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In Music, artists and groups are influenced by earlier ones. As a result, most artists and groups perform and play several covers of their favourite songs. In many cases, said artists and groups record them. Said versions can be more famous then the original recording or even surpass it, in quality. These covers can also be entirely different to the original, whether it be in style, gender or meaning.

A Cover Album is what happens when you compile several of these Cover Versions together and exclusively in one album.

There are basically two kinds of this:

  • The Tribute Album: In this kind of album, some artist(s) or group(s) is/are tributed by many other ones by doing Cover Versions of the original songs the tributed one(s) had composed. Very seldom, some original songs may be introduced, generally by showing what the bands do or a song specially composed for the album. These Tribute Albums may be done in order to celebrate some milestone (X Years of...) or simply for the pleasure of tributing the artist(s) or group(s).
  • The Single-Artist Tribute: This is where just one artist or group does all the covering job. Artists may do this for a variety of reasons. It might be that they want to have a product out there but don't have any new material at the moment, or they could be trying to pump some life into a stalled career by recording a bunch of familiar songs whose popularity has already been established. It can be an honest desire to pay tribute to songs and artists they enjoy, or it could just be for fun.

See also Cover Version, Covered Up, The Cover Changes the Gender, The Cover Changes the Meaning and Suspiciously Similar Song. Compare and contrast with Remix Album.

As a note for the tropers: We're talking about recordings, whether these are live recordings or studio ones, and said recordings should consist only of covers. There may be exceptions with one or two (no more) original songs.


Examples:

See also this list at That Other Wiki.
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    Tribute Albums 
  • The Heavy Metal genre is very fond of this:
    • Iron Maiden has many of these.
    • Helloween has essentially four: The Keepers of Jericho Vol. I & II, The Eastern Tribute to Helloween and HelloRay, shared with Gamma Ray.
    • Judas Priest has also some of these: both volumes of Legends of Metal, Hell Bent for Metal, Hell Bent Forever and The Metal Forge Vol. 1: A Tribute to Judas Priest, which covers British Steel in its entirety.
    • Dream Theater: Voices: A Tribute to Dream Theater, and Sin City: The Dreams Go On.
      • Of note about Voices... is that the album is actually composed of two CDs: one with the aforementioned Dream Theater covers, and the other with original songs by the same bands. We care for the first CD anyway.
    • Metallica has many as well: Metal Militia, Metallic Assault, Kerrang's Tribute to Master of Puppets and so on. 2021's The Metallica Blacklist comprises 53 songs covering the 12 tracks of The Black Album including 12 versions of Nothing Else Matters.
    • And, of course, Black Sabbath's Nativity in Black Vol. 1 & 2 and Evil Lives: A Tribute to Black Sabbath, among others...
    • QueensrĂżche's Warning Minds of Raging Empires.
    • Megadeth's Megaded.
    • Ronnie James Dio had three, two of them after his death.
    • Re-Machined: A Tribute to Deep Purple's Machine Head had many heavy hitters covering the seminal metal band's best known album.
    • Summoning has In Mordor Where the Shadows Are: A Tribute to Summoning.
  • Mojo magazine curates one of these with pretty much every issue it releases, mostly focusing on covers of one artist or one specific album. The theme of the CD always ties in with a story in the issue.
  • Star Power!, 20 Explosive Dynamic Super Smash Hit Explosions!, and 20 More Explosive Fantastic Rockin' Mega Smash Hit Explosions! are a trilogy of albums released by Pravda Records in the '90s, which featured indie and punk artists covering '70s AM radio hits: The verbose and/or excited album titles were coupled with deliberately garish, eye-searing cover art as a parody of K-tel compilations of the time. Many of the artists who contributed are fairly obscure today, but 20 Explosive Dynamic Super Smash Hit Explosions! features the The Smashing Pumpkins covering "Jackie Blue" by southern rock band The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, while 20 More Explosive Fantastic Rockin' Mega Smash Hit Explosions! has King Missile's considerably snarkier version of "Still the One" by Orleans note 
  • Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits from 1995 featured artists covering songs from '60s and '70s children's TV shows, such as Spider-Man (1967) by the Ramones and Underdog by Butthole Surfers.
  • Fearless Records' Punk Goes... tribute series features bands like Pierce the Veil, August Burns Red, and others covering songs in various genres, like Punk Goes Pop, Punk Goes Metal, and hysterically enough, Punk Goes Crunk.
  • The compilation album When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear, featuring artists such as Devo, The Oak Ridge Boys, Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan, Roy Clark, and Herman's Hermits covering popular songs they'd be considered unlikely to cover (such as Herman's Hermits covering Billy Idol's "White Wedding" and the Oak Ridge Boys performing Kansas' "Carry on Wayward Son").
  • This Bird Has Flown: An indie rock tribute to The Beatles' Rubber Soul.
    • Similarly, Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father was a benefit album for a child-abuse charity that had various artists covering all of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The most well-known contributors included WetWetWet (whose version of "With a Little Help from My Friends" went to number one), Sonic Youth and The Fall.
  • Likewise, parody group Big Daddy did a version of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as if it was recorded in the 1950s.
  • A Century of Covers, a tribute to Belle & Sebastian.
  • Rise Above: 24 Black Flag Songs to Benefit the West Memphis Three is in an odd gray area between being a tribute album and a single artist tribute, but for convenience, let's place it here: The album consisted of the current lineup of the Rollins Band collaborating with different vocalists on covers of Black Flag songs.
  • If I Were a Carpenter, a 1994 compilation featuring contemporary alternative artists covering songs written/made famous by the 70s pop duo Carpenters.
  • Kick at the Darkness, a tribute album to the Canadian singer Bruce Cockburn. Yielded a Covered Up version of his song "Lovers in a Dangerous Time", done by the Barenaked Ladies on that album, and now most people don't know about the original.
