Now that Soundgarden is officially in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, here’s a spotlight on great covers of their two of their most popular tunes. Continue reading »
Nov 062025
Nov 052025
A Widespread Panic Halloween show is a tradition, and, after skipping last year, the band was back on stage Halloween night, making up for lost time in their performance in Savannah, Georgia.
Fans knew they were in for something special as the whole band took the stage dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. (John Bell was the Cheshire Cat, Jimmy Herring was Tweedle Dee/Dum, Dave Schools was The Executioner, JoJo Hermann was The Caterpillar, Duane Trucks was The Queen of Hearts and Domingo Ortiz was the Mad Hatter.) Continue reading »
Jun 272025
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
Sly Stone died on June 9 at the age of 82. Two days later, Brian Wilson died, also 82. It was a rough week for eccentric musical geniuses years ahead of their time. We paid tribute to Wilson here, and a couple years ago did a full Best Beach Boys Covers Ever list that now serves as a de facto tribute too. After all, he wrote just about all of those songs.)
So today, the great Sly Stone gets the same treatment. Thirty covers of all the hits, and a few deeper cuts too. Hot fun begins on the next page. (And once you’re done with this, check out our new Five Good Covers piece on “Family Affair.”)
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Aug 052024
Meet Postmodern Jukebox: Everyone’s favorite music collective. Known for taking pop and rock tunes and turning them into everything from ragtime to bebop to soul covers. Recently the pianist-spearheaded group has decided to recreate the mournful and apocalyptic feeling of the Soundgarden tune “Black Hole Sun.”
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May 302024
“Black Hole Sun” is the most popular Soundgarden song to cover by an order of magnitude. With something like 150 covers, it can feel like there aren’t too many fresh versions. And, to be perfectly honest, when I heard the opening of the first verse of Aloe Blacc‘s new cover of “Black Hole Sun,” I assumed I was in for another straight-ahead cover of the song that follows the vocal line and just replaces the guitars with something a little more contemporary. To be fair to Blacc, the opening sounds nothing like the original, with some ethereal vocals and faint percussion instead of the iconic guitar. But when Blacc starts singing that first verse, it initially sounds like he’s just going to sing the song over some 21st century beats. Ho hum. Continue reading »
Apr 282023
As will surprise absolutely no one, “Black Hole Sun” is the most covered Soundgarden song ever, and it’s not even close. (Second Hand Songs lists almost ten times as many covers of “Black Hole Sun” as the runner up, “Rusty Cage.”) So it’s hard for artists to put their individual spin on it.
American singer-songwriter King Princess (aka Mikaela Mullaney Strauss), who we last heard from covering the Velvet Underground’s “There She Goes,” is determined to put her stamp on the oft-covered grunge ballad. She recorded for the legendary Australian radio station triple j’s “Like a Version” series. Continue reading »