While continuing to kick out her own original material, alt-rock legend Juliana Hatfield has in recent years begun releasing full-length tribute albums to iconic artists from her youth. In 2018 it was Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John. In 2019 it was Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police. And although a covers project hasn’t emerged in 2020, Hatfield says more are in the pipeline.

In an excerpt from Ray Padgett’s new book on the Leonard Cohen tribute I’m Your Fan published at Literary Hub, the former Blake Babies leader discusses her frequent participation in tribute albums despite her overall ambivalence about the form. “There’s always a few really great versions, but then there’s a bunch of other things like, is this really necessary?” Hatfield says. “There’s always people who I feel are not getting it and they’re not doing it right, or I don’t like their taste or their approach or something. I’m just a very picky listener.” However, now that she’s releasing album-length tributes of her own, she’s more into the concept. She says she’s targeting R.E.M. for her next covers LP, which makes some kind of sense — it’s like she’s gradually working her way forward in music history.

The interview also reflects Hatfield’s disdain for Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, despite once covering “$1000 Wedding” with Evan Dando for 1999’s Return Of The Grievous Angel: A Tribute To Gram Parsons. “When Evan and I were living in Boston in the late ’80s and we were hanging out a lot, he was kind of obsessed with Gram Parsons and he would play Gram Parsons’ music all the time,” she says. “Whenever he would play the stuff with Emmylou, I would just think like, ‘Emmylou was so flat. She’s so out of tune. How did they not deal with that at that time?’ It just always really drove me crazy. I didn’t like Gram Parsons on his own either.”

So don’t be on the lookout for Juliana Hatfield Sings Emmylou Harris or Juliana Hatfield Sings Gram Parsons, but definitely do keep checking for Juliana Hatfield Sings R.E.M. Until that materializes, you can look forward to Hatfield’s Record Store Day Black Friday release, a 7″ featuring original Christmas songs.