A Tribute To Cover Albums

We've recently paid tribute to tribute albums and compilation albums.  Today we turn our ears to the cover album.  Bowie's Pinups, John Lennon's Rock 'N' Roll, and Bryan Ferry's These Foolish Things were popular cover albums in the 70's.  After the punk revolution, the cover album became not just a way to look back fondly on the music of one's youth, but also a reclamation project -- a way of saying, "These things are still cool."  

In the 1980's musicians from the Paisley Underground (the Rainy Day album), Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Kicking Against The Pricks), Siouxsie And The Banshees (Through The Looking Glass) and Yo La Tengo (Fakebook) made a case for songwriters like Mickey Newbury, John Cale, Gene Clark, and Johnny Cash.  The songs were treated with reverence rather than the disdain or irony of many punk covers.  

A good cover album is an insight into a musician's influences.  It's like getting a mixtape from a famous person.  It's a launching point for investigating other artists. Of course, it's also an opportunity for reinterpretation: recasting a song in a different musical setting, or emphasizing a quality that was unappreciated in the original version.  

Listening to some of these cover albums again, I was reminded of some great moments that I'd forgotten.  Cobra Verde takes Hawkwind's "Urban Guerilla" to Motown.  The Dirtbombs play bits of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" during the intro and the outro of Curtis Mayfield's "Kung Fu".  The Church play brilliantly on Television's "Friction".  And k.d. lang's take on "The Air That I Breathe" is ... well, breathtaking.  (Her record Drag is both a cover album and a concept album: not just about smoking, but also about love and addiction.)

I've got a Discogs list of over 200 cover albums.  Next up will be a set of songs from punk cover albums.  Today's compilation does include the Ramones and the Banshees, but on the whole it's a mature and reflective collection, rather than an angry one.  Enjoy!

ELSEWHERE ON THE BLOG: Under The Covers (our two part undercover investigation into the overuse of "Under The Covers" as a title for cover albums), and Richard's tribute to Claw Boys Claw (whose 1988 album Hitkillers is a collection of cover songs by Dutch artists).