james

Top 50 Cover Songs of 2015 (25-1)

Here are my favourite 25 Cover Songs of 2015:

25. Seth Boyer – All Star (Smash Mouth)

Boyer turns this 90’s/early 2000’s staple into something nearly unrecognizable.

 

24. Sia – California Dreamin’ (The Mamas and The Papas)

Everything Sia does is huge. This is no different.

 

Bonus: Jack and White – How’s It Going To Be (Third Eye Blind)

 

23. The Wind and The Wave – Gold, Guns, Girls (Metric)

If you have Spotify, this swell cover resides there. Otherwise, I can’t find a link to share.

 

22. Capitol Children’s Choir – Chances (The Strokes)

Any cover these kids do is incredible.

 

21. Ryan Adams – Shake It Off/Blank Space

 

20. Metric- Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (Tame Impala)

 

Bonus: Prince – Creep (Radiohead)

Forever one of the baddest men on the planet. #GameBlouses

 

19. Red Fang – Can’t Help Falling In Love (Elvis Presley)

Whoa. As hard as three feet of solid ice. So different from the original.

 

18. Art vs. Science – Enter Sandman (Metallica)

Unlike you’ve ever heard this song, I can all but guarantee.

 

17. Tame Impala – Confide In Me (Kylie Minogue)

Kevin Parker and company are on fire. Everything they touch is sorcerer’s practice.

 

16. Twin Caverns – Gold Digger (Kanye West)

Flips this banger on its head.

 

Bonus: Birdy – 1901 (Phoenix)/White Water Hymnal (Fleet Foxes)

Older covers but ones that I just came to know. So, so pretty.

 

15. Phox – Miss You (Blink-182)

I was probably always going to love this cover, as I think it’s Blink’s melodic masterpiece. Phox does well with it.

 

14. Ben Howard – Wildest Moments (Jessie Ware)

Captivating take on one of the best pop songs of the first part of the decade.

 

13. I Know Leopard – Waterfalls (TLC)

Serenity. Love the double-take lead vocals and the instrumentation.

 

Bonus: Branches – I Believe In A Thing Called Love (The Darkness)

 

12. Tinashe – I Wanna Get Better (Bleachers)

 

11. James Blake – The Sound of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel)

Wow, Blake has outdone himself here. This is gorgeous.

 

10. Mitski – Fireproof (One Direction)

If this was a Mitski original, it would’ve been a hit. Such is the quality of this cover.

 

9. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Laid (James)

One of my favourite melodies ever.

 

Bonus: Elle King – My Neck My Back (Khia)

Pure filth and King pulls it off with aplomb. Very strange to here this song as a guitar-led folk track, but it’s compelling nevertheless.

 

8. Cigarettes After Sex – Keep On Loving You (REO Speedwagon)

A fantastic cover that sets a new mood for this classic tune.

 

7. Gallant – Learn To Fly (Foo Fighters)

Wow. Just wow. A masterstroke of soul-bearing intensity. Goose-bump inducing to put it mildly.

 

6. Ryan Adams – Out Of The Woods (Taylor Swift)

‘Twas a great idea for Adams to cover Swift’s world-conquering 1989. The interest in such an endeavour was bound to be large. But not many artists could pull it off as Adams has. Turning an in-your-face pop behemoth into a slow-burning, alt-country reflection must not have been easy, but for Adams, it sounds oh-so natural. “Out Of The Woods” is my favourite, and I think, the best cover on the album.

 

5. Florence and The Machine – Times Like These (Foo Fighters)

Florence is ebullience incarnate and this is Exhibit 23-A of about 1000 examples. Ms. Welch is one of the best and biggest headlining acts in the world for a damn good reason. She’s bigger than life and her energy is contagious.

 

4. Hot Chip – Dancing In The Dark (Bruce Springsteen)

It wasn’t enough for Hot Chip to make a tremendous cover of this Boss milestone, but they went and mixed in (seamlessly I might add) LCD Soundsystem’s indomitable “All My Friends” to make this cover an unholy amalgam of beastly sounds. Brilliant.

 

3. Mark Ronson f. Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow), Kevin Parker (Tame Impala), Kirin J. Callinan – I Sat By The Ocean (Queens of The Stone Age)

I’m in an ongoing state of awe at the quality of this cover. It’s one of my favourite QOTSA songs. What Mark Ronson and Kevin Prker (Tame Impala) and Andrew Wyatt (Miike Snow) and Kirin J. Callinan and others have made here is simply astounding. It’s funk. It’s soul. It’s psychedelic. It’s pop. It’s a fucking blast with treasures obvious and hidden. Typically, covers of songs that aren’t old (2013) don’t posses gravity like songs that’ve simmered in the ether for a while do. This song blasts away that idea with Ultron-level firepower.

 

2. Chromatics – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper)

I can’t put my finger on why I’m so into this cover. It’s magic of the highest wizardly-form, and I get lost in it. It’s one big exhale. It’s one big hook. It’s one hell of a song.

 

1. Jim Adkins – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper)

Strange or coincidental that my two favourite covers of 2015 are of the same song? Not really sure, but I am sure that this is my favourite cover of the year. Jim Adkins, in a way that only he can, shows us a side of this song that’s never been heard before. Every single word hangs on the melody, reaching to climb above the melody to get a glimpse of the world outside itself. That in itself is a wonderful accomplishment.

