“That’s a Cover?!” XPN Hosts Discuss the Biggest Surprises of the 885 Countdown

If you’re not ready to let the 885 go, you don’t have to. The 885 Countdown page is still up with the full archive, the complete 1–885 list, and a bunch of ways to dig into the data, including artists most covered, songs most covered, top artists, top years, top decades, plus the longest and shortest songs in the countdown (Bookmark it. Argue with it. Send it to a friend who still insists their No. 1 ‘got robbed.’)

WXPN’s 885 Greatest Cover Songs countdown wrapped up Thursday, Dec. 11, and by the time the final song played, the staff had that specific kind of relief that only comes after a project that’s both joyful and slightly unhinged.

Sleepy Hollow host Joey Sweeney sat down with Jim McGuinn and Bruce Warren for a wrap-up podcast, recorded before the whole thing “becomes a distant memory,” to celebrate crossing the finish line and get “a more thoughtful meditation” on cover songs as a form.

This year, McGuinn says, they had “more votes than ever,” with over 7,000 listeners participating. Because each voter submitted a ranked list of 10 songs, with a number one pick earning 10 points and a number 10 pick earning one point. “70,000 like votes in a way,” McGuinn said, which shook out to 10,547 different performances receiving votes. Including, yes, 30 versions of “Creep.”

The research alone was massive. Warren, McGuinn, and Mike Vasilikos split the list into thirds and went “song by song” to track who originally recorded each tune, who wrote it, and when it came out. Then there’s the practical radio problem: over 200 songs on the list had never been in WXPN’s system before, so Dan Reed had to track them down and build them into the library.

Defining what actually counts as a cover required judgment calls. McGuinn talks about the “asterisks and the exceptions,” the “edge cases,” and the fact that they convened a panel to decide 40 or 50 of them. “Some of them, I still think we got wrong,” he admits, before asking everyone to accept that yes, they allowed the Run-DMC and Aerosmith collaboration.

One highlight from this year’s 885 Countdown was Bonnie Raitt sharing with WXPN her story about falling in love with John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” calling it “one of the classics of great empathy” and marveling at “such insight for such a young man” writing from the perspective of “a middle-aged woman in a dead end marriage.”

Robyn Hitchcock also joined Dan Reed to discuss the covers in his career and he answered the eternal question “why cover anything at all?” with a perfectly blunt line: “Well, I guess I have to wish I’d written it myself.”

The countdown surfaced plenty of surprises. Bruce’s biggest “aha moment” was learning that Warren Zevon didn’t write, or even record first, “Carmelita.” McGuinn learned again just how eclectic the XPN audience is, he wouldn’t have predicted Whitney Houston landing at No. 9.

“Where else are you gonna find a list that goes from Whitney Houston to Metallica without blinking an eye?” McGuinn says. “That’s the beauty of this thing.”

Maybe the most accurate summary came from a listener quote Warren read from Bluesky, breaking the week into four phases: “I never heard this version,” then “wait, that’s a cover,” then “Ooh, that should have been on my list,” and finally, “I can’t believe this classic cover played so low, travesty.”

Editor’s note: In the audio portion of the piece above, Bruce Warren incorrectly states that “Carmelita” was written by Murray McLauchlan; in fact, it was written by Warren Zevon.