Dec 312015
 
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We’ve already finished the big year-end stories – Best Cover Songs and Best Cover Albums – but here’s a little postscript to take us into the new year. Maybe there’s something here you missed: covers of every song on a classic record in our “Full Albums” series, a deep dive into unusual reinterpretations of a particular hit in our “Five Good Covers” series, or just a bunch of MP3s of Dylan covering Sinatra over forty years.

Cover Me’s Most Popular Posts of 2015
1. Full Albums: Bob Marley & the Wailers’ ‘Legend’
2. Download Four Decades of Bob Dylan’s Frank Sinatra Covers
3. Full Albums: The Rolling Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers’
4. Five Good Covers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World (Tears for Fears)
5. Full Albums: Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’
6. Five Good Covers: The Logical Song (Supertramp)
7. Full Albums: ‘Led Zeppelin III’
8. The Best Cover Songs of 2015
9. Five Good Covers: Rocket Man (Elton John)
10. Full Albums: XTC’s ‘Skylarking’

See you in 2016!

Oct 162015
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

XTC is a difficult band to wrap your head around. Known initially, if at all, for quirky, jerky syncopated new wave songs, they slowly began to change into a band known for lush, intelligent pop songs heavily influenced by the Beatles’ psychedelic period. And, like the Beatles, XTC stopped performing live at what was, to that point, the height of their popularity. Having seen them in action just about a year before they quit touring in 1982, I can attest to the fact that they were an excellent live band. XTC has a devoted and creative fanbase, with exhaustive fan sites and a remarkable number of fan-generated tribute releases, which we will delve into in great detail below.
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Nov 152013
 

When Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs recorded their first Under the Covers collaboration, they were surprised that it was released with the subtitle “Vol. 1.” Whatever genius at the Shout! Factory label chose to do that deserves a raise and a promotion, as it led Sweet and Hoffs to record two more volumes. Where Volume 1 consisted of songs based in the ’60s, and Volume 2 was made up of ’70s songs, Volume 3, released this week, is all about the ’80s, the decade when Hoffs came of age as a musician and Sweet wasn’t far behind.
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Oct 112013
 

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

For students of cover songs, it’s a given: Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” is one of the five greatest covers ever made. Many could, and do, make the argument that it’s number one. So why mess with perfection? Why bother covering it again?

Why indeed.
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Jul 222011
 

This Week on Bandcamp rounds up our favorite covers to hit the site in the past seven days.

This Week on Bandcamp took a week off last week, so we come back swinging with a double-header. Instead of five tracks…ten! Download the main set first, then scroll onwards for bonus covers of Stevie Wonder, Twin Peaks, XTC, Kurt Vile, and Angus and Julia Stone. Continue reading »

Nov 192010
 

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s Undercover round-up, the A.V. Club, those patrons of pop culture, have announced a new Undercover series – this time with a peppermint twist! We’ve written about the first plenty, but in case you missed it: Undercover asks artists to pick a song originally performed by someone else and go to town, much like our own Cover Commissions. This time, though, they’ve changed the rules and added a theme: holidays! Where before artists were required to choose a song from a pre-determined list, participants in this round of Undercover can play any song they want, as long as they can demonstrate some kind of holiday theme. I can’t wait to see the hoops irreverent indie bands jump through to perform songs that have no discernible connection to the season. Continue reading »