Podcast Summary: Cannonball with Wesley Morris – “Where Have All the Covers Gone?”

Host: Wesley Morris (The New York Times)
Guest: Cecile McLorin Salvant (Grammy-winning jazz vocalist)
Date: November 13, 2025
Episode Theme:
A vibrant, nuanced exploration of the role and meanings of cover songs (aka "covers") in popular music and why they seem to have faded from mainstream culture, featuring a deep-dive conversation between Wesley Morris and Cecile McLorin Salvant.

Overview

Wesley Morris frames the episode around the rise and recent scarcity of “cover songs” on popular music charts, springboarding from WXPN’s year-end list of the greatest covers. The episode both celebrates the transformative power of covers and interrogates the complex politics, creative choices, cultural histories, and personal feelings that swirl around the act of reinterpreting another artist’s work. With Cecile McLorin Salvant—a vocalist known for breathing radical new life into classic material—Morris digs into the difference between standards and covers, the role of race in American cover culture, and what draws artists to (or repels them from) the act of covering a song.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Host’s Cover Song List & What Makes a Great Cover (00:41–05:47)

• Wesley’s Picks: He shares his personal top 10 greatest covers, emphasizing the pain and joy of narrowing it down, and notes his own exclusions—no reggae, Tori Amos, or Mary J. Blige.

  • #10 Pet Shop Boys' "Always On My Mind" (Willie Nelson)
  • #9 The Bangles' "Hazy Shade of Winter" (Simon & Garfunkel)
  • #8 Whitney Houston's "I'm Every Woman" (Chaka Khan)
  • #7 Cecile McLorin Salvant's "Wuthering Heights" (Kate Bush)
  • #6 Jodeci's "Lately" (Stevie Wonder)
  • #5 Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You" (Prince)
  • #4 Ike & Tina Turner's "Come Together" (The Beatles)
  • #3 Stevie Wonder's "We Can Work It Out" (The Beatles)
  • #2 Patti Smith's "Gloria" (Them/Van Morrison)
  • #1 Aretha Franklin's "Respect" (Otis Redding)

• What makes a cover great?
  “Their songs become hers, and to a listener, they mean something deeper than the original and often sound completely new. Her interpretation doubles as a kind of music criticism.” – Wesley Morris, on Cecile’s art (04:16)

2. Defining a “Cover” vs. a Standard (06:19–09:37)

• Cecile’s View: She doesn’t use the word “cover,” associating it instead with contemporary pop/youtube parlance and less so the jazz tradition.

  • “If you go around jazz musicians and ask them, oh, what song is that? Is that a cover? They’ll most likely say, no, that's a standard.” – Cecile McLorin Salvant (07:58)

• Standards vs. Covers:
  Standards are communal repertoire—any jazz musician might interpret “Summertime” but it’s not seen as a “cover” because no single artist owns it. The genre and tradition shape the definition.

• The challenge of classical and folk music:
  Calling an aria or folk song a cover feels alien due to the tradition of reinterpretation as the norm.

3. Interpolations & Beyoncé as a Case Study (09:37–15:20)

• Interpolation:
  Not just imitation—a song may borrow elements (melody, hooks) but transform or rewrite core parts (e.g., lyrics). Beyoncé’s "Jolene" (from Cowboy Carter) serves as a focal point:

  • “She rewrites the song…the melody and the changes are the same…the bones of the song, it’s like a mutation. Her song is in conversation with Dolly Parton’s song.” – Wesley Morris (10:45–10:56)
  • The political reading: Beyoncé’s version addresses both the original song and cultural expectations about her place in country music.

• Beyoncé’s “Blackbird”

  • A highly faithful cover (unlike “Jolene”), significant for its all-Black-women vocals; discussed as an act of “honoring the spirit” and the politics of who sings what and why.
    • “She understands…there’s two covers on this album…But the other explicit cover…is Blackbird by The Beatles. And it’s beautiful. It’s her and four other Black women singing this song together. It’s very faithful…and the politics of Beyoncé doing a cover is like—she’s like, I want in.” – Wesley Morris (13:39–14:39)

4. The Alchemy of Great Covers: Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” (15:28–19:13)

• Track Dissection: Aretha’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand / You’ve Got a Friend”

  • Cecile marvels at how Aretha blends gospel roots back into a pop song originally inspired by gospel — a creative “reclaiming” and “desecularizing” of material via interpretation.
  • “We’re explicitly desecularizing this song. This song that was a secularization of our own song.” – Wesley Morris/Cecile (18:01–18:10)

• Aretha as the Greatest Cover Artist:
  Her ability to transform even familiar songs into transcendent, deeply personal statements is repeatedly lauded.

  • “Aretha was out here lifting her leg on some fire hydrants all over town. And she loved it. She loved dropping houses on people.” – Wesley Morris (19:56–20:02)

5. Covers and the Marketplace: Race, Recognition, & “Fast Car” (20:01–26:48)

• Luke Combs’ “Fast Car”:
  The rare recent cover to become a chart hit; discussed for both its fidelity to Tracy Chapman’s arrangement and the controversy of a white man charting with a Black woman’s signature song.

  • “What I love about the Luke Combs cover is that it exposes to me the problem that we have with covers. It’s like a moral problem. And our discomfort about what to do when we Black people do a white thing and a white person does a Black thing.” – Wesley Morris (24:44–24:57)

  • Chapman’s Approval: Her onstage endorsement at the Grammys resolves some of the anxiety about appropriation—she “gets a lot of Tracy feel” (23:43), and the performance is framed as intergenerational musical exchange.

• Historical Context: Covers as tools for white artists to capitalize on Black innovation (e.g., Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” vs. Pat Boone’s version).