  • Leonard Cohen has had a few:
  • Urban Renewal, a soul, R&B, and hip hop tribute to Phil Collins featuring Brandy and Ol' Dirty Bastard among others. The album came about because the publishers of Collins' songs noticed a notable amount of artists in those genres asking about covering or sampling his music - As explained in Pop-Culture Isolation, Phil Collins' solo work was popular with a generation of black audiences who heard his eighties hits on "urban" radio stations but didn't know of his roots in Progressive Rock with Genesis. It received negative reviews for being a Phil Collins tribute album released at the time of his hatedom's height.
  • Salvation - Inspired by The Cranberries, featuring covers of The Cranberries by Irish musicians like SinĂ©ad O'Connor.
  • Virus 100, a Dead Kennedys tribute album that gets its name from the fact that it was the 100th release for Jello Biafra's label Alternative Tentacles. It mainly featured artists who were signed to Alternative Tentacles themselves, but notable outside contributors included Sepultura, Faith No More, L7, and Napalm Death. The album had a good deal of arrangements that completely changed the genre of the original song — aside from the metal covers, you have Faith No More playing "Let's Lynch the Landlord" as a lounge song, Mojo Nixon's country version of "Winnebago Warrior", NoMeansNo's a capella version of "Forward to Death", The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's rap version of "California Ăśber Alles" (with updated lyrics focusing on then-current California governor Pete Wilson), and Kramer turning "Insight" into an eerie ballad with synthesized orchestration.
  • For the Masses, a Depeche Mode tribute album released in 1998, mainly featured contemporary Alternative Rock bands (such as Deftones, The Smashing Pumpkins, Veruca Salt), with a few Electronic Music artists (Meat Beat Manifesto, Apollo Four Forty) contributing too. It's also notable for focusing entirely on Depeche Mode songs written by Martin Gore, and for having a cover designed by Martyn Atkins, who frequently worked with Depeche Mode themselves as a graphic designer or video director. Additionally, Marilyn Manson were going to contribute a version of "Personal Jesus" to this album, but couldn't due to scheduling conflicts — they finally covered the song six years later and used it as a new track for their own Greatest Hits Album instead.
  • Stay Awake, which consists entirely of covers of Disney songs by various artists.
  • Stoned Immaculate: A Tribute to the Music of The Doors came out in 2000 and featured a diverse collection of musicians, from Aerosmith and The Cult, to Days Of The New and Stone Temple Pilots, to Creed and Train.
  • Duran Duran merited no fewer than three tribute albums, all within the span of three years (1997 - 2000): The Duran Duran Tribute Album, featuring late '90s alt-rockers such as Deftones and Less Than Jake; UnDone: The Songs of Duran Duran, featuring Australian musical artists such as Ben Lee (with Kylie Minogue) and Something for Kate; and Glue: A Tribute to the Music of Duran Duran, a fan-driven covers album project that benefited RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).
  • Bob Dylan In The 80's: Volume 1, a Bob Dylan tribute album specifically focused on his output from 1980 to 1990 (including songs from the era that weren't officially released and songs that were technically by The Traveling Wilburys).
  • Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles: Eagles songs performed by country artists.
  • Legacy: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, where assorted artists (Jewel, Shawn Colvin, Elton John) cover a song from the Rumours album.
  • There are two major Grateful Dead tribute albums:
    • Deadicated: A Tribute to the Grateful Dead from 1991 had the endorsement of Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, who particularly liked the contributions from Midnight Oil, Jane's Addiction, and long-time Deadhead Elvis Costello.
    • Day of the Dead, from 2015, was a triple-disc set curated by members of The National and featuring contributions from Wilco, The Flaming Lips, Lucinda Williams and more. Dead members Bob Weir and Bruce Hornsby even show up on a few of the tracks.
  • Concert for George, a 2002 tribute to George Harrison, available on CD and DVD.
  • Shaken and Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project was a 1997 album of covers of James Bond theme tunes by contemporary artists. The producer David Arnold went on to compose the music for the Bond films from Tomorrow Never Dies onward.
  • 1991's Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Notable for Kate Bush's cover of "Rocket Man" and The Who's cover of "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)"; Elton John is one of the few recording artists to ever cover The Who, with his version of "Pinball Wizard".
  • Also in 1994 came Kiss My Ass: Classic KISS Regrooved, featuring (among others) Lenny Kravitz, Stevie Wonder, Extreme, Anthrax, Yoshiki (from X Japan), and members of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. Plus Kiss themselves on a straight remake of "Hard Luck Woman"... but this time with Garth Brooks on lead vocals.
  • A Led Zeppelin tribute album called Encomium was released in 1995, and features covers done by various alternative and pop groups from The '90s, including Hootie & the Blowfish, Stone Temple Pilots, Duran Duran, 4 Non Blondes, and the Rollins Band, among others.
  • In 1994, a bunch of Country Music artists got together to record a Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute called Skynyrd Frynds.
  • Ram by Paul and Linda McCartney was the subject of three out of the blue tribute albums in recent years: Ram on L.A. and TOM were released within weeks of each other in 2009, and in 2011 a Portland musician released a re-creation of the album called The RAM Project.
  • The Power & The Passion, where Australian bands cover Midnight Oil.
  • Songs from the Neighborhood is this for the TV series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, with artists like Amy Grant and Donna Summer performing songs that Fred Rogers sung on his series. The album also includes a Rewritten Pop Version of "Thank You For Being You", a song from another PBS Kids show, The Noddy Shop. A sequel album, Thank You, Mister Rogers: Music & Memories, featuring artists like Tom Bergeron and Kellie Pickler, was released in 2019, featuring many of the same songs.
  • Spin magazine put together Nevermind: A Tribute, an album that featured various artists covering the entirety of Nirvana's Nevermind, in honor of that album's tenth anniversary. Possibly most notable for featuring two bands who went from being Covered Up by Nirvana to doing Nirvana cover songs themselves (The Meat Puppets and The Vaselines).
