Ruston Kelly is a singer-songwriter who creates Americana, pop-rock, and alt-country tunes- but he recently traded his twang for a much rounder vocal timbre in this version of Samia’s song “Dream Song.”
The original version of “Dream Song” is like a dark lullaby, with macabre lyrics such as “tripping over spanish moss again, today is all of it, there are six minutes of brain activity, after the body’s dead.” Kelly kept the same emotive quality of the song in his version but changed the instrumentation and momentum slightly. Continue reading »
The big story in 2022 covers came from a song that’s almost 40 years old: “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God).” After Kate Bush’s classic had its Stranger Things moment, every week we got a half dozen new covers. It’s been six months since the show came out, and they’re still coming! This entire list could have been “Running Up That Hill” covers if we’d let it.
We didn’t, and it isn’t. The song makes one appearance, as do a number of other trendy 2022 items: Wet Leg, GAYLE, and Beabadoobee; the latest Cat Power covers project; posthumous releases (Dr. John, Levon Helm); songs that tie into coming out of pandemic isolation.
But, as always, a joy of our list is all the covers that tie into nothing, and that you won’t find anywhere else. Doom-metal Townes Van Zandt? Bluegrass Eminem? Ska Eddie Murphy? Folk Björk? Psych-rock Groucho Marx? Those are just five of the fifty killer covers on this year’s countdown. So run up that road, run up that hill, run up that building, and read on at the link below.
Guest post by Adam Selzer. Adam writes true crime and runs walking tours in Chicago. His latest book is ‘Murder Maps USA’.
A few weeks ago, New York songwriter Samia released a single with covers of The Eagles’ “Desperado” and the Magnetic Fields’ “Born on a Train. Samia’s first album, 2020’s Baby, and a brief follow-up EP Scout, mix abstract imagery with personal details verging on oversharing about that age when you’re doing adult things, but still feel like a kid. Streaming services worked their best to make me take notice of her; songs from the album ended up on lots of of my curated playlists, and now and then a great line would jump out at me. Continue reading »
You may listen to the gentle plucking when this begins and thing, boy that’s not what I expected from that band photo. Is this an acoustic flying V? Blacktop Mojo’s “My Girl” stays pretty and meditative for over half the run time, turning the oldies classic into a pretty folk-rock ballad. Eventually, though, true to that long-hair-and-leather image, the heads start banging and axes start shredding.Continue reading »
