Artist:     John Wesley Harding

Album:     Greatest Other People’s Hits

Label:     Omnivore Recordings

Release Date:     5.18.18

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An autobiography of sorts, bulging at the seams with 17 cover songs, Greatest Other People’s Hits reveals more about the artistry of veteran singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding than any book ever could. A craftsman in every sense of the word, Harding boasts a body of work that’s the envy of most of his peers. Having a myriad of influences surely helped shape the man and his music.

They’re all on display on Greatest Other People’s Hits, released as a special 10-track LP for Record Store Day. Greatly expanded for the CD and digital versions, Harding’s newest LP doesn’t simply acknowledge the impact these songs had on him as some nostalgic exercise. His days as a late-1980s college radio darling long behind him, Harding lovingly rehabilitates and restores old favorites to their former glory. With all due reverence, he adds power-pop brightness and sparkle to Roky Erickson’s “If You Have Ghosts” and brings out the rich elegance and passion of Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe” in a stunning duet with Kelly Hogan.

There’s a sense that Harding has known all along that he was capable of transforming each of these tracks into something different and interesting, even going so far as to give them a spiritual rebirth. Trading the transcendence and drama of the original for spare, lonesome desperation, Harding performs an acoustic rendering of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” that strips it down to its bare essentials. He draws the melancholy out of Bruce Springsteen’s “Jackson Cage” with a more minimalist approach, and with help from The Minus Five, and R.E.M guitarist Peter Buck in particular, Harding turns Pete Seeger’s folky “Words Words Words” into a jangle-pop revelation.

Knowing when to leave well enough alone is also one of Harding’s best qualities, as he maintains the brooding, meditative character of Bruce Springsteen’s “Wreck on a Highway” – from The River – and the suave sophistication of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je Suis Venu Te Dire Que Je M’en Vais.” Some of the material on Greatest Other People’s Hits is performed live, with Harding using the occasions to experiment a little. A prime example is when Lou Reed and Rob Wasserman team with Harding to loosen up the Velvet Underground classic “Satellite of Love,” summoning its wilder, more earthbound elements. These may be other people’s hits, but Harding has a way of making them his own.

—Peter Lindblad