    • In a similar vein, Japanese label Far East Tribe Records pulled together a Nevermind tribute album for the album's twentieth anniversary, simply called Nevermind Tribute. The album is responsible for getting several bands noticed in the west for the first time, such as ONE OK ROCK and Man With a Mission.
  • Sharin' in the Groove, featuring covers of Phish songs. This album is a bit of a twist on a typical tribute album; Instead of featuring artists inspired by Phish, it instead included songs from acts who were contemporaries of the band (Los Lobos, Pavement side-project The Preston School of Industry), artists who were influences on Phish (Son Seals, Little Feat, Tom Tom Club), famous admirers of the band (Jimmy Buffett, Arlo Guthrie) or friends with its members (Boredoms, Dave Matthews, Phish lyricist Tom Marshall's band Amfibian). The album even includes a contribution from Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, who composed an orchestral medley of two Phish songs, performed for the project by the Vermont Youth Orchestra.
  • Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae cover of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.
  • Stereogum Presents... OK X: A Tribute to OK Computer: An indie tribute to Radiohead's OK Computer. Notable for featuring a contribution from the then-virtually unknown Vampire Weekend about six months before the release of their breakthrough debut album.
  • We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to Ramones. There are many, many Ramones tribute albums out there, but this one's notable for featuring lots of well-known artists such as Metallica ("53rd & 3rd"), Rob Zombie ("Blitzkrieg Bop"), Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Havana Affair") and Tom Waits ("Return of Jackie and Judy"). The album was produced by Zombie and Johnny Ramone, who had creative control over the project, right down to personally sequencing the tracklisting himself.
    • Let's just say you may never hear "The KKK Took My Baby Away" the same way again after you hear Marilyn Manson singing it; your ideas about U2 may be upended as well when you hear their version of "Beat on the Brat".
  • The Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show was songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show covered by various Punk Rock bands.
  • Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute which featured artists like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and Van Morrison doing covers of Jimmie Rodgers songs.
  • In The '90s, there was something of an unofficial series of albums where a punk band would cover a Ramones album in full. Screeching Weasel's 1992 cover of Ramones seemed to kick off the trend, and was notable for emulating the original album's production by consistently placing the guitar in the left speaker and bass in the right. Later came The Victims' Leave Home, The Queers' Rocket to Russia, The Mr. T Experience's Road to Ruin, Parasites' It's Alive! note , Boris The Sprinkler's End of the Century note , and Beatnik Termites' Pleasant Dreams.
  • 1996 saw the release of "Schoolhouse Rock Rocks", a tribute album to Schoolhouse Rock!. Highlights include Blind Melon's "Three's a Magic Number" and Better Than Ezra's "Conjunction Junction".
  • Seven Swans Reimagined: Sufjan Stevens' album Seven Swans covered by various indie musicians.
  • Hello Radio, a tribute to They Might Be Giants.
  • Twisted Forever – A Tribute to the Legendary Twisted Sister.
  • The ten-year anniversary rerelease of Sharon Van Etten's album Epic included covers of the songs by other artists: Big Red Machine, IDLES, Lucinda Williams, Shamir, Courtney Barnett, St Panther, and Fiona Apple took one apiece.
  • Tom's Album is unusual in that it's basically a tribute album to one song: It features twelve versions of "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega — the original vocal and instrumental versions that book-ended Suzanne Vega's album Solitude Standing, plus a selection of remixes, covers, parodies, or other songs that just prominently sample it, all curated by Vega herself. The album was primarily inspired by the popularity of DNA's remix of the song, which is included note . Aside from the concept, the album is notable for featuring a bizarre cover of the song by Bingo Hand Job, a one-off collaboration between R.E.M. and Billy Bragg.
  • Whore: Various Artists Play Wire.
  • 1995's A Testimonial Dinner; the Songs of XTC. This one included a contribution from a group calling themselves "Terry & The Lovemen"...who were actually XTC themselves in disguise, and their contribution was a previously unreleased song that had been left off their 1989 album Oranges & Lemons.

    Single Artist Tributes 
  • Aerosmith's Honkin' on Bobo, in which they cover old blues songs.
  • Strange Little Girls by Tori Amos is loosely themed as "covers of songs written by men about women".
  • Anastacia's It's a Man's World, a cover album of songs originally performed by male artists or singers (such as Kings of Leon, Guns N' Roses, Foo Fighters, and Led Zeppelin).
  • Paul Anka's Rock Swings.
  • The Anthems EP by Anthrax focuses entirely on songs from the '70s, which is reasonable for a band with some 20-30 cover songs across their discography. The title comes from "Anthem" by Rush (one of the songs performed).
  • Apoptygma Berzerk's Sonic Diary.
  • Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones' Foreverly is a song for song cover of The Everly Brothers' Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us itself consisted entirely of cover songs and traditional folk songs, which makes Foreverly a cover album of a cover album.
  • Billie Joe Armstrong released a series of covers on Green Day's YouTube channel during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. They were compiled as No Fun Mondays.
  • AWOL Nation's My Echo, My Shadow, My Covers, And Me covers hits from the '70s to the '90s with an ensemble of guest vocalists.
  • The Band's Moondog Matinee.
  • Beach Boys' Party! by The Beach Boys was a quickly-recorded cover album to buy Brian Wilson more time to create Pet Sounds.
    • And on the subject of Brian Wilson, the man himself recorded two cover albums consisting of George Gershwin and Disney tunes, respectively.
  • The Black Crowes' EP 1972: As the title suggests, the album consists entirely of covers of songs that were originally released in 1972 - mainly rock songs, but there's also a nod to soul influences in the form of "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone".
  • Chulahoma by The Black Keys is a tribute to Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough. The final track is an answering machine message left by Kimbrough's widow commending the band.
  • The Blue Aeroplanes' 2007 Harvester album is a single label tribute. The Aeroplanes were signed to Harvest Records (EMI's imprint for Progressive Rock and related genres), and the album consisted of their covering songs by various Harvest bands (most notably Pink Floyd and Deep Purple).
