How Listeners Like Covers, Why Radio Should Like Them More

The songs in WXPN Philadelphia’s 2025 year-end Top 885 countdown event all qualify as covers, but they didn’t get there the same way. In a typical hour or so earlier this week, the songs covered included:

• A hit original that became a hit remake for another generation — Los Lobos’ “La Bamba” (No. 264)
• A hit original that was remade almost immediately in another genre and became a pop hit of some magnitude as well — Otis Redding’s version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (No. 280)
• The song that was floating around for a while until a sharply different arrangement finally made it a hit — Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes” (No. 267). (Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” was a similar transformation. So was Toni Basil’s “Mickey.”)
• The song that never really belonged to anybody else, even if there were earlier recordings. It is almost irrelevant that writer Mark James recorded “Suspicious Minds” (No. 257) before Elvis Presley. 
• The radical reimagining — Rage Against the Machine’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (No. 259). (Luther Vandross’s medley “Superstar/Until You Come Back to Me” was in an earlier stretch I listened to.)
• The acoustic version — Jonatha Brooke’s chilled out “Eye in the Sky” (No. 261) 
• The deserving song brought to a more mainstream audience — “Oye Como Va” by Santana (No. 275), “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” by George Thorogood (No. 265)
• The song transported from one end of the fringe to another — Gillian Welch doing Radiohead’s “Black Star,” although that was No. 285 for an audience that likely considers neither version fringe.

That a major-market radio station is willing to spend a week on cover songs at various levels of familiarity is, once again, what makes WXPN what it is. But it also speaks to how covers became, if not a genre, a successful organizing concept over the last 25 years. You will find them anywhere you find playlists of songs, although, ironically, there have been fewer actual covers on mainstream radio formats lately.

Covers have become part of the audience’s musical frame of reference because of American Idol and The Voice. Because of SiriusXM’s Coffee House channel and its ongoing stash of acoustic reworkings. Because of movie trailers and music supervisors. Because of TikTok and other streaming randomness. Her version of “Misty” is not how I would have introduced my daughter to either Lesley Gore or the song itself, but I can’t begrudge its brief resurgence.

At mainstream radio, on the other hand, remakes have become almost as endangered a species as instrumentals – often talked about by chart fans in the same way. Interpolations or “flips” were different. After David Guetta’s “I’m Good (Blue),” there were so enough of them stacked up as summer 2023 began to effectively cancel each other out.

Did artists think that flips were somehow more elevated than straight covers? Were acts more motivated to rework songs than remake them because they could perhaps share the royalties? Often those new lyrics didn’t bring much new to a song that didn’t need their help. And yet, just when you think the practice is oversaturated and can produce nothing worthwhile, we have a year with “APT” (itself a “Mickey” reworking), “Luther,” “Anxiety,” and “Mystical Magical” all among the best available CHR hits.

When they do hear one, listeners connect with the right remake almost immediately, not insignificant in a time when few songs get fast traction. Weezer’s “Africa” helped both covers and “yacht rock” become more of a factor with listeners. Luke Combs’ “Fast Car” was the sort of cover that was meant to be phenomenal only online, and yet became the same instantly successful combination of well-liked artist/slightly underplayed song that “Give a Little Bit” by the Goo Goo Dolls had been years earlier.

The David Guetta/Alphaville/Ava Max interpolation of “Forever Young” was so minimally changed that it might as well have been a straight cover. On Coleman Research’s Integr8USA national callout research — a ranking often dominated by year-old songs — it entered at No. 1. It doesn’t matter what listeners thought they were voting for; they would have likely listened to either version had they encountered it on the radio.

Covers, especially when organized in the WXPN way or on a playlist, seem to bring a level of buy-in that entirely unfamiliar songs would not have. There are usually a few remakes or interpolations every week on “Big Hits Energy,” the playlist I share with Ross on Radio readers and friends outside contemporary radio who are trying to keep up with new music. I regard them as my potential secret weapons. 

The reintroduction of left-field older songs into the ecosystem has its opportunities, too. Classic Hits radio hasn’t considered testing “California Dreaming” in years. Because of its Stranger Things exposure, the Beach Boys version could allow the format to play a song that listeners never stopped liking.

