Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
On February 19, 2026, figure skater Alysa Liu became the first American to win Olympic gold in the women’s competition since 2002. She did it in a style that caused shockwaves through the sport, as Liu, now 20, had previously retired at age 16. With her return, she vowed that she would skate for herself, in her own style, and simply enjoy the moment. Her spirit radiated from the ice, and her jumps were spot on. She emerged from the games not only a medal winner, but a global superstar.
But what really caught our attention was Liu’s choice of music for her long program. She skated to Donna Summer’s disco cover of “MacArthur Park.” With its infectious groove, the song perfectly reflected her approach to the sport, especially as Summer sings “There will be another song for me.” It was an ideal pairing for one of the greatest second acts in the history of the sport.
“MacArthur Park” was written by Jimmy Webb, the tunesmith known for such classics as “Wichita Lineman,” “Worst that Could Happen” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.”
It was first recorded by Irish actor Richard Harris. Coming off the success of the 1967 musical film Camelot, Harris teamed up with Webb, who penned all of the tracks and produced Harris’ debut 1968 record A Tramp Shining. “MacArthur Park” – all seven minutes and twenty seconds of it – was the lead single. Despite its length and unusual structure, the song became a massive global hit for Harris upon its release.
The track itself is more of a suite than a traditional pop tune, with three distinct sections. It tells the story of a young couple falling in love and splitting, interlaced with visual descriptions of the titular Los Angeles park, from “birds like tender babies” to “old men playing checkers.”
But it is most famous, and perhaps infamous, for its chorus…Continue reading »
“Yacht rock” is a genre kinda like emo: No musician admits to making this style of music. Unlike emo, though (maybe more like “indie sleaze”), no one called it “yacht rock” at the time. Nevertheless, whether artists like the name or not, yacht rock exists now. It used to be considered something of a guilty pleasure, but these days, after a splashy (no pun intended) documentary about it got a lot of attention, it’s just a regular pleasure. Questlove loves yacht rock! So do Thundercat, Mac Demarco, Vampire Weekend, and many other musicians considered far “cooler” than Toto ever was. So, today, we salute the yacht rock catalog through covers.
This brings up a contentious question though: What counts as yacht rock? We didn’t want to get derailed debating that indefinitely, so we deferred to the experts. The guys who coined the term in a 2000s web series have a long-running website and podcasts called Yacht or Nyacht. They literally invented the phrase, so we followed their guidance. Any song that scored above 50 on their 100-point scale—more yacht than nyacht—counted. Any song that scored below did not. (You can read more about their criteria on their website, but one thing to note is they define yacht rock not just by the sound of a song, but also whether it emerged from that specific ’70s-LA studio-rat scene.)
Their rigorous ranking includes most of the songs you’d expect, by The Doobie Brothers (and McDonald solo), Christopher Cross, Toto, etc. It also helps deal with the thorny cases. Steely Dan is mostly not yacht-rock, but some songs, particularly in the Aja era, very much are. Fleetwood Mac, though, is definitively not yacht-rock. (Good news: We have an entire Fleetwood Mac list you can peruse.)
So, if you have any beef with what songs do or don’t count, take it up with them. We just want to celebrate the music. Sail away on these 30 covers that do just that.
In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
Whilst it is now many a long year since the last active members of the Band threw in the towel, it is surely now appropriate to give a collective eulogy to this epochal and iconic band, now that the last surviving member, also the eldest, has died. Garth Hudson, the extravagantly bearded professorial figure behind his faithful Lowrey organ, left the earth last week, aged 87. It would be nice to hope the rest of the band have had time to patch up their differences, and that Valhalla is shaking once more to the mighty sound of the five-piece in their prime. For Hudson (1937 – 2025), Robbie Robertson (1943 – 2023), Levon Helm (1940 – 2012), Rick Danko (1943 – 1999) and Richard Manuel (1943 – 1986) were like no other band, before or since. Continue reading »
Cover Genres takes a look at cover songs in a very specific musical style.
Back in 2022, right here on Cover Me, I wrote a confessional essay titled Soul In The Middle Of The Road. It was all about my weird, scarily specific obsession with R&B covers of soft rock songs from the ’70s and early ’80s that were recorded during that same era. Well, here’s where I confess to you that it wasn’t quite the whole story. My affliction actually runs a bit deeper than I first described. In addition to my soft-soul craving, I have a side obsession with R&B covers of classic, dirty, Dad-approved late ’60s ‘n’ ’70s-era ROCK songs recorded during those same years. Yes, you guessed it: it’s sequel time! Welcome to Exorcist II: The HereticThe Rock Of Soul, an over-the-top sister piece to that original essay.
Before we start, I need to lay out a particular parameter regarding the songs included in this love letter/essay. There are multitudes of fine soul-ified covers of songs by Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles. Everyone from Aretha to Stevie Wonder to Otis Redding has recorded something from at least one of their songbooks, as have a myriad of incredible others.
We’re not gonna talk about those.