  • Michael Bolton released Timeless: The Classics, which was recorded at least in part to spite critics who went after him for doing so many cover songs (one of which had won him a Grammy).
  • Any album by Pat Boone.
  • David Bowie's Pin Ups revolves around songs from The British Invasion, focusing on artists who influenced Bowie's own material, including The Who, The Yardbirds, The Kinks, and Pink Floyd. Bowie intended to record a follow-up themed around American songs from the same era, but it never materialized; two songs planned for it were eventually recorded for Heathen, though.
  • Anne Brigg's self-titled LP was 8 tracks of English folk songs with two original songs.
  • Garth Brooks' Blame It All on My Roots box set contains four CDs of covers, each with its own title (Blue Eyed Soul, Classic Rock, Country Classics, and Melting Pot).
  • Built to Spill Plays the Songs of Daniel Johnston. After being asked to perform as Daniel Johnston's backup band for a few dates of a tour, Built to Spill decided to record their arrangements of his songs in studio (with Doug Martsch on vocals) without any intention of actually releasing them. After Johnston's death, they decided to put the album out as a tribute.
  • Johnny Cash's American Recordings.
  • Camper Van Beethoven covered the entire Fleetwood Mac album Tusk (under the same album title, of course).
  • Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos is an example of Electronic Music playing work by Johann Sebastian Bach.
  • The Cover Record, Covers and Jukebox by Cat Power. The latter does have two originals, one of which is a rearranged version of "Metal Heart", one of her earlier songs.
  • Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Kicking Against the Pricks, a very varied assortment of folk, blues, country, rock and pop numbers.
  • Clan of Xymox's Kindred Spirits includes covers of David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, The Sisters of Mercy, Radiohead, and Joy Division/New Order.
  • Claw Hammer's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Not Devo is a track for track cover of Devo's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!. It also included covers of Brian Eno's "Blank Frank" and Patti Smith's "Pumping (My Heart)", along with a short jokey Led Zeppelin medley and an introductory skit explaining their reasoning behind covering the album.
  • Metalcore band Coalesce have There Is Nothing New Under the Sun, an EP of Led Zeppelin covers. A later reissue stretched it to album length by including more covers (of The Get Up Kids, Boysetsfire, Black Sabbath and Undertow), one original, and some alternate takes of the Zeppelin songs.
  • Holly Cole did an entire album of Tom Waits covers called "Temptation".
  • Going Back by Phil Collins is an album of his versions of soul and Motown standards from The '60s.
  • Counting Crows' Underwater Sunshine: While there are a few pretty well-known songs on the album (Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", Pure Prairie League's "Amie", and The Faces' "Ooh La La", for instance), the overall focus seemed to be on covering artists that they feel deserved more attention.
  • Cracker's Countrysides consists of seven country covers, one Bruce Springsteen cover performed country style, and one original song.
  • The Crust Brothers' only release, Marquee Mark, is a live set consisting almost entirely of covers (notably the first six songs are all either by Bob Dylan or else are songs by The Band that first appeared on Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes). The rendition of Silkworm's "Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" may or may not qualify as a cover because The Crust Brothers were Silkworm collaborating with Pavement's Stephen Malkmus.
  • Def Leppard had the album Yeah!, which covered songs by some of their main influences.
  • Rise Above by Dirty Projectors is a cover of most of Black Flag's Damaged. It's pretty far afield from the original versions, in part because band leader Dave Longstreth hadn't heard the actual album in 15 years and purposely avoided revisiting the material aside from the lyrics.
  • Dream Theater have a fondness for tributing their influences. They've covered and recorded several classic albums on stage, such as Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, Metallica's Master of Puppets, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and Deep Purple's Made In Japan. Recently, they've launched a special edition of their latest album with a Cover Album featuring six different covers. Not to mention both volumes of the official bootleg Uncovered.
    • Their keyboardist Jordan Rudess has also released at least three albums consisting largely of covers. Perhaps most notable is The Road Home, which, except for one track, consists of covers of classic Progressive Rock material (with Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Tarkus" probably being the most impressive; Keith Emerson himself, who was sparse with his praise for others' performances of his material, loved it). Four of these are full band arrangements and the fifth is a piano-and-voice medley of four songs. ("Piece of the Ď€" is an original instrumental.) He also has two albums that consist largely of covers, but just barely miss the cutoff for this trope due to containing too many original songs.note 
  • Dump's That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice? is an album of lo-fi Prince covers - though technically "A Love Bizarre" was a Sheila E. song with heavy involvement by Prince. By the way, the Intentionally Awkward Title is a Shout-Out to the Prince song "Bob George", which doesn't actually get covered on the album.
  • Thank You by Duran Duran.
  • Bob Dylan's (frequently overlooked) self-titled first album, Bob Dylan (1962) was composed almost entirely renditions of folk standards, with only two (not particularly inspired) original compositions.
  • Easy Star All-Stars, have also done dub reggae cover versions of OK Computer and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band called Radiodread and Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band, respectively.
  • Eighteen Visions' 1996 focuses on the band's influences from the 1990s - the title track is a new original song, while the rest of the album is about evenly split between 90s Hardcore Punk / metalcore and 90s Hard Rock. The cover art is also a Shout-Out to Bleach, using the same font and a similarly posed photo of the band... though Bleach itself was released in the late 1980s, and the Nirvana song they cover on the album is "Scentless Apprentice" from In Utero.
  • Other People's Songs by Erasure.
  • The Director's Cut by FantĂ´mas, which has them covering movie themes in their own avant garde metal style.
  • Songs from the Mirror by Fish.
  • The Flaming Lips' The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Take a wild guess as to what album is being covered.
  • Foo Fighters' limited edition Medium Rare.
  • Four Year Strong Explains It All, a cover album consisting entirely of Four Year Strong doing 90s songs.
  • On the first album by Fozzy (the self-titled one), eight out of ten songs are covers.
