Jun 012026
May 282026
The Tom Waits fanbase is not entirely starved for news lately, but most of it is about Waits’s acting career. On the music side, the news is small change: something about singing on a new Pogues tribute, and similar tidbits.
Then came the announcement of Where the Willow and the Dogwood Grow, a star-studded tribute to the music of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. OK, it’s not new original music (we’ve waited 15 years for a new Waits album) but whatever it is, we’ll take it!
The excitement gives way, on closer inspection, to disappointment: there’s nothing actually new in this new release. (“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away,” to borrow a classic Waits-as-huckster phrase.)
Each cover has been available for years–in many cases, for three or four decades. So this is material we have heard before, and written about before–see our 2023 feature The 50 Best Tom Waits Covers Ever. The most recent of the tracks on hand is “Hold On” by Madison Cunningham, but even that one dates back six years. It’s a killer version, by the way, a clear highlight of this compilation.
Still, having these covers compiled in one place serves a purpose, if only to help reassess the song catalog. And realistically, the number of Waits devotees who have actually listened to all these songs is miniscule; they could fit in a single booth at an all-night diner. If a song is new to you, then it’s new music, regardless of its original release date.
The very title of the album suggests a new framing, a fresh lens: the notion that Waits’s song-writing changed when he partnered with Brennan, and their extensive and lengthy collaboration deserves its own celebration.
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Apr 242026
‘The Best Covers Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.
After a long and tortured production process, the Michael Jackson biopic Michael comes out in theaters today. Is the movie any good? Does it matter? It’s enough of an excuse for us to count down covers of his biggest songs!
The legacy of Michael Jackson the person is—to put it mildly—complicated. But the legacy of Jackson’s music is unimpeachable. Dozens of songs that are all-time classics, and that get covered frequently, in every genre imaginable. Here are our favorites:
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Mar 042026
Omnivore Recordings has re-released the 1997 Lowell George tribute album, Rock and Roll Doctor: Lowell George Tribute Album. The record includes covers by folks like Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Hillman and Randy Newman. But the re-issue also features a new track, “Willin’,” which features Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and Lowell George’s daughter, Inara George. The track is a beautiful take, with the weary voices of Nelson and George combined with the beauty of Harris’ to make something really special. Continue reading »
Dec 152025
Follow all our Best of 2025 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
Hip-hop oldies become jazz instrumentals. Cult folk songs become grand spaghetti-western soundscapes. Blink-182 hits become DIY bedroom jams. We’ve got ’90s hardcore bangers shredded on acoustic guitar, Spanglish Latin-pop takes on Air Supply and Elvis, and, maybe most outrageously of all, a wild experiment in turning everyone from Chappell Roan to Smash Mouth into emo/screamo.
It’s an especially unruly set this year, but a rewarding one. Enough preamble. Dive in.
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Nov 172025
Normally, if you wrote a country music song that mentioned marijuana, LSD and group sex, you would be permanently barred from country music radio. But in 1969 Merle Haggard did just that with “Okie from Muskogee” and wound up at the top of the country music charts. Granted, in his version of events, the narrator was describing all the things they supposedly didn’t do in small-town Oklahoma.
Ever since the song was released people have been debating whether or not Haggard was celebrating the joys of small town life or mocking it. Haggard himself was a complicated figure. He embraced being one of President Richard Nixon’s favorite singers, yet at the same time had an arrest record that would make most gangster rappers cringe. Over the years, there have been countless parodies and covers of “Okie from Muskogee,” sometimes at the same time, by singers who wore “manly footwear” and even by hippies from San Francisco, whom he was seemingly deriding.
The latest to tackle the track is Willie Nelson, a man who probably wouldn’t hesitate to smoke marijuana if he ever passed through Muskogee. He included the song on his latest album, Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle (click here to read a review).
Nelson plays the track as a laidback, piano-driven country song. He seems to neither celebrate nor mock the people of Muskogee. Instead, he delivers a joyous cover that’s easy to sing along to. He’s simply celebrating Haggard. In fact, that’s the spirit of the whole record. Nelson sings as if he’s having a great time paying tribute to his departed friend and fellow country outlaw. Even the sad songs are happy and upbeat. It’s a worthy tribute to Haggard’s life and music. I don’t expect contemporary country radio to play any of it.