Mar 222024
 

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

Kraftwerk

Sometimes only a greatest hits will do, a necessity to hit those spots and scratch those itches. For me, Kraftwerk’s The Catalogue is one of those times.

I guess that sort of reveals me as the dilettante I try so hard to pretend I am not. But dilettante or no, I bow to no one in my like of some of Kraftwerk’s MO–which, I guess, gives it all away. It’s true, I confess to not having the traction for the band’s entire oeuvre, but the ones I know, I love. More importantly, I recognize their pivotal position, as popular music discovered the absence of a need for guitars. Tougher call than it sounds, but these guys stuck steadfastly to this template throughout various permutations for over half a century, whilst their minions and acolytes all started slyly adding guitars and, horrors, live drums. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Depeche Mode.)

The Catalogue is one of many Kraftwerk kompilations that exist, and probably the best one for the attention of Kraftwerk civilians like me, primarily as it has the highest headcount of hits. Before all start shouting at the screen, The Catalogue, as in the commercially released version, was indeed an eight-disc remastering of the original existing catalogue. But a promo single-disc compilation was also made available (and, according to Discogs, is able to buy, pre-loved, for a very reasonable outgoing). That’s the one I’m basing this Full Album post on. Is this a slightly deceitful ploy? Maybe, but this is my post and, given I actually have a copy, I can. Besides, let’s be honest–who can even remember the original of “Der Stimme De Energie”? (Go on, then, hum it!)
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Oct 302020
 
best cover songs 2000

Every year, I do a big anniversary post tackling the best covers of a year before Cover Me was born. So far we’ve done 1969 (in 2019), 1978 (in 2018), 1987 (in 2017), and 1996 (in 2016). And in 2020 we circle back to the not-so-distant past with the most recent year yet: 2000.

Cover Me began in 2007 and we did our first year-end list in 2008, so 2000 isn’t that long before we were following this stuff in real time. But, in music eras, 2007 and 2000 seem eons apart. 2000 was nü-metal and Napster, Smash Mouth and the ska revival. Beyoncé was in the quartet Destiny’s Child; Justin Timberlake only had a one-in-five chance of being your favorite member of N’Sync (or maybe one-in-four…sorry Joey). By the time this site started seven years later, all this seemed like ancient history.

There were a lot of extremely prominent covers in 2000. “Prominent,” of course, doesn’t necessarily meaning “good.” This was the year that Madonna covered “American Pie” (not to be outdone, Britney Spears then took a stab at “Satisfaction”). It was the year a Jim Carrey movie soundtrack inexplicably asked bands like Smash Mouth and Brian Setzer Orchestra to cover Steely Dan. It was the year of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Bet you didn’t even know that one was a cover (unless you’re a faithful Cover Me reader).

None of those are on this list (though, if you want more dated trainwrecks like those, stay tuned Monday for a bonus list I’m calling the “The Most Extremely ‘2000’ Covers of the Year 2000”). But 2000 offered a wealth of wonderful covers, often flying just under the mainstream radar. Some of them still seem of the time – anything ska, basically – but most could have come out decades earlier. Or yesterday.

YouTube was still a few years away, as was streaming more generally, so covers still mostly came out through “traditional” avenues: on albums, as the b-sides to singles, etc. As I wrote in my new book, tribute albums were big business by this time too, which means that many 2000 covers emerged through that format. Even narrowing this list down to 50 was hard, which is why Cover Me’s Patreon supporters will get a batch of 150 Honorable Mentions.

Check out the list starting on Page 2, and stay tuned for the best covers of this year coming in December.

The list begins on Page 2.