  • Marvelous Clouds by Aaron Freeman consists entirely of Rod McKuen covers.
  • Live Frogs Set 2 by Les Claypool's Frog Brigade is an entire-album cover of Animals by Pink Floyd. Live Frogs Set 1 also consists only of covers, but most of them were originally by some of Les Claypool's other projects.
  • Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back.
    • Though it's closer in form to a Tribute Album, And I'll Scratch Yours is a companion piece: The original concept was to have all of the artists who Gabriel covered on Scratch My Back record Peter Gabriel covers themselves. In the end, four of the artists covered on Scratch My Back declined to record anything for And I'll Scratch Yours, and two artists who Peter Gabriel didn't cover at all note  appeared on the album just to make up the difference.
  • Songs We Didn't Write by Ghoti Hook.
  • "The Spaghetti Incident?" by Guns N' Roses.
    • Brazilian band Ratos de PortĂŁo spoofed this with "Feijoada Acidente?", which had two versions, Brasil (local punk bands, including RxDxPx themselves) and International.
  • Petra Haden (who played in alternate band that dog, and did some violin for the Foo Fighters) did an a cappella version of The Who Sell Out by The Who - as in, every single instrument was covered with her voice. Her later album Petra Goes to the Movies mostly takes the same all a capella approach to songs from film scores - this time there were a few covers that included conventional instruments.
  • Hammerfall's Masterpieces.
  • Helloween's Metal Jukebox.
  • Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet (aka "Sid and Susie"), Under the Covers Vol. 1 (favorite songs from The '60s), Vol. 2 (The '70s), and Vol. 3 (The '80s).
  • Peter Hollens: In "The Greatest Showman A Capella", he sings multi-track vocals of the entire songtrack from The Greatest Showman.
  • The Hollies had a few. Hollies Sing Dylan was an album of Bob Dylan covers, and Buddy Holly was an album of Buddy Holly covers. Additionally, the group's first album, Stay with the Hollies, contained 14 tracks, only one of which was an original composition.
  • The Insane Clown Posse's Smothered, Covered, & Chunked is an album that's only found in a certain edition on their The Mighty Death Pop! album. They do have other artists on some of their covers, such as Lil Wyte, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, and the rest of their Psychopathic Records artists, and although they do include some pop songs (such as Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful", Tears for Fears' "Shout", Michael Jackson & Mick Jagger's "State of Shock", and even Yo Gabba Gabba!'s "Hold Still"), it's basically them covering the late '80s/early-to-mid '90s rap artists that ended up influencing them.
  • Information Society's Orders of Magnitude, which even covers "Capital I" from Sesame Street and "Heffalumps and Wooozles" from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
  • Ricardo Iorio:
    • HermĂ©tica's "IntĂ©rpretes".
    • As a solo artist, he has "Ayer Deseo, Hoy Realidad" and "Tangos y Milongas".
  • A Flower Bookmark and A Flower Bookmark 2 by IU are remake albums, a tribute to some classic Korean songs she admires.
  • Under the Influence by Alan Jackson.
  • The Hit List by Joan Jett.
  • Anywhere I Lay My Head by Scarlett Johansson is a tribute to Tom Waits.
  • Grace Jones' first five albums were predominantly cover albums, with the latter two gradually incorporating original material as well (while still mostly consisting of song covers); Jones would shift to recording albums of predominantly original material from her sixth album, Living My Life, onwards.
  • "Reload" by Tom Jones is, with the exception of newly-written "Sex Bomb", entirely cover versions of other artist's songs recorded as duets with a third artist/band e.g. a cover of "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads as a collaboration between Jones and The Cardigans.
  • Joy Electric's Favorites at Play. Ronnie Martin of JE initially wanted to record an album covering the songs and artists that had influenced him. Then he realized that it would have been a bunch of 80s songs, and the last thing the world needed was yet another piece of 80s nostalgia. So he swung in the opposite direction and covered a bunch of songs that had just been released in the prior five years (2004-2009).
  • Laibach covered almost all of Let It Be in pseudo-fascist industrial style, minus the title track, and with "Maggie Mae" replaced by a German folk song.
  • Mujer Divina – Homenaje a AgustĂ­n Lara is a tribute album by Natalia Lafourcade made of songs by Mexican singer AgustĂ­n Lara.
  • Hymns of the 49th Parallel by k.d. lang.
  • Covers, an EP by Greg Laswell.
  • Leaether Strip's album of Depeche Mode covers.
  • Leeni's Lovefool EP covers songs from Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, including The Cardigans' "Lovefool".
  • John Legend & The Roots' Wake Up! is based around covers of Soul songs from the '60s and '70s - more specifically ones that were lesser-known and had lyrics dealing with social and political themes. Though several of the interpretations include new A Wild Rapper Appears! verses, the only fully original song is closing track "Shine".
  • Happy Together by the Leningrad Cowboys with the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble.
  • Rock 'n' Roll by John Lennon.
  • Greased by Less Than Jake is the songs from Grease in their Ska Punk style. TV/EP does the same with TV Theme Tunes and commercial jingles - though it's an EP with an under 20 minute runtime, they manage to fit sixteen songs in.
  • Leona Lewis' Hurt: The EP consists of three cover songs, all originally sung by men: "Hurt" (Nine Inch Nails), "Iris" (The Goo Goo Dolls), and "Colorblind" (Counting Crows). The US edition added a fourth cover, "Run" by Snow Patrol, which had been previously released and happened to still fit the theme. Another thing all four songs had in common was that the lyrics only use first or second person pronouns, so The Cover Changes the Gender wouldn't have to apply to Leona's versions.
  • Local H's Awesome Mix Tape Vol. 1, as well as its sequel.
  • Mutt by Lost Dogs is an odd one. Lost Dogs is a supergroup, consisting (at the time of Mutt) of the frontmen of Daniel Amos, The 77s, and The Choir. For that album, they covered songs by all three of those bands—with each member only singing on the songs they didn't originally write.
