Sammy Kershaw ft. Jamey Johnson – The Cover of the Rolling Stone

About The Song

The Cover of the Rolling Stone by Sammy Kershaw featuring Jamey Johnson is a country take on the 1973 Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show hit written by Shel Silverstein. It appears on Kershaw’s 2010 album Better Than I Used to Be, released August 31 on Big Hit Records. The track runs just over three minutes and sits among the album’s mix of new material and familiar territory.
Kershaw has long made a habit of slipping an older hit onto each of his records. He once scored a major success with a remake of the Amazing Rhythm Aces’ “Third Rate Romance,” so the practice stuck. The idea for this particular song came while he was sitting in a Lowe’s parking lot one morning, listening to satellite radio. A 1973 recording came on, and he decided it was the one. He also decided it needed a duet partner. He called Jamey Johnson, who agreed without hesitation. Johnson showed up one afternoon, and the two cut the track in a single take. Kershaw later called the result great and praised Johnson’s voice.
The original song was a sharp, comic complaint about the gap between rock-star life and true cultural recognition. The band had the pills, the groupies, the guru, the money, and the limousine driven by someone’s gray-haired father, yet the one thrill that still eluded them was seeing their picture on the cover of Rolling Stone. The joke landed so well that Dr. Hook actually made the magazine’s cover shortly afterward, albeit in caricature. Silverstein’s lyric mixed satire with a knowing wink at the hunger for validation that sits underneath the excess.
Kershaw and Johnson keep the spirit of that lyric while shifting the perspective slightly. They become two country singers with golden fingers, loved everywhere they go, pulling down serious money for singing about beauty and truth. The thrills are still there, but the one that remains out of reach is the same: a smiling face on the cover of the magazine. The update feels natural rather than forced. Both men had already built careers on traditional country values and plainspoken storytelling, so the satirical edge lands with a different shade of irony.
The recording itself was not released as a major radio single and did not chart on the Billboard Hot Country Songs list. By 2010 Kershaw was working outside the major-label system that had powered his 1990s hits, and the album reflected a more independent approach. Still, the duet gave the project a notable guest appearance. Johnson was riding a strong wave of critical respect at the time, and pairing the two voices on a well-known comic song made for an easy talking point.
Around the same period a Shel Silverstein tribute album also featured a version of the song, showing that the lyric still held appeal across different corners of the music world. For Kershaw the track simply continued a personal tradition of revisiting older material that had once connected with audiences. For listeners it offered a light, knowing moment on an album that otherwise leaned toward more reflective or straightforward country themes.

Video

Lyric

Well, we’re two country singers, we got golden fingers and we’re loved everywhere we go
We sing about beauty and we sing about truth at ten thousand dollars a show
We take all kinds of pills, that give us all kind of thrills but the thrill we’ve never known
Is the thrill that’ll get you when you get your picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone, wanna see my picture on the cover
Rolling Stone, wanna buy five copies for my mother
Rolling Stone, wanna see my smilin’ face, on the cover of The Rolling Stone

I got a freaky old lady name o’ Cocaine Kitty who embroiders on my jeans
I got my poor ol’ grey haired daddy, drivin’ my limousine
Now it’s all designed to blow our minds but our minds won’t really be blown
Like the blow that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone, wanna see my picture on the cover

Rolling Stone, wanna buy five copies for my mother
Rolling Stone, wanna see my smilin’ face, on the cover of The Rolling Stone

We got a lot of little teenage blue eyed groupies who’ll do anything we say
We got a genuine Indian guru, who’s teachin’ us a better way
We got all the friends, that money can buy, so we’ll never have to be alone
And we keep gettin’ richer but we can’t get our picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone, wanna see my picture on the cover
Rolling Stone, wanna buy five copies for my mother
Rolling Stone, wanna see my smilin’ face, on the cover The Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone, wanna see my picture on the cover
Rolling Stone, wanna buy five copies for my mother
Rolling Stone, wanna see my smilin’ face, on the cover The Rolling Stone