I'm Waiting for the Man

 This is the coolest thing I've seen/heard from Keef this century. His low-key approach, the fact that we all know whereof he speaks, and the lack of vocal fireworks on the original, make this a killer combo. 

Jump

This is pretty amazing. Beyond the novelty factor—which is considerable—it works this way so much better than I ever would have believed. I especially appreciate the tiny bit of tapping towards the very end of the solo. But it's really the general vibe of the cover that shines, as well as the more harmonically interesting if less overtly virtuosic nature of most of the solo. 

One

I don't know how I missed this at the time but I surely did. Eddie Vedder covering "One" for U2's Kennedy Center Honors. 

The song's abridged. The tempo's a bit too fast. And it's maybe the finest vocal performance I've ever heard Eddie Vedder give, and I believe I've heard everything official studio recording and dozens and dozens of hours of live material from him. 

Bono seems to be nearly vibrating as he listens and it's hard to blame him. 

Faithfully

I'm a big fan of the generations that had the extreme misfortune of following mine. Huge fan. I'm Team Millenial and Team Gen Z all day. All. Day. But what they seem incapable of understanding (as with a distressing percentage of my own generation, and most of all those...you know...Boomers) is that Journey pretty much sucks. Arguably as a band and definitely as a corporation. 

Look, I've come around on "Don't Stop Believin'," in large part because the drums are phenomenal and the structure is weird, and that's more than enough to overcome the arena rock platitudes and geographic sloppiness. Also, to be fair, it's truly hard to come up with a stadium stomper as powerful and enduring. So. 

But in general Journey is the anti-Beatles. They are five insanely talented musicians who together produce significantly less than the sum of their parts. 

Except...I really like some of their stuff. Which doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It just means that blind pigs and being a certain age and all that. So no matter how awful the video for "Separate Ways" is—and it is—the song's pretty kickin'. 

And even as my most sneering, as only a teenager can be (or one who remains terminally teenaged into his dotage), I always liked "Faithfully." I liked the backstory about Jonathan Cain's wife asking if he was ever tempted to cheat whilst on the road, and how he wrote this lovely ballad in reply. (The fact that he did indeed subsequently cheat on her, leading to their divorce may take some of the shine off the song but, hey, trust the art and not the artist and all that, right?) 

One of the delightful surprises over the past decade is watching as Miley Cyrus not only seems to have pulled herself out of what looked like a disaster spiral but has subsequently revealed herself to be one hell of an artist. I can't claim to be an expert, having heard fewer than two dozen of her songs, but every cover I've heard her do has been at least good and some have been extraordinary. 

Such as this casual walk through "Faithfully." The ease with which she dips in and out of it while talking with the audience at the famed Chateau Marmont is striking. And her husky voice is a wonderful counterpart to Steve Perry's crystalline vocals on the original.