The Best Cover Songs of January 2026

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Jan 302026
 
The Best Cover Songs of January 2026
The Beaches — I Ran (So Far Away) (A Flock Of Seagulls cover)

The Beaches released one of the best albums of last year with No Hard Feelings. Now they’ve followed up with a Flock of Seagulls cover. Why? Why not! They don’t veer too far away from the original arrangement, but add an extra dose of indie-rock crunch. Halfway through it gets a little more shoegazy and expansive, with a huge build.

The Damned — Making Time (The Creation cover)

This deeper cut is a high point of the Damned’s new covers record, which, per our review, “takes the song into near heavy metal territory, if leavened by the catchy choral chorus, which, especially with the bass and drums, comes over like the Who in their prime.” Continue reading »

Ian Sweet Covers “Semi Charmed Life” As If It’s a Ballad

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Jan 162026
 
ian sweet semi charmed life cover

For a brief period at the end of the ’90s, Third Eye Blind were pretty big. They had two Top 5 hits, three Top 10 hits and four Top 20 hits, in the span of just three years. But “Semi Charmed Life” topped some other charts, just not the Hot 100. And, decades later, it has double the streams of their next most popular song and double the covers. But “Semi Charmed Life” is one of those covers that poses a difficult conundrum for the cover artist. Because if you attempt Stephan Jenkins’, um, semi rap, you run the risk of sounding exactly like him. Continue reading »

Third Eye Blind Covers “Wolf Like Me”

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Jul 242024
 

Third Eye Blind has recently covered everybody’s favorite ‘06 tune about being a werewolf (and embracing their well, more sensual instincts…). 

Since TV on the Radio released “Wolf Like Me,” it’s been a popular song to cover – and for good reason. There’s certainly something contagiously catchy and gritty about the art-rocker’s tune.

Third Eye Blind was on their most recent tour when they performed their live version of the cover at New Jersey’s PNC Bank Arts Center. And while some music critics aren’t so sure about the San-Fran native alternative rockers performing the Brooklyn-ers tune, we think they more than pulled it off!

From the lively locked-in bassline to the emotive and rowdy vocals and the musicians draped in purple-red lights, everything about this one is a win. If only there was more than a one-and-a-half-minute clip of the live version for us to all watch retroactively… And now, fans on YouTube are beginning for a studio version. Listen to it now down below:

For more great TV on the Radio covers, be sure to check out this link!

The Best Cover Songs of August 2023

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Aug 312023
 
Amanda Palmer and The Righteous Babes — The Last Day of our Acquaintance (Sinéad O’Connor cover)


You’re going to notice a theme here. We have the usual grab-bag included below (see “Best of the Rest”), but, for our featured covers up top, it’s all Sinéad. There were so many wonderful tributes performed, often in concert and always powerful and moving. Many did “Nothing Compares 2 U,” technically a Prince cover but really a Sinéad song now and forever, but others selected from elsewhere in her catalog. Of this one, which just came out Tuesday, Amanda Palmer wrote, “This song means a great deal to me, as does the artist who penned it, along with everything she still stands for.” A portion of the money from sales will be donated to The Irish Women’s Survivor Support Network. Continue reading »

Third Eye Blind Covers Sinead O’Connor’s “Emperor’s New Clothes” Live

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Aug 112023
 
Third Eye Blind

In the wake of Sinead O’Connor‘s death, there have been a lot of covers of her songs, as you might expect. Many artists have defaulted to her most famous performance, her legendary cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Some bands have been going for deeper cuts, however.

One of those bands is, um, ’90s rock group Third Eye Blind, best known for their 1997 US Top 5 hit “Semi-Charmed Life.” Singer-songwriter Stephan Jenkins is also an infamous jerk, which makes the tribute and song choice more incongruous. The song is “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Sinead’s follow-up single to “Nothing Compares 2 U.” A personal song about O’Connor’s experience with fame and pregnancy at the same time, it might seem like an odd choice for Jenkins. But, then again, given the song’s refrain, maybe not. Continue reading »

Cover Me Q&A: What’s your favorite cover you learned about on Cover Me?

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Jul 172019
 

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

song at your funeral

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, courtesy of Cover Me staffer Mike Misch: What’s a favorite song you learned about on Cover Me?
Continue reading »

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