Joan Osborne: Bring It on Home

For her seventh album, Kentucky-born singer-songwriter Joan Osborne returns to her roots—the soul, blues and R&B she sang while coming up in New York. But perhaps she shouldn’t have waited so long. Featuring covers of songs from the likes of Ike and Tina Turner and Muddy Waters, Bring It on Home sounds less like the recordings of a woman throwing herself into the music that moves her than those of a tired artist running out of ideas.   read more

50 Best Bob Dylan Covers of All Time

As we began to compile this list of the 50 Best Bob Dylan Covers of All Time—asking for input from Paste readers, writers and editors—someone suggested that it might be easier to compile a list of artists who haven't covered Dylan. I've listened to literally hundreds of Dylan covers over the course of the past week, trying to weigh choices like, "Who's version of 'Tomorrow Is a Long Time' is better, Nick Drake or Nickel Creek?" But I don't mean to make it sound like grueling work. My biggest take-away from this exercise is that going to Dylan for source...  read more

Paste-apalooza: Recent performances at the Paste Studios

Today, Matt Morris stopped by the studio at our Paste headquarters here in Decatur, Ga., around 11 a.m., followed an hour later by Joan Osborne (above), who played a powerful rendition of The Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace" as well as three of her originals. This feels about par for the course over the past few weeks, as our multi-media producer Kevin Keller has been working like a madman....  read more

Joan Osborne: Little Wild One

Well-crafted effort from versatile singer/songwriter short on grabbers“I have been unfaithful,” confesses Osborne at the top of “Hallelujah in the City,” which opens her sixth album, but the beloved she’s addressing turns out to be New York, the Kentucky-born artist’s adopted hometown. Amid chiming mandolin and folk-rock electric guitar, Osborne’s sturdy voice rises in the track’s climactic moments to gospel-like conviction. Later, “Can’t Say No” features muezzin-like yodels, riding atop a galloping, banjo-centered groove. Those two come as close as Little Wild One gets to the urgency of her memorable 1995 hit “One of Us,” despite the fact that...  read more