  • “That right there, let's say, just in popular music alone, for a Black person to write a song, perform a song, and then for that song to then be covered by extremely famous white performers…their version becomes [bigger].” – Cecile McLorin Salvant (22:45–23:27)

6. Artistic Motivation: Why (and Why Not) Cover a Song? (28:26–34:52)

• On Choosing Material: Cecile covers songs that cling to her emotionally—sometimes even songs she “almost hate[s]” or finds ugly.

  • “I have to be surprised by [a song]. Has to cling to me sometimes. I have to kind of almost hate it.” – Cecile McLorin Salvant (28:38)

• Case Study – “Wuthering Heights”:
  Cecile discovered the Kate Bush song via her sister at 16, fell under its spell, but resisted covering it due to genre expectations. After reading the novel and falling in love with the story during the pandemic, she approached the song anew, fusing it with Irish sean-nós singing for a haunting, book-rooted version.

  • “I never thought that I could sing it…like, I never thought that it would be appropriate. I was in a jazz school…where am I gonna do this song? …So I thought that I wasn't allowed to cover it. Isn’t that funny?” – Cecile McLorin Salvant (29:11–29:45)
  • The “ghostly” production: recorded in a stormy Manhattan church, using distant microphones to create a spectral, cinematic effect (35:01–35:32).

7. The Vulnerability and Play of Covering (34:52–41:47)

• On Singing Famous Songs: Cecile admits she avoids extremely well-known songs (“Through the Fire" by Chaka Khan) out of fear of comparison or feeling too “karaoke.”

  • “There's a part of me that has a tendency to shy away from songs that are too well known, too popular. I don’t want to do them for some reason.” – Cecile McLorin Salvant (37:04)

• Self-Indulgence & Permission:
  The tension between wanting to embody a hero’s voice and fearing it will be self-serving or fall short—plus the cultural “permissions” that shape who sings what.

• Drawn to the “Ugly” or Uncomfortable:
  Cecile is attracted to reclaiming “ugly” songs (“Darkies Never Dream”, “You Bring Out the Savage In Me”)—songs fraught with racial stereotypes. She enjoys the ambivalence and subversive pleasure of “touching the hot oven.”

  • “It’s so racist and it’s so false and then also so true that people think that. Yes. And continue to think that…So I go, I want to sing that. I want…to touch the hot oven. …There’s something dangerous about it. …I have a troll in me. And that’s the troll in me that wants to sing these songs.” – Cecile McLorin Salvant (41:03–42:02)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Their songs become hers, and to a listener, they mean something deeper than the original and often sound completely new.”
  – Wesley Morris, on Cecile’s interpretive genius (04:13)

• “If you go around jazz musicians and ask them, oh, what song is that? Is that a cover? They’ll most likely say, no, that's a standard.”
  – Cecile McLorin Salvant (07:58)

• “The bones of the song, it’s like a mutation. Her song is in conversation with Dolly Parton’s song.”
  – Wesley Morris on Beyoncé’s “Jolene” (10:52)

• “We’re explicitly desecularizing this song. This song that was a secularization of our own song.”
  – Cecile McLorin Salvant and Wesley Morris on Aretha’s gospel interpolations (18:01–18:10)

• “Aretha was out here lifting her leg on some fire hydrants all over town. …She loved dropping houses on people.”
  – Wesley Morris (19:56)

• “It's like a moral problem. And our discomfort about what to do when we Black people do a white thing and a white person does a Black thing.”
  – Wesley Morris, on covers and race (24:44)

• "I never thought that I could sing it…like, I never thought that it would be appropriate. I was in a jazz school...So I thought that I wasn't allowed to cover it. Isn’t that funny?”
  – Cecile McLorin Salvant on “Wuthering Heights” (29:11–29:45)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:41–05:47 — Wesley’s Top 10 Covers & what makes a cover great
• 06:19–09:37 — What is a “cover” vs. a “standard” vs. interpolation?
• 09:37–15:20 — Beyoncé’s “Jolene” and “Blackbird” as case studies; the politics of covering
• 15:28–19:13 — Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace”; the art of remaking and reclaiming songs
• 20:01–26:48 — “Fast Car” chart success, race, and economics in cover culture
• 28:26–34:52 — Cecile’s process: falling in love with and reinterpreting “Wuthering Heights”
• 34:52–41:47 — Why artists do (or don’t) cover certain songs; the daring pleasure of taboo material

Tone & Style

The tone is intellectually playful, personal, and candid—Morris and Salvant both use humor and vulnerability alongside sharp cultural criticism. Discussions are steeped in “fan energy” but never over-awed, and the conversation jump-cuts between musical analysis, social critique, and intimate storytelling.

For First-Time Listeners

This episode functions as both a deep education and a celebration—a must-listen for anyone curious about what makes a cover version matter, both musically and socially. The discussion illuminates how cover songs can be acts of critique, transformation, reclamation, and even resistance, while also wrestling honestly with why the tradition of covering seems to have faded in our pop landscape.

Additional Recommendations

• Wesley plugs “Hit Parade” (43:10): a podcast episode he calls “a definitional episode about covers on the charts and what they even are.”
• Wesley on Cecile McLorin Salvant (43:30): “I also highly recommend seeing Cecile wherever she’s playing near you. Find out where she’s gonna be and have a really excellent night with one of our great musicians. Period.”

Listen if you want:

• To understand the shifting place of covers in popular and jazz music.
• To hear sharp, funny, heartfelt stories about creating art in a crowded cultural history.
• To absorb why reclaiming old songs can be radical—and why sometimes, it just feels like karaoke.

End of summary.