The Specials 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

Lankum Releases Video of The Specials Cover “Ghost Town”

Posted by Aleah Fitzwater at 9:25 am No Responses »

Nov 122025

The contemporary Irish-folk quartet Lankum has teamed up with director Leonn Ward and his team to create a spellbinding cover and music video for “Ghost Town.” The original version by The Specials put the social issues of the 1980s—urban decay, unrest, unemployment, societal chaos—on the table for everyone to see. This (of course) was done in a sort of ska-Brit-punk genre. Now, Lankum has recreated the song, making it what this Stereogum article is calling “doom-laden experimental music.” Continue reading »

That’s a Cover?: “A Message To You, Rudy” (The Specials / Dandy Livingstone)

Posted by Mike Tobyn at 9:00 am No Responses »

Mar 072025

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

In November 1979 there was evidence of a remarkable movement in British music. Top of the Pops, the pop music show watched by millions across the country, which had the ability to make or break careers, featured three songs from the 2 Tone record label. An independent collective of the bands The Specials and The Selecter, they had recently taken a decision to sign up Madness, who had similar musical influences. Although a major label marketed them, 2 Tone itself was a tiny, ramshackle outfit. Literally off-beat, as part of their Ska music. Yet here they all were on the UK’s flagship music show. They were on a show with Abba, Dr. Hook and Queen, and the finale was Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand doing “No More Tears.” The Specials and Madness dashed up to the studios from their joint tour to perform, although The Selecter could stay in Cardiff as their part could be reshown from their performance a few weeks before. The single that The Specials were promoting was 2 Tone’s “TT 5-A,” only the fourth single on the label (the first was a joint A-side which both got serial numbers). “A Message To You Rudy” has a clear message and a danceable tune, and is one of the most streamed and covered of The Specials canon. It is also a cover itself.

(Unfortunately, although people get a lot of pleasure from reruns of the series, that episode of Top of the Pops can no longer be shown on TV for reasons unrelated to British youth culture in 1979, so we don’t get the chance to officially relive the moment in its entirety).
Continue reading »

Review: Nouvelle Vague’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go?’

Posted by Seuras Og at 11:30 am 1 Response »

Feb 212024

Nouvelle Vague is back with a new collection titled Should I Stay or Should I Go? I’m going to hesitate in answering that question, as there is the one more demanding, about how this lot are still going. No offense intended, mind; back in the day, Nouvelle Vague’s bossa nova revisiting of punk and new wave songs was really something to behold, with both the novelty and the application well worthy of praise and merit. But now? I know a version has been touring, but I hadn’t appreciated they were still marketing something new, or, more to the point, new to them. So, is this a soft sophisticated samba swirl through the song cycles of Eilish and Swift, Sheeran and whoever else the young people adore? Ummmm, nope. This is a further trawl through the hallowed dusty halls of the last century. Or, more to the point, hoping the audiences who loved them near two decades ago will still love them now, and are still listening to their tired old record collections.

I needed to check out the rationale, hastening to the requisite website. The fact that one of the originators, Olivier Libaux, is now the late Olivier Libaux should be enough confirm him spinning gently, counterclockwise, in his grave. I am presuming his then co-conspirator Marc Collin is still at the helm, as the agenda is seemingly unchanged, setting up a set of chanteuses unfamiliar with the originals, ironically perhaps all the more available as time flits by. So why does it seem now to, largely, pall, where it once delighted? Follow me…..
Continue reading »

Review: The Specials’ ‘Protest Songs 1924-2012’

Posted by Seuras Og at 5:00 pm No Responses »

Oct 052021

I am uncertain how much traction the Specials had outside the UK, where they are rightly considered national treasures, riding a wave of energy since their most recent regrouping and reiteration. Now down to the core trio of Terry Hall on vocals, Lynval Golding on guitar and vocals, and Horace Panting on bass, here they are again aided and abetted by much the same cast who crewed 2019’s Encore, the touring of which had been rudely interrupted by Covid. Rather than sitting home and ruing, the band fired up their default setting of righteous indignation.

As a multiracial band in the English midlands city of Coventry, on the cusp of the 1980s, the Specials became famous, not just for their infectious bluebeat, but also as bastions in the burgeoning fight against racism, generally and in music, appearing, on occasion, on the Rock Against Racism platform. Their response to the George Floyd case last year, was to utilize lockdown and raid their record collections, putting together Protest Songs 1924-2012, a collection of covers which, in some way or form, cast a reflection on the circumstances that could allow such a thing to happen. Protest songs, one and all, if sometimes not necessarily appreciated as so, with about as eclectic a selection as could be, with source material including the unlikely triad of the Staples Singers, Frank Zappa and Leonard Cohen. The one style absent is of ska, the band’s erstwhile calling card and M.O., with any number other of genres embraced in its wake. If nothing else, this displays the broad grasp of musical strengths available within the Specials, yet without losing the strident declaratory croon of Hall, or, indeed, the collective identity. Ska or not, this could be no other band.
Continue reading »

An Exhaustive History of German Cover Songs

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:00 pm 2 Responses »

Jun 112021

We’re not generally in the practice of publishing reader mail at Cover Me (doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate getting it!). There’s no Letters to the Editor page like you’d see in an old magazine. The comments section and social media serve that function well enough. But today, we’re making an exception.

Last summer, a German reader named Karsten Schroeder wrote in offering to share some cool covers he liked by German bands. We said sure – we’re always looking to discover new stuff, after all. We didn’t hear much after that and, to be honest, forgot about it. Then, a full ten months later, he emailed an exhaustive look at the covers scene in Germany. Across 123 songs, Karsten explored covers spanning punk – his favorite genre – to hip-hop, folk to pop to a few genres that are Germany-specific (“Fun-Punk,” “Deutschrock”). It was so rich and detailed, full of amazing covers that we – and, I expect, you – had never heard before that we asked him if we could publish it. Continue reading »