  • Timeless by Martina McBride.
  • Starting Over by Reba McEntire.
  • The Russian Album by Paul McCartney (originally a USSR-exclusive release, but went international in 1991)
    • Run Devil Run is an accidental subversion; it was intended to be a Cover Album and is mostly covers, but two of the three original songs on it are perhaps the best-known on the album. (This is what you get when you allow someone else to pick which songs make the album.)
    • Kisses on the Bottom is another album of mostly covers, this time formative pop standards Paul listened to as a youngster and two originals.
  • K. McCarty's Dead Dog's Eyeball: Songs of Daniel Johnston. Another case of a one album band whose only release is a cover album - though she previously sang original material as a member of the band Glass Eye, she only did a solo album in the hopes of helping Daniel Johnston get some more recognition, and hasn't released anything else since.
  • Michael McDonald recorded two albums of Motown covers.
  • Peripheral by Matt Mancid & Color Theory covers a variety of now-obscure '80s gems, including Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street", New Order's "Ceremony", The Blue Nile's "Tinseltown in the Rain", Depeche Mode's "The Sun and the Rainfall", The Cure's "Kyoto Song", the Pet Shop Boys' "Rent", The Psychedelic Furs' "The Ghost In You", Erasure's "Piano Song", Prefab Sprout's "The Ice Maiden", and Soft Cell's "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye".
  • Marsheaux's A Broken Frame is a full-length cover of the Depeche Mode album of the same name.
  • Melvins' Everybody Loves Sausages is a fairly eclectic one, with material ranging from obscure Hardcore Punk songs to Venom, Queen, Throbbing Gristle, and the title theme to early John Waters film Female Trouble.
  • Garage Inc. by Metallica.
  • George Michael's Songs from the Last Century, an album of covers mostly from the 20s to the 50s.
  • Ministry's The Cover Up, which combines three previously released cover songs with covers recorded specifically for the album.
  • Mandy Moore recorded "Coverage" in 2003, a collection of covers of '70s and '80s songs. It was one of her first albums that allowed her to break out of the Pop Princess stereotype.
  • Mockingbird by Allison Moorer.
  • NateWantsToBattle:
  • New Found Glory have From the Screen to Your Stereo and From the Screen to Your Stereo Part II, which are the Signature Songs from well known movies like Titanic and Napoleon Dynamite, and the Mania EP, which consists of Ramones songs.
  • Under the Covers by Ninja Sex Party in collaboration with Tupperware Remix Party. Covers a selection of late '70s and '80s songs, including "Rock with You" by Michael Jackson, "Take on Me" by a-ha, and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears. The album's follow-up, appropriately titled Under the Covers Vol. 2, features solely '80s songs.
  • Noah's 2016 album Sings Legends is entirely consisted of their cover of Indonesian songs that were famous in the 80s and 90s.
  • Ozzy Osbourne's Under Cover.
  • Osso's Run Rabbit Run is an odd borderline case. They covered the entirety of Sufjan Stevens' album Enjoy Your Rabbit, but Osso themselves had gotten their start backing Sufjan on two of his prior releases (Illinois! and Song For Christmas, Vol. V).
  • Coverkill by Overkill.
  • A Singer Must Die by Steven Page and the Art of Time Ensemble.
  • Pato Fu had MĂşsica de Brinquedo and its sequel, which as the title "Toy Music" makes clear, has all the songs (which include old Pato Fu tracks) performed with toy instruments.
  • A Perfect Circle's Emotive, an album of politically-themed covers with a pair of original songs. Interestingly, those two originals are really only kind of original - "Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums" is a drastic re-arrangement of their earlier song "Pet", while "Passive" was originally co-written by members of the band and Trent Reznor for the defunct Super Group Tapeworm.
  • Axel Rudi Pell's Diamonds Unlocked.
  • Nineteeneighties by Grant-Lee Phillips covers songs from The '80s.
  • A Pilot Project, a 2014 release by the Scottish band Pilot, consists entirely of Alan Parsons Project covers. The album (whose complete title includes the phrase "A Return to The Alan Parsons Project") marked the 40th anniversary of Pilot's first album, which Parsons had produced. Three of the Pilot members who worked on their debut album went on to work with the APP, and the album is explicitly a tribute to the APP in general and that group's by-then-deceased Eric Woolfson in particular.
  • Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Raising Sand, which had the duo working with a backing band and covering songs chosen by Record Producer T-Bone Burnett. There is one song that could sort of be termed an original: "Please Read the Letter" was co-written by Plant, but it's a new recording of a song that first appeared ten years earlier on the Jimmy Page And Robert Plant album Walking Into Clarksdale.
  • Powerman 5000's Copies Clones & Replicants.
  • Primus' Rhinoplasty has two live recordings of Primus' original songs as "bonus tracks", but since this trope allows at least one or two original songs, it counts.
  • QueensrĂżche's Take Cover.
  • Ramones have Acid Eaters, which much like Rush's Feedback, is mainly a collection of 60s songs that influenced them.
  • Renegades by Rage Against the Machine is all about covers.
  • Real Life's Send Me an Angel - 80s Synth Essentials includes a 2009 remake of their own "Send Me an Angel" and 12 other covers of 80s synthpop hits such as "Sweet Dreams", "Fade to Grey", "Cars", "Everything Counts", "Blue Monday", "Primary", "Shout", "Tainted Love", and "The Model".
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers' digital-only Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Covers EP: To celebrate being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame themselves, the band released an EP of covers of past inductees. All six covers were previously released (the already-mentioned cover of Ramones' "Havana Affair" also appears here, for instance), but four of them were previously unavailable digitally.
  • Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon has an AC/DC cover album titled What's Next to the Moon? as well as Sun Kil Moon's Modest Mouse cover album Tiny Cities.