When we listen to a song, we hear the music and we hear the lyrics. That’s obvious. When something is obvious though, it can hide in plain sight. Jim Adkins has taken a classic that everyone knows, and miraculously, he’s made it into something that can finally be heard. I’d first come to know “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” many years ago. But now, oddly, beautifully, all these years later, I think I’ve finally heard it. That’s magic and that’s why I love music as I do.

 

Top 10 Songs of Summer 2015 That Are Not From 2015

What I wrote last year when I issued the first of this type of list still aptly describes my feelings on the subject:

Part of the joy of summer is listening to music, whether it’s outside on a sunny day, by the water, at the cottage, or out for a jog. And often times, the summer songs that give us pleasure aren’t necessarily new. Listening to old(er/ish) songs during summer has a unique power: it can place us in a memory from the distant past, make time seem to stand still, and fill a moment with pure, unencumbered peace. It has the power to conspire with the elements, warm, sun-filled air, whistling trees, and roving clouds, to make one smile. That’s some kind of experience.

Here’s a list of the “oldies” that helped make the summer of 2015 a special one. My top ten songs of summer 2015 that are not from 2015:

10. Band of Horses – Laredo/Detlef Schrempf

The guitar work in Laredo will never get old. The way Ben Bridwell croons “a kitchen knife up to my face” won’t either.

It’s been almost eight years since Band of Horses released Cease To Begin. It had been a while since the sad beauty of “Detlef Schrempf” fell on my ears. That was too long. It’s still an immaculate song, like a prolonged exhale in the most peaceful of settings.

 

9. Tiga – Hot In Here

The amount of swag in this cover cannot be contained or defined by any year.

 

8. I’m From Barcelona – We’re From Barcelona

This is exhibit #3,207,471 why the Swedes are amazing at music. I hadn’t heard this song in a couple years before I heard it again this summer. It made me smile from ear to ear when I first heard it and its effect has not waned.

 

7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Y Control

So much energy. So much power. It’ll always be Karen O and then everyone else.

 

6. 5ive – If Ya Gettin’ Down

Rick Jordan demanding to hear 5ive on the way back from seeing a movie lead to this rediscovery. It’s hard not to get down, get jiggy, and sing along with this ditty.

 

5. James – Laid

A sing-a-long song to conquer all sing-a-long songs. The melody is an all-time classic. This song has never gotten old and it never will.

 

4. Under The Influence Of Giants – Mama’s Room/In The Clouds

Even before AWOLNATION, Aaron Bruno and his crew had a way with melody. Awolnations’s new album prompted me to get back into UTIOG. These two songs were always my favourites and they’ve held up really well.

 

3. Travis – Selfish Jean/Closer/Writing To Reach You

I’d not forgotten how great of a band Travis is, I just hadn’t been reminded of that fact until this summer. Fran Healy and company were/are such gifted song constructors. Melodies, lyrics, and videos. They did it all. I got back into pretty much every Travis song that I love this summer, but here are three that I particularly enjoyed listening to again. The live version of “Writing To Reach You” shows how phenomenal they are live.

 

2. Oasis – Supersonic

Oasis are one of my all-time favourite bands. They affected me (as they did countless others) in a way that no other band can touch. It’s been more than 20 years since they burst onto the scene, and no one has come close to replicating the rock’n’roll swagger of Liam, Noel, and their Mancunian brethren. I don’t think there’s been a year where I haven’t listened to Oasis a lot, so it wouldn’t be fair to say that I’d forgotten about them or their legendary songs. But something happened with regard to “Supersonic” this summer.

I heard the tune several times in serendipitous circumstances. In pubs, on the radio, in surround sound. And although I’ve always been in awe of its incomparable bravado and machismo, I think the song’s immaculate melody and stonehenge heavy guitars filled a new space in my brain. I was taken aback, and I was in love with the revelation. It’s now right there with “Champagne Supernova” as my favourite Oasis song of all-time. The live version I’ve linked below is from an MTV broadcast in 1994. Liam is hilariously stoic but his voice sounds sensational. But what makes this clip is what makes the record version too. That 10-foot-thick concrete wall of guitars. Combined with a melody that couldn’t be more perfect, and you have, hands down, one of the best rock songs of the last 25 years.

 

1. Jamie T – Alicia Quays

I adored this song several years back. I even got to hear it at Toronto’s V-fest in 2007. But I think I’d forgotten about it because Jamie T either hasn’t done much or he just hasn’t come to my attention since then. “Alicia Quays” is still vicious. The raw, unencumbered, feverish emotion that Jamie T sings/raps/pleads/spits is still as compelling as the day I first heard it. Perhaps even more so because it’s very rare that a song can be this furiously frenetic. The beat is still so fucking sharp. The bass is incredible. The keyboard touches are sublime. This song was one of my favourites in the year that it was released. And now, over eight years later, I can say, with certainty, that “Alicia Quays” is a classic. A classic that perhaps never got the attention it deserved, but a classic nevertheless. Still absolutely vital.