Instead, we’re gonna be adventurous mofos. The fact is, at this stage of humanity, none of us need to hear another cover of “Let It Be,” good, bad, or otherwise (don’t freakin’ pretend like you do). Besides, it’s way more fun to look past the well-trod songbooks of rock’s behemoths and dig a little deeper. All of which is to say, we’re gonna get weird and occasionally obscure here. In a few cases, you may not be familiar with the originals. I know I wasn’t when I first heard several of these covers. So as an added bonus, I’m going to include links to some of the lesser-known tracks just so you can check them out and potentially be even more blown away by the reinterpretations (Hope says hopefully).
Okay, are you ready to hear some fine, old-school late ’60s and ’70s FM radio nuggets by wonderfully sludgy stalwarts/stallions/stadium stalkers like Cream, Free, and Mr. Springsteen get transformed into mighty ‘n’ righteous clouds of joy (and shimmery beautiful tears)? Then let’s get crackin’ (chronologically). Continue reading »
Cover Genres takes a look at cover songs in a very specific musical style.
Musical obsessions are not always as cut and dried as “this is my favorite song/ album/ band/ genre.” Occasionally you will find yourself in uncharted territory, involuntarily drawn to something so specific and esoteric that it doesn’t fall under the umbrella of an actual existing category. Hmmm… I’m making this sound way more dignified than it is. What I’m trying to say is, most dyed-in-the-wool music nerds have what I’m going to call an imaginary friend. By that, I mean that they have an obsession with some weird-ass thing or self-invented category, one that may not be audible to the ears of others, but feels oh so real to them.
I am now going to introduce you to my imaginary friend, my Harvey, my Snuffleupagus, my Drop Dead Fred. It’s a “thing” I’m obsessed with, which, while exceedingly specific and adhering to a strict set of self-invented rules, doesn’t technically exist as an established, formalized entity.
In a nutshell, I have an insatiable fascination with R & B covers of ’70s Soft Rock songs. Specifically, those recorded in the same era as the originals, when the originals themselves were still young, topical, and ubiquitous.
This oddball interest has roots in all the times I spent as a captive backseat passenger in my Mom’s 1972 white Chevy Nova with the sunflower painted on the side (only one word for that car: bitchin’). It was in this magical machine that my musical foundation was established and my taste was, some might say tragically, molded into shape. Meaning I was exposed to a helluva lot of ’70s AM pop radio as a kid. And there were two things being churned out in ample quantities back then that I especially loved:
1. R&B aka Soul Music (the first single I ever bought was by The Spinners, the first LP was by Billy Preston)
2. Soft Rock, primarily the candy-coated version (“Shannon is gone, I heard…”)
For a specific subgenre, “Soft Rock” is a pretty broad descriptor. The term has come to characterize the adult incense burning-cool babysitter sounds of Carole King and James Taylor, as well as the candy-coated, big-chorus-ed corniness of Barry Manilow and the Captain and Tennille. While we tend to draw a distinction between these two types of Soft Rock (the former is “cool,” and the latter… isn’t), back then, to my kid ears, they were the same damn thing, 100% equal in terms of their artistic credibility. They were all served up on the same radio stations, so in my world, Jackson Browne and Helen Reddy were as one. It was all pop music.
My sloppy love for both the Soul and the Soft did not trigger a lightbulb moment where I thought, “hey, I love these two things and I wonder if there are artists who have perhaps married the two.” Lord no. That would have been far too sophisticated a notion to have ever sprouted up in my eight-year-old peanut brain. My fascination with the marriage was a more random pursuit that defined itself over time. I think it may have been triggered by hearing The Four Tops’ incendiary cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talking” on some compilation in the ’80s. I honestly can’t remember. What I do know is that as technology advanced, my pursuit grew more and more fanatical with each passing day.
Once I could get at discographies with the touch of a button, the nerd assembly line kicked into high gear. Stores were scavenged for Soul-ified Soft Rock treasures. Mixtapes were assembled, followed by mix-CDs, finally culminating in an immense iTunes playlist I pathetically titled, yup, Soul in the Middle of the Road, that grew to feature hundreds of songs. They ran the gamut from transcendent (some rivaling or surpassing the originals in terms of beauty) to horrible (oh man) to just straight-up bizarre (you’ll see).
As alluded to earlier, my main interest is in covers that were recorded during the same era as the originals, in or on the edges of the ’70s. These covers offer a direct nod to the ubiquity of the originals and capture the spirit of that swingin’ era in a way that is impossible for a latter-day cover to achieve (to me, anyway).
I now humbly offer you 30 of the finest, weirdest, and “what the holy hell was that” soul-infused covers of classics and beloved deep cuts from the sweet ‘n’ vast Soft Rock canon. Now I’m sure some of the artists I’m about to mention would bristle at having one of their works characterized as “Soft Rock,” but hey rock star, you made a Soft Rock song, so you know, that’s onyou (also thank you, you sexy thing). At the end of the day, they should all feel grateful and flattered to have had their sweetest sounds so soulfully celebrated.
As for me, I hear love in every one of the covers that follow and genuinely hope you can too. Take it away, Tops…
