European Tour twice now due to the pandemic, but hopefully fans will get a chance to rock out when the world settles down a bit more. Continue reading »
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!
We shine the spotlight on an artist who has won acclaim for her own songwriting—including a song of the year and record of the year Grammy—but who has been overlooked as an interpretive artist. Cover Me readers, let’s show Shawn Colvin some love. She has released not one but four albums of covers (if you count the Holiday song collection and the collection of children’s lullabies). And those are just the start: we can also look at covers she has inserted onto albums otherwise devoted to her own material, and listen to her guest appearances on other artists’ cover projects.
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