To the surprise of the world, alt-country singer/songwriter and North Carolina native Ryan Adams announced Aug. 6 that he would be releasing a cover album of Taylor Swift’s 1989.
My first thought was, “Hey, that’s pretty cool,” despite not being a huge fan of Swift and knowing Adams mostly from his recently-ended marriage to Mandy Moore. What can I say, I am a fan of creativity.
And, unless they’re “released” on ReverbNation by those guys you knew in high school who started a band when they were 15 and now use it as an excuse not to get a job despite their subpar talent level (you know who I’m talking about), I’m also a fan of a good cover album. I’ll give Adams’ 1989 album a listen.
But I know I won’t be the first. My roommate, Katherine, is the queen of covers, not only in her Taurean love for the perfect blanket, but in her quest for the best new version of an old song.
In the few years that we’ve both used Spotify, the app has not proved to be useful in that quest.
“Spotify is shit for covers and it's because I love them so much that they find me,” she told me about her uncanny ability — nay, her gift. “It's like Spotify thinks it's too cool for covers.”
The user-generated playlists available are lacking at best, and, from my brief search, it looks as though Spotify does not have an app-sponsored playlist dedicated to good cover songs. This is an outrage in the eyes of my roommate, myself and, ultimately, the eyes of a nation that celebrates innovation and persistence until perfection (#capitalism).
“I need you to tell the blog how fucking difficult it is finding good covers on Spotify,” she said to me.
To spread the wealth of her knowledge, and to celebrate the joy that only can be felt through a truly kickass cover of an already good/okay song that completely transforms it into something new — a joy that Ryan Adams knows all too well — my roommate has compiled a Spotify playlist comprised of the best of the music app.
The process was not easy.
"First, I had some covers in mind but Spotify had almost none of them, so I then Googled song covers and searched Spotify for those," she said. "After that, I remembered a few more covers I liked then found some other cover playlists. Now I'm listening to all of them and deciding which ones are good enough to keep."
Although the method was madness, the result was anything but. Below is a playlist of 40 songs, hand-compiled by Katherine herself, of excellent cover songs.
With Ryan Adams' new Taylor Swift-inspired album, maybe Spotify will take notice of the obvious and apparent problem they have with this hole in their music programming.
Until then, we've got you covered.
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