Candy Everybody Wants by 10,000 Maniacs

Candy Everybody Wants takes its name from the second single off Our Time in Eden, the fifth 10,000 Maniacs album (1992), and Elektra issued it with a handful of extras. Natalie Merchant, still the band's singer, wrote the title song with keyboard player Dennis Drew, and it's a bright, bouncy tune with a sharp edge: Rolling Stone heard it as a jab at America's hunger for sex and violence on television and at the businesses happy to feed it.

The real draw here is the covers, which show off the band's record collection. They take on Morrissey's "Everyday Is Like Sunday", turning its gloom into something wistful and lovely, dust off the traditional "Sally Ann", which the Hill Billies were the first to record, and tip their hats to R.E.M. with "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville". It's a short, generous odds-and-ends release from a band that, with Merchant leaving soon after, was nearing the end of an era.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.