"Come Away With Me"

This is my friend Caralyn, who is doing a cover of "Come Away With Me" by Norah Jones. It's a lovely little cover. I can't wait to hear her do more covers. Hopefully, she'll choose another Norah Jones song, like "Back to Manhattan."

James Blake's "Limit To Your Love"

There's something fascinating about a good cover. Covers so often are just another, different voice, but sometimes they add or subtract or subvert or just plain change a song in a wonderful way. I love that about a cover.
This is James Blake (a huge star in the U.K., virtually unknown in the U.S.) doing a cover of Feist's "Limit to Your Love." The original is bland in comparison with this cover, which manages to be subtly dramatic and quietly convincing of its emotional motivations in a way the original never is. Feist's lyrics are phenomenal, but Blake manages to highlight their simplicity and depth to the point of elegance.
Blake is so baby-faced, so young looking, but his pain feels like it has been distilled in the barrel of someone older, someone about to die, someone saddled with the tragedy of mistakes and regrets, almost Johnny Cash like.
This video is amazing, and like the song, all about the small things. Everything is shaking slightly, like just the barest of earthquakes is rippling through. I love the blue color hanging over much of the video; it's like the ceramic gray color of a winter Sunday morning. And it has the wonderful imagery of orbiting fruit.

The Covers of Kurt Vonnegut

Good Show Sir is the interesting blog which collects all the worst science fiction book covers out there. The first time I looked at this blog, I was amused to see the latest post featured a book I myself had.
Lately though they posted a Kurt Vonnegut cover. I love Vonnegut, but this cover is indeed bad. (Though I've seen worse on the like of Battlefield Earth.) Mostly, I feel like there should be a category called When Bad Covers Happen to Good Authors.
One of the things I don't think people realize is that writers do not necessarily get a lot of say over covers, especially if they're getting published with a big press. Sometimes writers will get to pick one cover out of a few acceptable choices, but that's it.
Don't despair for Vonnegut: his cover for Jailbird actually looks really nice.