Animal Collective’s debut album Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished came out nearly 23 years ago, though when it came out it was only credited to Avey Tare (David Portner) and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), and really it’s mostly an Avey Tare solo album. They’ve released a reissue of the album with an EP of requisite bonus tracks, given its own title, A Night At Mr. Raindrop’s Holistic Supermarket. Included in this EP of outtakes is a pretty radical cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” Of course, “pretty radical” is what you would expect from Animal Collective.Continue reading »
Angel Olsen dropped two terrific covers this month. Her version of Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings,” recorded for the TV show Shining Girls, features haunting electronic textures underpinning her voice. It’s a surprisingly un-folky cover of one of Bob’s early folk songs. Her version of Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road standout “Greenville” is just as good, guitar echoing behind her mesmerizing double-tracked vocals.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? Continue reading »
As both Stevie Nicks‘ most famous duet and, unofficially, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers‘ biggest hit, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” might have inspired more than a few covers. But it’s only in the 21st century that people have taken it on, and only occasionally.
Bluegrass singer-songwriter Molly Tuttle is a regular at Cover Me, her covers featuring in a number of our Best-Of lists since the pandemic started. Her album but I’d rather be with you was a highlight of 2020 and it she has a sequel, the new EP but I’d rather be with you, too. It’s for this new EP that she’s taken on the Nicks/Petty classic.Continue reading »
What is there left to say about Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours at this stage? It is a veritable blueprint of what a perfect pop album should sound like, and the drama surrounding it is as iconic as the record itself. Unsurprisingly, its most beloved track and the one that’s spawned the most cover attempts is Stevie Nicks’ incandescent “Dreams”…which makes sense, for beyond its general evergreen perfection, it’s kind of foolproof, with strong enough bones to withstand even the most experimental cover attempts. But that fact makes it even more impressive when someone takes on one of the deeper cuts (though I suppose in the case of the ubiquitous Rumours, we should just refer to them as ‘non-singles’)…like the dark queen-Grande dame that is “Gold Dust Woman.”
Lindsey Buckingham once famously referred to “Gold Dust Woman” as “an evil song,” and his sinewy groove of a guitar line supports that notion tenfold. Sinister and ominous, equal parts pop song and exorcism, Stevie herself explained later it was “My symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship and doing a lot of drugs and trying just to make it, trying to live. That song was about a very heavy, very bad time in my life.”
Composer, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Julia Holter recorded her version of the song way back in 2012 (for a MOJO Magazine curated Fleetwood Mac tribute CD called Rumors Revisited). Up until last week the song had only been available as part of that compilation, but it’s now officially available through the streaming services. Holter added that she’d “always wanted to release it” and describes it as a “rough home recording with the raw energy of that time for me when I first started touring and playing my music outside of LA with a band.” It also happens to be one of the finest covers of the song ever recorded. Holter’s “Gold Dust Woman” is spare, hymnal and utterly spellbinding. There’s a quiet urgency to it, a chilliness that pulls it miles away from the smoky grittiness of the original, and it’s absolutely entrancing.
In Defense takes a second look at a much maligned cover artist or album and asks, “Was it really as bad as all that?”
Lindsay Lohan is now a business woman and back to releasing music, Stevie Nicks is always relevant, and hey, clearly we need more drama in our lives, so let’s get “a little more personal” and talk about what may be a controversial cover of “Edge of Seventeen.”
Nicks wrote the original song, and it appeared on her debut solo album, Bella Donna. It only reached number 11 on the US Billboard Hot 100, which seems inconceivable given its cultural legacy. And yes, part of that legacy is its opening riff being sampled in Destiny’s Child’s “Bootylicious.” Nicks making a cameo appearance in the music video is the ultimate stamp of approval. Alas, Lohan did not receive the same pat on the back. Lohan reportedly wanted to play Nicks in a biopic, but Nicks wasn’t enthused, to put it mildly, referring to Lohan’s drug and alcohol use (after this album, things started to go downhill for Lohan).
This song is not Lohan’s only cover; she also covers Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” (for the record, her song “Rumors” on her first album is just a coincidence, not a Fleetwood Mac cover). However, fans seem to be a little more protective of Nicks (or maybe they are just Hillary Duff loyalists). Despite this, a rare, on the road to recovery, Lohan sighting had people coming out and admitting that her cover might, gasp, not be that bad. Let’s investigate!
