Brow Beat

Drake Recorded a Beautiful, Melancholy Cover of Nico’s “These Days,” Because of Course He Did

Drake is the type of dude to cover Nico/Jackson Browne’s “These Days” and make the lyrics even sadder.
Drake is the type of dude to cover Nico/Jackson Browne’s “These Days” and make the lyrics even sadder.

Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for MTV

“These Days” is one of the all-time great wistful ballads of jadedness and regret. It’s the type of song that’s been covered by Elliott Smith and and the Tallest Man on Earth and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold. It’s the type of song that Wes Anderson singled out to soundtrack a melancholy, slow-motion scene of star-crossed love. So of course Drake—the type of dude who’s inspired a whole meme about how sensitive he is—covered it, and of course the result is sad, faintly funny, and absolutely gorgeous. In other words, it’s perfectly Drake.

Drake’s version comes courtesy of the Tolkienishly-named up-and-comer Babeo Baggins, who just shared the collaboration on SoundCloud. (A different version of the cover leaked over the weekend.) Over a sample of the same fingerpicking that grounds Nico’s original version of the song, Drake and Babeo take turns singing verses, with a few subtle tweaks. “I’ve met some women/ I wish I had resisted these days,” Aubrey Drake Graham sings, taking Jackson Browne’s original lyrics and adding a light, Drake-y drizzle of passive aggression. Soon sappy strings begin to swell in the background, and Drake adds another line that only he could have made work: “These days I sit inside a chauffeur car/ With windows down and count the stars.”

To recap: In 2016, the biggest rapper in the world can release a cover of “These Days,” and it can be good. What a time to be alive.

Update, March 29, 3:50 PM: The song appears to have been removed from SoundCloud.

Update, March 31: The song has been uploaded to Baggins’ BandCamp page and is embedded above.