Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.
Jaime Joshi lives in South Florida amidst geckos, 24-hour Cuban coffee and soup-like humidity. She has been writing for Cover Me since 2013; of all her pieces, she is particularly proud of her pieces on Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. (She’s the one on the right.)
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Though a prolific songwriter in his own right – three albums and four EPs worth of songs since 2013 – Jared Putnam has always been a fan of a good cover. After the breakup of his previous band The Conversation, he launched current solo project The March Divide with covers of Radiohead and The Cure. Now, so many original releases later, he returns to the covers well to pay homage to the artists he loved growing up in the 1980s.
“People might write this off as a rehash, but that honestly didn’t even occur to me until I was finished recording,” he wrote announcing the project. “For me, these songs are endearing. I was a little kid and these songs were on MTV. Everyone loves something about these songs.” Continue reading »
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!
At the time, did you consider yourself to be a Baroque popper?
No… to put myself in a category, okay, pop, yeah, definitely pop. But ‘Brrr-roke?’ Come to think of it, I was brrrroke my whole life! Yeah, a brrrrrrrroke popper! That’s exactly what I am! — Emitt Rhodes, in a 2010 interview
If you want the prototypical example of a record company killing the goose that laid the golden egg, look no further than the story of Emitt Rhodes. An incredibly talented teen who’d had a couple local hits with his band the Merry-Go-Round, Rhodes released a self-titled album in 1970 that featured him on all vocals and instruments, and which earned favorable comparisons to Paul McCartney’s similar one-man-band home-recorded solo debut released earlier that same year. But after that, the suits stepped in, and it was all downhill.
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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: Which artist/band does the best covers? That’s a lot to bite off, no doubt about it, but many mouths make less chewing, and the many mouths at Cover Me are very good at raising their voices. As always, our answers are not the only answers; feel free to leave yours in the comments section… Continue reading »
The word “supergroup” is thrown around when two or so well-known musicians band together to form a new group. Girl Crisis, which is made up of Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Spring, Class Actress’ Elizabeth Harper, TEEN’s Jane Herships, and many other talented ladies residing in New York City, should probably be referred to as a super SUPERgroup then, due to the sheer amount of talent squeezed into one tiny space. Literally. The women came together for their summer cover (which is always of a female artist; men are reserved for the winter) to take on the Bangles “Walk Like An Egyptian.” Continue reading »
Part two of our 80’s tribute series, we follow up all the rockin’ with a little new wave pop.
Jake Shimabukuro – Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)
The smooth Hawaiian sounds of Jake’s ukulele became a youtube hit with his While My Guitar Gently Weeps cover, but this take is almost as soulful. I wish the lounge background music was stripped though.
KT Tunstall – Walk Like an Egyptian (The Bangles)
A live take here, it’s not too dissimilar to the original, but fun nevertheless. Tunstall says she chose to cover it because of its musical similarity to her single “Hold On.”
Johnny Cash – Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode)
Another classic off the same album that brought the world “Hurt,” this one is a little faster paced. The rollicking piano backs Cash’s broken but forceful vocals.
Norman Palm – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper)
Sensitive but not pathetic, the guitar harmonies match the vocal ones on this quiet take that would sound like a completely legit song if you ignored the lyrics.
Adam Selzer – Like a Prayer (Madonna)
Dark piano adds a gothic touch to this outtake that gets all touching for the chorus.
Fabienne Louves – She Works Hard for the Money (Donna Summer)
A Swiss German cover here, it’s electro-disco-fun in a language you can’t understand. Hurray!
Kevin Davis – 99 Red Balloons (Nina)
No synths or drum machines here, the riff is taken over by a harmonica. I wish they’d done the German version, but you’ve probably had enough of that after the previous song.
Der Tanz Der Vampire – Totale Finsternis (Total Eclipse of the Heart) (Bonnie Tyler)
Like the original only even more orchestrally epic, this song was rewritten by Jim Steinmen for his German vampire musical. It’s a dark and Gothic bloodsucking love duet that totally eclipses the original. The musical had a brief Broadway run in 2003, but having been rewritten as a camp number was a huge flop. Just go and watch a video of an abridged version from the original Austrian production to understand.
Bat for Lashes – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (Eurythmics)
A thumping, echoey version, it’s trippy psychedelia for the electronic millennium.
The Editors – Road to Nowhere (Talking Heads)
An Americana-inflected take, it starts out with a powerful voice and little else and builds from there into an acoustic power ballad.