You’ve Got the Music in You

At glamglare, we don’t include covers in our Song Pick of the Day series. We focus on new and original music, and we’ve followed this rule with very few exceptions over the years.

During our beach vacation in Barbados, Elke read “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” a new Beatles biography by Ian Leslie centered on the close relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. She read passages aloud, sparking lively discussions.

Meanwhile, our Instagram feed is filled with artists who are deeply unhappy with how the industry works today – namely, the difficulty of earning a significant income from streaming.

“John & Paul” is a reminder that making it as a musician has never been easy. The Beatles were not geniuses whose songs went viral. They had to hone their craft for years by playing six or seven days a week, for multiple hours, in clubs in Hamburg’s red-light district. Signing with a label was long elusive because they did not fit the mold of a single leader and singer with a backing band.

Also, performing musicians who wrote their own songs were not appreciated in the 60s. On their first record, Please Please Me, six of the 14 tracks were hits written by others. While playing in Hamburg, John Lennon sort of put himself in charge of scouting new songs, many of which were first performed by Motown artists and girl groups in the USA. The Beatles gave those songs their own spin, and in turn were influenced by them in their own songwriting.

Today, most new musicians want to present their own original material, which makes it even harder to find an audience. Not only do they need to tell a compelling story about their artist persona, but they also need to write songs that stick in listeners’ heads, often within seconds, without any reference.

Performing songs that are already widely known can help. Creating a good cover is not easy. You have to come up with a new angle while staying sufficiently true to the original. Also, selecting the material is difficult. It cannot be too much of a deep cut that too few people recognize, but you also don’t want to do the umpteenth version of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.”

It makes no sense to treat covers as second-class songs on glamglare. Starting today, we will feature a cover song of the week. Also, this week we’ll share some of our favorite cover songs in our Five Songs section.

Again, Happy New Year, and let music make this world a better place.

Cover Song of the Week

If you were around in the late 1990s, you know “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals probably more often than you wanted. Listening to the chorus — “You’ve got the music in you, don’t let go” — it sounds like an encouraging message, maybe even one addressed to musicians. But the verses place those words against the backdrop of a society obsessed with celebrity and steadily falling apart. If that struck a chord at the end of the last century, it certainly resonates again in the mid-2020s.

Enter better joy, aka Bria Keely, who has released a fantastic cover of “You Get What You Give.” She leans into an indie-rock sound, replacing the piano-driven ’90s power-pop production with melodic guitars. Her vocals and the anthemic build, however, stay true to the original — keeping the song’s message aimed exactly where it was 26 years ago.

New Radicals frontman Gregg Alexander ultimately embodied the song’s ethos himself. After releasing just one album, he quietly stepped away from the limelight and continued his career behind the scenes in the music industry.

Five Songs

Listen to glamglare five songs on Spotify, Apple Music, or below on YouTube.

If I remember correctly, Brothertiger was the spark that led me to create the Cool Covers playlist in the first place. I love John Jagos aka Brothertiger’s originals, but his covers are just as irresistible — from Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair to his takes on Talk Talk and Talking Heads. And “This Must Be the Place” might very well take the top spot.

Let’s stay synth-driven for a moment and indulge in the sheer beauty of what Poolside did with “Harvest Moon.” There’s a reason this cover has become so iconic.

Of course, one of Oliver’s all-time favorite bands must not be left out here, and what Warpaint did with David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” is pretty spectacular.

Someone who firmly put himself on the map with a phenomenal cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s 1970 classic “If You Could Read My Mind” is singer/songwriter Henry Jamison — whose own originals are just as fab.

I’d like to end this list of five cover songs with another really cool electronic track that boldly reimagines “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — a song that changed alternative music forever — by She’s Excited! — a real-life friend we haven’t seen in way too long.

Song Pick of the Day

Listen to/watch all seven songs on YouTube. Follow our daily updated playlists on YouTube, Apple Music, or Spotify for the 50 latest Song Pick of the Day features, or subscribe here to receive them in your mailbox in real-time. Thank you for following us and sharing the excitement.

• “Finest Work” is a standout track from Bargaining, the new mixtape by Theo Bleak. Direct and emotionally restrained, the song captures a moment of clarity after a relationship has run its course. It’s an understated but powerful entry point into a release that documents a year shaped by loss and reflection.
• Big feelings, bold hooks, and a leap into the unknown — Sametime’s “Is This The End” turns change into a soaring pop moment.
• Letting go is rarely clean or easy. Sydney Quiseng’s new song “When a Good Thing Ends” stays with that dizzy moment when you know there’s no way back. Our Song Pick of the Day.
• Unforced, warm, and gently hypnotic. Large’s “Falling in the Woods” settles into its own groove.
• Pebe Sebert’s self-titled debut album brings together songs recorded originally in the early ’80s with a clarity that still feels current. “Nice Girl” stands out for its quiet confidence.
• Dreamlike clarity and hard-won hope: Melody’s Echo Chamber’s “The House That Doesn’t Exist” feels like faith rediscovered.
• When someone says “Here Comes the Summer” in January, it already feels suspicious. On her new song, Dutch singer-songwriter tjels leans into that feeling, pairing hazy guitars with lyrics about broken promises and uneasy hope.

Nine Photos from a Jet-Set Time Capsule at the TWA Hotel

Preparing for this week’s Nine Photos felt like a little double time-travel moment. In January 2023, Oliver and I flew to Barbados and spent one night at the TWA Hotel — and this time around, we did it all over again. It’s fun — and incredibly practical — when your plane leaves at 8 or even 10 am! I couldn’t quite remember whether we were already publishing a weekly newsletter back then, but I had a strong feeling that if we were, I would have shared photos from that stay. A quick scroll three years back confirmed it: The Nine Photos of the TWA Hotel — a perfect companion piece to this week’s visuals.

This time, I put a bit more thought into what to wear, trying to match the hotel’s unmistakable 1960s jet-set vibe. Quite frankly, my yellow dress back then clashed spectacularly with all the glorious red on display at the TWA. I even had a little silk scarf planned — tied around my neck for that extra air-travel glamour — but, alas, I forgot it and had to do without.

Yes, it’s an airport hotel, and it doesn’t come cheap. But if you book in advance and give yourself a little extra time, the payoff is big: a full-on immersion into a bygone era of travel. We certainly felt it.

Enjoy these nine impressions