  • Duet All Night Long by Reel Big Fish and Zolof The Rock And Roll Destroyer: Every other track is one of the aforementioned bands or the other performing a cover. The other gimmick is that every song is performed as a duet - Zolof's Rachel Minton appears on every Reel Big Fish track, and Reel Big Fish's Aaron Bartlett appears on almost every Zolof track (On Zolof's version of "Say Say Say", Reel Big Fish's Scott Klopfenstein gets to Step Up to the Microphone instead)
  • The Residents, being big fans of The Cover Changes the Meaning and the Concept Album, have quite a few: The Third Reich 'n Roll is two sidelong medleys of deranged '60s and '70s pop covers, The King and Eye consists of Elvis covers with some between-song narration about the rise and fall of Elvis himself, George And James covers George Gershwin and James Brown, and Stars And Hank Forever covers John Phillip Sousa and Hank Williams. The latter two were originally going to be part of a lengthy series of two-artist cover albums that eventually got scrapped.
    • I Am A Resident! is an odd deconstruction of a "tribute album": First the band asked fans to submit their own cover versions of Residents songs, then they created "mash ups" by combining elements of different covers of the same song with each other.
  • Another unusual case is Lionel Richie's 2012 album Tuskegee, made up entirely of reinterpretations of songs he wrote in full or part. Most are from Richie's solo career, though a couple were first recorded by his former band Commodores and one by Kenny Rogers. As for the reinterpretations, all but one are collaborations with then-current country acts; the exception is one with Jimmy Buffett.
  • LeAnn Rimes' Self-Titled Album.
  • Linda Ronstadt recorded a trio of albums of jazz standards in the 1980s (What's New, Lush Life and For Sentimental Reasons) with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, followed in 2004 with another album of jazz standards (Hummin' to Myself) with a jazz combo.
    • Ronstadt's 1987 album Canciones de Mi Padre was a collection of traditional Mexican folk songs.
  • Songs by psychedelic Soul band Rotary Connection is a collection of radically-altered cover versions of artists ranging from Otis Redding to The Rolling Stones, and no less than three Cream songs! With Minnie Riperton (yes, the one who became famous for "Loving You" years later) on lead vocals on most when she isn't doing who trademark high-pitched backing vocals.
  • Side 1 of Todd Rundgren's Faithful features his near-perfect reproductions of '60s songs from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Yardbirds, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix.
  • Feedback by Rush (Band). Released in honor of the group's 30th anniversary is a collection of favorite 1960s songs.
  • A fusion of both types with Santana's Guitar Heaven: Carlos playing classic rock under the voices of a who's who of 90s/early 00s vocalists, including "Whole Lotta Love" with Chris Cornell,"Smoke on the Water" with Jacobby Shaddix, and "Riders on the Storm" with Chester Bennington (and Ray Manzerek!).
  • Bob Seger's Smokin' O.P.'s.
  • Sepultura's Revolusongs EP.
  • From Sepultura's native Brazil, there are a few cases, but to highlight ones in English (which are also single artist tributes), Matanza's To Hell with Johnny Cash, and ZĂ© Ramalho Canta Beatles (Ramalho also had one with Bob Dylan, though there he made Portuguese versions of the songs).
  • Simple Minds "Neon Lights" album, and the bonus disc of "Graffiti Soul", "Searching for the Lost Boys".
  • Siouxsie and the Banshees' Through the Looking Glass was inspired by David Bowie's Pin Ups and as such focuses on artists who influenced the band, including Sparks, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Billie Holiday, and even Disney.
  • Undisputed Attitude, by Slayer (but while the band is Thrash Metal, the songs are Hardcore Punk covers, and a few original songs in Hardcore Punk style.)note .
  • Patti Smith's album Twelve is a collection of famous rock songs such as "White Rabbit" and "Gimme Shelter".
  • Sonique's Don't Give a Damn consists of James Bond theme tune covers.
  • We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions by Bruce Springsteen, a collection of folk songs, most of which were recorded by folksinger Pete Seeger.
  • Rod Stewart's Great American Songbook series of Tin Pan Alley standards, and all the similar albums by other artists (including Cyndi Lauper, Bette Midler and Art Garfunkel).
  • Stryper's The Covering.
  • Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey of Supergrass formed a cover band side project called The Hotrats - their lone album Turn Ons consisted of 12 cover songs.
  • Sacred Cows by The Swirling Eddies was an album of parodic cover versions (often employing Stylistic Suck) of the most popular Christian rock songs of the moment. Thus, DeGarmo and Key's "God Good Devil Bad" was performed as if Terry Scott Taylor was recovering from a blow to the head; Amy Grant's "Baby Baby" was performed like a hotel lobby karaoke performance; dc Talk's "I Luv Rap Music" was performed in lounge lizard style.
  • Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music, which goes in chronological order from "Sumer Is Icumen In" to "Oops I Did It Again". Supposedly, this was inspired when Playboy magazine asked him for his list of "greatest songs ever", and accused him of trolling when it included songs over fifty years old.
  • Toto released Through the Looking Glass, all covers of songs which inspired the band.
  • UB40 released four different cover albums, each titled Labour of Love.
  • Ulver's Childhood's End is made up entirely of covers of mostly very obscure songs from the late-sixties psychedelic era. By far the best known song covered is Jefferson Airplane's "Today".
  • Zonkey by Umphree's McGee is a mash-up cover album - based on a feature of their live Halloween sets, they combine elements of two or more cover songs into one track, sometimes adding pieces of their own original songs too. For instance "National Loser Anthem" starts out as the lyrics of Beck's "Loser" set to the music of Radiohead's "National Anthem", and eventually adds "In The Air Tonight" into the mix.
  • Vanilla Fudge's 1967 self-titled debut consists of covers of hit songs from the previous three years, including one of the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On", all of them with slower tempos, thundering rhythms and dramatic vocals.
  • Pabllo Vittar's debut EP, Open Bar, consists entirely of Portuguese versions of pop songs.
  • Famous Blue Raincoat by Jennifer Warnes.
