Brothers Osborne Reacts to Rachel Wammack Covering ‘It Ain’t My Fault’

Rising star Rachel Wammack performed at CMA Fest this year, singing not only her own songs but a couple covers, including Brothers Osborne‘s big hit “It Ain’t My Fault,” earning high praise from the duo in the process.

“Someone that’s covering our song is a high honor,” John Osborne recently shared with PopCulture.com and other media. “I long for all of this. I played bands and cover bands all throughout the country and down on Broadway, just to be somewhere. I love that Rachel did that. That’s a high honor, especially someone that you really admire.”

Brothers Osborne are always appreciative when artists, even unknown ones, tackle one of their tunes.

“I was walking through the airport one day, and somebody was playing one of our songs,” John recalled. “I don’t even know who he is. It means a lot knowing that’s where we came from. We came from that very stool of acoustic guitars, singing songs and now someone else is doing ours. It’s neat.”

The siblings might have gotten their start singing other people’s songs, but they now, happily, mostly stay away from anything that isn’t their own.

“Covers are hard,” reflected TJ Osborne. “Sometimes, I think [for] a lot of artists, it’s a kiss of death. When I was playing a lot of covers, people just basically saw a jukebox and they look, not knowing who you are, and so we’ve always been very selective on cover songs for that reason. We would rather walk out and play to a thousand people, making 300 of them Brothers Osborne fans than pleasing a thousand of them by playing someone else’s music. But at the same time, you can only play so much of your own music before it does start to get a little long with the tune, and people start to lose their attention spans until they know what the songs are.

“And then finding that special cover song that people will know but also kind of fits in the vein of what we do, and try to change it a little bit to where we have our own kind of spin on it,” he continued. “They are important to do, but it’s really challenging because then you do a cover song and then it’s like ‘Last Dance with Mary Jane.’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’ I’ve heard a thousand people cover it.”

Brothers Osborne, thankfully, have plenty of their own hits to choose from by now, but there is one cover song that they gladly keep including in their shows.

“We don’t want to tell people we never do covers,” said John. “We’ve been doing ‘Copperhead Road.’ When you listen to ‘Copperhead Road’ … If Brothers often had one sound, I wish every song we had sounded like that because it’s huge, but it has a big mandolin so it’s very country. Very rootsy. Very Appalachian, but with big guitars. We had a lot of fun playing that song. And that song just fits perfectly in our set.”

Photo Credit: Getty images / Rich Fury