The Dead South Archives

The 50 Best Cover Songs of 2025

Posted by Staff at 9:00 am 2 Responses »

Dec 192025

Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.

Last year’s unexpected theme was Tom Petty covers. For no obvious reason, he popped up again and again on our 2024 year-end list. And whaddya know, Tom’s back this year, with two more Petty covers on our list. This year, however, he is not the most-covered artist on our list.

That’s a tie between two artists, one extremely of-the-moment, one timeless. With three covers apiece, Chappell Roan and Neil Young share the most-best-covered crown. (Artists with two covers apiece this year, in addition to Petty, are Gillian Welch, John Prine, and—this one’s surprising—Nelly Furtado!)

Spoiler alert: None of those appears in the number-one position. Number one covers an artist who I don’t think has ever appeared on one of our year-end lists. But don’t skip ahead. There are 49 equally (well, almost) as good covers to get through first, spanning genres and sounds and eras and ages. Here we go.

Cover art by Hope Silverman

Five Good Covers: “Joey” (Concrete Blonde)

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 10:00 am 1 Response »

Aug 222025

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Johnette Napolitano knew she had something good, but she wasn’t ready to finish it. She had a boyfriend, Wall of Voodoo guitarist Marc Moreland, whose alcoholism made their relationship a trying one. She and her band, Concrete Blonde, had recorded a rough demo and “right away everybody reacted to it,” she later said. “There weren’t any lyrics, but there was something about the music that everybody really reacted to.”

The song was going to have lyrics, though – and they were going to be about Moreland. “I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t looking forward to saying it,” Napolitano said. The music was ready, and the producer kept pushing her for the lyrics. She put him off and put him off until she had no other songs left to record. Finally, in the back of a cab on the way to the studio, she set down the words to “Joey,” which would become the band’s biggest hit.

“I was flooded with mail after ‘Joey,'” Napolitano said, “about everybody who had known that story, lost a buddy, or had a relationship with an alcoholic. It was a big lesson – the closer you get to the truth or are vulnerable with it and express it, the more universal it is.”

The Best Cover Songs of March 2022

Posted by Ray Padgett at 11:51 am No Responses »

Mar 312022

Avhath – Cool / Levitating / Don’t Start Now (Dua Lipa covers)

What’s better than one Indonesian black-metal Dua Lipa cover? Three Indonesian black-metal Dua Lipa covers! Not that you’d ever know these were Dua Lipa songs unless you were listening really closely to the lyrics (and could manage to make them out).

The Band of Heathens – El Paso City (Marty Robbins cover)

During lockdown, Band of Heathens hosted a regular livestream variety show called Good Time Supper Club. One segment, “Remote Transmissions,” featured them covering a new song every episode – over 50 in all. They’re collecting some of the best on a forthcoming album of the same name: Remote Transmissions. “Making records is always about cataloging any point in time. We wanted to celebrate the unique collaborative aspect of the show,” guitarist Ed Jurdi told American Songwriter. “What better way to document the last year than with these songs?” First up is this take on a Marty Robbins country classic. Continue reading »

The 30 Best Decemberists Covers Ever

Posted by Staff at 8:39 am 2 Responses »

Mar 252022

‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

For this month’s Best Covers Ever, we polled our Patreon supporters. Voting among five 2000s (ish), indie-rock (ish) bands they’d previously nominated – Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The Decemberists, The Killers, Vampire Weekend – an underdog won by a single vote. Unless you scrolled so fast you missed the headline and photo, you already know who that underdog was: The Decemberists!

The Decemberists are arguably the least widely-known band of the bunch – they certainly don’t have Killers-level hits – but you wouldn’t know it from the depth and breadth of covers. Other musicians love the Decemberists, and have dug deep into their catalog to cover tracks from across their entire career. They lean a bit Americana on the whole, but some covers cross over into heavy metal, pop-punk, or even mariachi. Their songs have been covered by legends, sure – Patti Smith, Nick Cave – but even more often they get covered by under-the-radar bands, genuine fans who just happen to possess a heap of musical talent themselves.

As The Decemberists prepare to embark on their Covid-delayed 20th anniversary tour this summer, we salute their songs of crane wives and engine drivers, butchers and barrow boys, with thirty covers that were meant for the stage.

PS. Join our Patreon if you want a say in the next band we cover!

The Dead South Find the Bluegrass in “Chop Suey”

Posted by Riley Haas at 2:15 pm No Responses »

Mar 162022

Though it wasn’t their highest charting hit, “Chop Suey” is arguably System of a Down’s most iconic song, both because it was their most successful single in terms of total sales and because of its inimitable mix of metal and high melodrama. It sounds like nobody else, and it’s hard to imagine someone else doing the song. Especially this way…

The Dead South are, despite their name, a Canadian bluegrass band active since 2012. Like many 21st century bluegrass bands, they specialize in a style of bluegrass that is heavily influenced by rock music, even though they play acoustic instruments. And, given the acoustic elements in “Chop Suey,” it sort of makes sense that someone would eventually try a bluegrass cover. Continue reading »