Regina Spektor Archives

The 40 Best John Lennon Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 12:00 pm 3 Responses »

Feb 282025

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

Fifty years ago this month, John Lennon released his covers album Rock ‘n’ Roll, in which he tackled a bunch of pre-Beatles rock and roll classics by folks like Gene Vincent and Fats Domino. Admittedly, the album isn’t all that good. It was done under legal pressure, and sounds like it. But the anniversary is a good enough is excuse to celebrate Lennon covers our own way: Not covers by John, but covers of John.

We should our one rule state up front: No Beatles songs! We did a giant 75-song Beatles covers list last year, which, naturally, included a bunch of John songs. So, for this list, as we did with Paul McCartney a few years back, we’re focusing entirely on his solo output. “Solo” loosely defined as anything post-Beatles: co-billed with Yoko, officially backed by Plastic Ono Band, etc.

If you think the no-Beatles rule adds a pretty strict limitation, think again. There was no shortage of solo-Lennon song covers to choose from. And it’s not 50% “Imagine” covers either; in fact, on our list of 40 covers, only two “Imagine”s make the cut. Most “Imagine” covers are pretty damn saccharine, not a word often associated with the most caustic Beatle. But just about every other mood and sound appears below.

Click to the next page to get started. All we are saying is give these a chance.

– Ray Padgett, Cover Me Founder/Editor

Full Albums: Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Retrospective’

Posted by Seuras Og at 1:00 pm 4 Responses »

Jan 072022

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Retrospective saw Buffalo Springfield’s record company out to catch a final buck or two, their cash cow having imploded ahead of quite how much of a cash cow it could or should have been. The band had been on the decidedly no-frills ATCO label, an offshoot of Atlantic for acts that failed to fit their then template of blues, jazz, r’n’b and soul, along with other square pegs of the day, like Dr. John. I say no frills, as their cover art was always of the decidedly cheap and shoddy nature: Retrospective has a cover that cannot have taxed too many creative brains, the “rips” in the background paper, to allow inserts and a makeshift collage, are all clearly visible.

Retrospective, which is actually subtitled “The Best of Buffalo Springfield,” actually performed as well as their final album, Last Time Around, and surpassed the sales of both Buffalo Springfield and Buffalo Springfield Again. It’s an artistic success, too; it contains many songs which have a greater quality, with the hindsight of time, than perhaps was fully appreciated at the time. Stills’ “For What It’s Worth,” their biggest hit, has repaid itself time after time after time, becoming a soundtrack shorthand for setting a time and place during the US civil rights years. That has to appease him a little, surely, against his always apparent second pegging against his Canadian nemesis.

The Best Cover Songs of February 2021

Posted by Ray Padgett at 9:00 am 2 Responses »

Mar 012021

Black Country, New Road – Time to Pretend (MGMT cover)

If you’re expecting the “Time to Pretend” you knew and loved a decade ago, think again. UK post-punkers Black Country, New Road, one of the buzziest bands of the new year, deconstruct the song entirely. It starts pretty sane, then gradually veers off the tracks into chaos. By the end there’s a free-jazz sax solo leading a wall of noise only barely identifiable as this, or any, song. Continue reading »

Cover Classics: Peter Gabriel’s ‘Scratch My Back’

Posted by Seuras Og at 4:00 pm 2 Responses »

Mar 102017

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

Until 2010’s Scratch My Back appeared, Peter Gabriel had been an artist more covered than covering – arguably a pity, given the cracked wistfulness of his croaky beauty. But I guess if you can write material of the quality and diversity that he has, why bother with someone else’s material? The problem was, Gabriel hadn’t been writing that kind of material – this was his first album in eight years.

So was Scratch My Back just, as covers projects can so often be, a stopgap sales pitch to keep his brand alive during a creative lull? Who knows? I think not and hope not, feeling this a deliberate if somewhat failed experiment on two levels. Flawed, maybe, rather than failed.
Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of 2016: Honorable Mentions

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 6 Responses »

Dec 062016

Over the past few months, we’ve been hard at work making our list of The Best Cover Songs of 2016. Narrowing it down to 50 caused some excruciating choices, that’s how many great covers there were this year.

We’ll be posting the full list next week (and “Best Cover Albums” this Thursday), but as a little appetizer, here are our Honorable Mentions, covers we loved and still wanted to spotlight as among the best 2016 had to offer. Continue reading »

HBO’s Boardwalk Empire Showcases Old Timey Tunes By Modern Musicians

Posted by Peter Ferioli at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Dec 212012

The third season of HBO’s crime drama, Boardwalk Empire has just finished. Having spent a good deal of time in the Atlantic City area when I was young, I have become a big fan of the show which is based on historical criminal figures. There is a lot to like about the show and many focus on the once-in-a-lifetime role of gangster Nucky Thompson as played by Steve Buscemi. Indeed he is incredible. But what transports you into 1920’s prohibition era South Jersey shore are the sets, costumes, cinematography and perhaps most importantly, the music. Continue reading »