There are exceptions to the industry’s resistance to straight covers. At Christmas, they often comprise most of the new songs on the AC chart. LeAnn Rimes doing (the other) “All I Want for Christmas is You” was a great choice. The Vince Vance & the Valiants original had faded, but not entirely, over the years; it still had some currency, but not too much to remake. In Active Rock, artists gave up their hesitance about being associated with covers for a while after Disturbed’s version of “The Sounds of Silence.”

Some of the covers from the WXPN countdown speak to a time when an artist like Linda Ronstadt could flourish primarily as an interpreter of other people’s songs, or when Aretha Franklin could chart with “Bridge Over Troubled Water” shortly after the original and listeners would still be curious what she did with it. Sometimes, two artists would co-write a song and both release it. Technically, WXPN shows Carly Simon’s “You Belong To Me” as a Doobies cover, but her version came out as a single first.

It used to be that every A&R person had a stash of songs like “Torn” that were waiting to be reshaped into hits. There seems to be no impetus toward that now. It has often occurred to me that there should be a modern-day Three Dog Night, an act that could take quality songs by Triple-A artists and make them sound more like pop hits. That undoubtedly sounds like the oldest-of-old-timer ideas, and yet those same A&R people haven’t had any compunction about posting covers online.

Here’s a stretch of WXPN’s 885 Greatest Cover Songs on Dec. 7:

• Johnny Cash & Joe Strummer, “Redemption Song” (Bob Marley) (550)
• Luther Vandross, “Superstar/Until You Come Back to Me” (Carpenters/Aretha Franklin) (549)
• Kim Carnes, “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” (John Prine) (548) — host Eric Schuman noted that there was an extra level of depth when the artist being covered is also a guest
• Lucy Dacus, “In the Air Tonight” (Phil Collins) (547)
• Orgy, “Blue Monday” (New Order) (546)
• Lyle Lovett, “Friend of the Devil” (Grateful Dead) (545)
• Built to Spill, “Cortez the Killer” (Neil Young) (544)
• U2, “Dancing Barefoot” (Patti Smith) (543)
• Chris Isaak, “Solitary Man” (Neil Diamond) (542)
• Bonnie Raitt, “Dimming of the Day” (Richard & Linda Thompson) (541)
• Mavis Staples, “Beautiful Strangers” (Kevin Morby) (540) — a recent cover of a 2020 song that still somehow made it to mid-countdown, again indicative of the trust that both WXPN and the covers concept carry
• J. Geils Band, “Ain’t Nothin’ but a House Party” (Show Stoppers) (539)
• Duran Duran, “Perfect Day” (Lou Reed) (538). 

As promised, here’s the top 10 as counted down Dec. 18:

• Mark Ronson f/Amy Winehouse, “Valerie” (Zutons) (10)–in the UK, a hit twice in relatively short order; here, it’s a supermarket staple, but also a song that people seem to know anyway
• Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You” (Dolly Parton) (9)–Parton herself remade it twice; love that the suggestion for this version came from Kevin Costner, and not the A&R world
• Talking Heads, “Take Me to the River” (Al Green) (8)–Green is almost as well known for his songs that never became singles (e.g., “Love & Happiness”) as his hits; he gave this one to another R&B legend, Syl Johnson, to release as a single
• Joe Cocker, “With a Little Help From My Friends” (Beatles) (7)
• Aretha Franklin, “Respect” (Otis Redding) (6)
• Bonnie Raitt, “Angel From Montgomery” (John Prine) (5)
• Sinead O’Connor, “Nothing Compares 2 U” (The Family) (4) — Prince isn’t even among the top 25 most-covered artists on XPN’s countdown but in the ’80s, his catalog–ample and mostly unheard by pop audiences–was a great place for everybody from Cyndi Lauper to Chaka Khan to find songs
• Jeff Buckley, “Hallelujah” (Leonard Cohen) (3) — While outside the debate rages about whether the Pentatonix version is a legitimate Christmas song
• Johnny Cash, “Hurt” (Nine Inch Nails) (2)
• Jimi Hendrix, “All Along the Watchtower” (Bob Dylan) (1)