  • The self-explanatory A Compilation of Scott Weiland Cover Songs mixes previously released cover versions (such as a Stone Temple Pilots version of "Revolution" that had been previously issued as a standalone charity single) with newly recorded ones done specifically for the release. The album was originally conceived to be packaged with Weiland's memoir Not Dead and Not For Sale, but was instead released digitally on its own.
  • Weezer (The Teal Album) by Weezer
  • Westlife's Allow Us to Be Frank is entirely composed of Frank Sinatra covers. Yes, the title is a pun.
  • Whitesnake has an unusual case in The Purple Album, where all of the songs are Deep Purple ones... back when Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale was in said band.
  • Robbie Williams recorded Swing When You're Winning, its title a pun on his previous album Sing When You're Winning, following the success of a song for the Bridget Jones' Diary soundtrack. It featured one original song which fit in with the theme and which Robbie had waiting for a suitable album to release it on, and several duets including ones with Nicole Kidman and the late Frank Sinatra.
  • Ann Wilson's 2018 album Immortal, meant to pay tribute to rock or pop musicians who passed away in the 2010s - the significance of the title being that their music would always be remembered. Most of the original artists were primarily solo performers, but sometimes she covers songs by groups in honor of one particular member: For instance, Chris Cornell is represented by "I Am The Highway" (originally by Audioslave) rather than a song from any of his solo albums.
  • Five Live Yardbirds by The Yardbirds is comprised of nothing but blues and R&B covers, all played live.
  • Francesco Zappa (1984) by Frank Zappa is an unusual example as Zappa used plays music by 18th century classical composer Francesco Zappa on his Synclavier computer. In other words, he doesn't actually cover him as he just lets his computer play the scores.
  • Stabbing Westward have Hallowed Hymns, released the day before Halloween 2020, and consisting of three cover versions of songs with vaguely seasonally appropriate themes (plus a remix of one of them): The Cure's "Burn", Ministry's "Everyday Is Halloween", and Echo & the Bunnymen's "Killing Moon".

    Holiday Themed Albums 
  • Bad Religion's Christmas Songs - there's one original, and it's The Not-Remix of one of their old singles, "American Jesus".
  • Winter Carols by Blackmore's Night mostly comprises covers of Christmas songs, performed in the style of Renaissance folk music by former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore.
  • Merry Christmas by Bing Crosby, the best-selling Christmas album of all time, all covers.
  • Christmas in the Heart by Bob Dylan, an album full with covers of Christmas carols.
  • Erasure's Snow Globe features covers of both well-known and obscure Christmas tunes, in addition to the five original songs.
  • Weezer's Christmas With Weezer EP, also consisting entirely of Christmas carols. The band originally recorded the songs for a Tap Tap mobile Rhythm Game of the same name, then released the songs on their own with alternate mixes and added backing vocals.
  • The Most Wonderful Time of the Year by Scott Weiland consists entirely of renditions of Christmas standards.

    Cover albums by artists who are predominantly cover artists 
  • A lot of folk, country and traditional music performers will bring out albums where they play traditionals and standards, rather than their own material.
    • In fact, during the 1950s and 1960s, it was common for many country artists to record albums of songs entirely by one particular songwriter; one notable example is Buck Owens' 1961 album Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard. Frequently, several of the songs on such albums had been (or would later be) big hits for other artists. One example on Owens' Buck Sings Harlan album is "Heartaches by the Number", which had been a top 5 country hit for Ray Price two years earlier.
  • The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings by Louis Armstrong is a collection of mostly traditionals and jazz originals that were circulating around the time Armstrong and his band recorded them. Some of them are own compositions, but most of them were already covers back then.
  • With a Little Help from My Friends and Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Joe Cocker; the latter is also a Live Album.
  • The Four Freshmen mostly did covers of jazz and pop standards, although they sometimes included an original or two in their albums.
  • Billie Holiday covered other people's songs, but she managed to make the material personal by her delivery and the listener's knowledge of her tragic life. A good example is her album Lady in Satin, which was recorded one year before her death.
  • The Complete Recordings by Robert Johnson is an album with all his recordings, yet most of them were traditionals and blues songs that other artists were already singing at the time. Johnson covered them, added his own lyrics here and there and used different melodies sometimes too.
  • The Kidz Bop series, currently on album 40, tries to cover songs only using children's voices. They have attracted some attention from Moral Guardians because of the fact that some of their songs have explicit lyrics.
    • For the EVEN younger set there's the Rockabye Baby series, featuring lullaby renditions of songs by almost everyone (The Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, you name it!)
  • Leo Moracchioli, a multi-instrumentalist known for making metal covers of non-metal songs on Youtube, has released the better part of three dozen of these.
  • The Muppets have brought out two cover albums, Muppet Beach Party and Kermit Unpigged.
  • Post Modern Jukebox's Retro stock and trade.
  • Elvis Presley's Elvis Presley, Elvis (NBC TV Special) and From Elvis in Memphis are all cover albums, since Elvis never wrote his own material.
  • The self-titled (and only) album by Replicants was entirely covers of songs by artists active in the seventies, mostly split between New Wave Music (The Cars, Gary Numan, Missing Persons) and album rock (Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, John Lennon). Their name, aside from being a Shout-Out to Blade Runner, was also a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that they were just replicating songs already written and performed by other artists. The group featured ex-members of tool and Failure, and the album was perhaps best known for the fact that they got Tool's Maynard James Keenan to sing Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs".
  • Frank Sinatra mostly covered material by songwriters, as was common for crooners in his day. Examples are the albums Songs for Young Lovers and Songs for Swingin' Lovers!. Even My Way is a complete cover album.
  • Jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughan's entire career is made of cover albums, including Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown (1957) and Live in Japan (1973).
  • Sid Vicious solo album Sid Sings (1979) has nothing but covers, except for one solo rendition of one Sex Pistols song.

Alternative Title(s): Tribute Album

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