This beautiful performance aired on South Dakota Public Broadcasting and, as of this writing, has 81 views, half of which are mine. (To be fair, presumably more people saw it when it aired on actual TV). But this Sioux Falls singer-songwriters beautiful Taylor Swift cover deserves a far bigger audience. It’s simply done, no frills or gimmicks, but he sells the hell out of it. Continue reading »
The Sugababes—Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan, and Siobhán Donaghy—recently delivered a standout performance in the inaugural BBC Radio 1 Anthems Live Lounge, offering a fresh and heartfelt take on Lorde’s latest single, “What Was That.” The trio transformed the minimalist, emotionally guarded original into a rich, harmony-laden ballad that foregrounded their distinctive vocal chemistry. Opening with a moody, chugging electric guitar and easing into shimmering a cappella harmonies, the performance gradually built into a layered arrangement of synths and percussion, adding warmth, urgency, and soul to the stripped-back source material.
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On his new covers album High Drama, Adam Lambert didn’t pick one of the obvious Billie Eilish songs to cover (“Bad Guy,” “Everything I Wanted,” etc). He goes for relative deep cut “Getting Older,” off her 2021 album Happier Than Ever. Eilish’s original was fairly minimalist. Lambert doesn’t do “minimalist.” His “glam” version, as he describes it, makes the song sound like a much bigger hit than it was. Continue reading »
This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.
Today’s Bandcamp feature (our 20th) takes an unexpected theme: girl power! Four of the five songs at least come from female artists or lady-fronted bands. They range from icons embodying the spirit of rock in a female frame (Beth Gibbons of Portishead) to groups who embody something less than the feminist ideal (the appropriately-named Sugababes). And then there’s a song originally by Big Star, who represent none of these things, but just couldn’t be skipped. Continue reading »