“Beautiful”: Post Malone nods to his rock roots once again with a killer guitar cover of Alice In Chains' Them Bones – accompanied by a full choir

Post Malone has considerable form when it comes to rock covers. Often accompanied by (or in direct competition with) his friend and collaborator Andrew Watt, the hip-hop icon has previously performed War Pigs with Slash, a full Nirvana set with Travis Barker, and even dropped a section of Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover during a guitar battle.

Now, in his latest appearance on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM Show, the hip-hop star wowed the veteran DJ with a version of the Alice In Chains classic, Them Bones. 

In the performance clip [above] Post makes effective use of both a well-worn Martin dreadnought acoustic guitar [we can’t tell the model from the footage, but that looks like a faded vertical Martin logo on the headstock – Ed.] and a full choir.

Sadly, though he no doubt could if he wanted to, Post doesn't wrangle the Them Bones solo from that Martin neck, but that is probably for the best in this particular version.

Nonetheless, the performance leaves Stern taken aback, with the host labelling it “beautiful.” Indeed, it’s about as pretty as Post Malone – or Alice In Chains for that matter – have ever sounded.

Them Bones originally featured on Alice In Chains’ 1992 album, Dirt and was written by Jerry Cantrell. It features a classic Cantrell device of a shifting time signature, with a 7/8 verse that morphs into 4/4 for the chorus.

“Off-time stuff is just more exciting,” Cantrell told Guitar World in 1998. “It takes people by surprise when you shift gears like that before they even know what the hell hit 'em.

“It's also effective when you slow something down and then slam 'em into the dash. A lot of Alice stuff is written that way – Them Bones is a great off-time song.”

The above is not by any means Post Malone’s only acoustic performance – though this one went better than his Tiny Desk show. In that clip, he joked he’d messed up his chords to Circles, because “I was playing a Van Halen solo in my mind.”

Which is an excuse that – let us be clear – is always going to fly with Guitar World.

Fortunately, as the other clips we’ve seen attest, that’s not representative of his wider playing ability.

Previously, the aforementioned Watt has heaped praise on Post’s six-string talent and, having produced everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones, he should know a decent guitarist when he sees one.

“Post is a great guitar player,” Watt told Guitar World in 2020. “And he's just an amazing musician. He's one of those guys that can do anything, you know?”