If cover versions are good enough for legends like Mavis Staples and Levon Helm, they’re certainly good enough for us! Here’s our roundup of cover songs in 2022 so far.
Royal Castles covered…themselves!
Rotting Out covered Nirvana
Erra covered Muse
John Orpheus covered Radiohead
Ann Wilson and Vince Gill covered Queen
Sam Casey covered Nina Simone
Juliana Eye covered Blondie
The Seafloor Cinema covered Olivia Rodrigo and Coheed and Cambria
Cowboy Junkies covered David Bowie and Gram Parsons and Neil Young and The Cure and…
Royal Castles covered…themselves!
We recently featured Royal Castles for their use of archive footage and singing in German to honour Katrin Sawatzky‘s ancestors. This time, we’re checking out the band’s cover of…themselves! Frickin Wünderschonon is a German-language version of their 2021 single Frickin Pretty.
Rotting Out covered Nirvana
Now on to the more traditional type of cover – of someone else’s song! Hardcore punks Rotting Out are currently celebrating their blistering new single Who Am I. However, earlier this year they dropped a heavy version of the Nirvana classic Even In His Youth.
Erra covered Muse
Erra also reached back through the decades to deliver a heavy cover. In this case, it’s Muse‘s Stockholm Syndrome. The metalcore band’s latest album, S/T, is out now on UNFD.
“The first time I heard [it] I thought, ‘This song is begging to be covered by a metal band. It has aggressive riffs, soaring vocals, keyboard arpeggios, and a big ending breakdown … The chromatic guitar octaves in the verses also left me a lot of room to play with some chromatic groove riffs in the style of Meshuggah.
Jesse Cash, guitarist and clean vocalist
John Orpheus covered Radiohead
Time for a sonic palate cleanse? How about a very different Radiohead cover?
“We wanted to do it in our style, but hold true to the song’s inherent qualities. As with many of their songs, it is haunting with an ambivalent lyric and a subtle, yet powerful feeling, but we wanted it to be danceable, Caribbean and soulful – three things Radiohead is rarely accused of!”
Black Mountain’s frontman Stephen McBean also went in a different musical direction than the original when covering Black Flag‘s Nervous Breakdown with his new project, Pink Mountaintops.
“Steven McDonald used to always play a disco version of that bassline to annoy [Black Flag co-founder] Keith Morris when they were sound-checking for [their hardcore supergroup] OFF!, and it ended up fitting perfectly with the demo I’d made,
Stephen McBean
Nonetheless, Morris emphatically approved of the new version: “Great job taking a song that’s been beaten to death by numerous punker dunkers and turning it into your own song! BRAVO!!!!”
Ann Wilson and Vince Gill covered Queen
This soaring duet features on legendary Heart vocalist Ann Wilson’s new album, Fierce Bliss.
“I had the idea for the Queen song Love of My Life as a duet, so I just tried to picture who would be ‘the male angel’ that would sing the other part of it.
It had to be Vince Gill because he’s got that voice, that soul.”
Ann Wilson
Sam Casey covered Nina Simone
It’s time for another emotional song. Sam Casey accompanied her cover of Nina Simone’s I’d Rather Go Blind with an unflinching music video.
“I was going through a challenging time in my life. It feels so vulnerable to see the results of my raw emotion and struggle that this is almost difficult to watch…The courage it took to write this song is hard to fathom until you have to film it while you’re going through a breakup.”
Sam Casey
Juliana Eye covered Blondie
Canadian musician Juliana Eye sought to bring out the new wave synths, and alluring vocals of the Blondie track Dreaming.
“Most of the renditions I’ve heard are fairly upbeat and close to the original, so I wanted to slow it down and give it a dreamy kinda vibe, where it feels like you’re suddenly living in slow motion and your imagination starts running wild.”
Juliana Eye
The Seafloor Cinema covered Olivia Rodrigo and Coheed and Cambria
The Seafloor Cinema quickly followed up their rendition of Coheed and Cambria’s A Favor House Atlantic with this Olivia Rodrigo cover. You can find out more about their album In Cinemascope With Stereophonic Sound here.
We really wanted to take this song and turn it on its head, while still keeping the grit and angst of the original.
Seth Lawrenson, guitarist
Cowboy Junkies covered David Bowie and Gram Parsons and Neil Young and The Cure and…
Two covers? That’s nothing! Cowboy Junkies have delivered an entire cover album! Songs of the Recollection is out now, featuring nine curated covers.
“Long before we were musicians, we were music fans. We didn’t grow up sitting around the kitchen table playing instruments and harmonizing. We grew up sitting around the record player listening to each other’s record collections and having our minds blown. This was the passion that we shared. Our goal has always been to create music that took hold of the listener the way that this music took hold of us. These are some of the songs and some of the artists that found their way into our lives and eventually into our repertoire over the past fifty years.”
Michael Timmins, guitarist and songwriter
Here is their cover of David Bowie‘s Five Years. The record also features songs from Gram Parsons, Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, Vic Chesnutt, and The Cure.
Now that you’re all caught up on the latest cover songs in 2022, check out musiccloseup.com for more music news and reviews!