Thought we’d end our Automatic For The People tribute run with a bang. In Matthew‘s eloquent essay, he wrote “a majority [of the Drive XV artists are] young enough that their earliest exposure to the [Automatic] songs came during their adolescence, which may help to explain why so many of them opted to record a cover of “Everybody Hurts,” a tune that may well be the single most sympathetic and compassionate song about teenage depression of all time.” May not have made sense on launch day (when the only available cover was that by Meat Puppets), but it will now. We did indeed have an outpouring of artists wanting to tackle “Everybody” — so, we decided to let everybody cover it.

It’s a triple treat of tracks, here: Swedish chanteuse Friday Hyvönen with gentle piano and a haunting vocal turn, Elk City offering a somber start/beautiful bloom cycle, and
then Bodies Of Water who took the most liberty, introducing a stunning, stormy choral arrangement. Also, BoW treated us to our favorite track quote:

An interesting note: I thought this meant hurling your severed hand, while Meredith thought that it meant waving your hand around spastically, like a baby. Whatever. It’s gross and weird.

Ha. On that note: Ready to download?

Here’s Frida. Here’s Elk City. And here’s Bodies Of Water.

And for the complete set, don’t forget Amanda Palmer.

Thanks again to all the amazing artists willing to share their impressions of Automatic For The People with us. We had a lot of fun celebrating the record. Hope you did, too.