The covariant oscillator quark model, which was extended recently to include one-gluon-exchange effects, is applied to investigate the mass spectrum of light-quark mesons. In the meson rest frame our effective potential due to one-gluon exchange is given as the sum of a Coulomb-type, orbit-orbit-like, spin-orbit, and hyperfine interaction, and has similar general features as in the standard nonrelativistic quark model. However, there are essential differences between them. First, our scheme is manifestly covariant and the potential is concerned with the squared masses of hadrons. Second, our effective one-gluon-exchange potential is greatly modified due to the covariant nature and the retardation effect. Owing to these modifications our model reproduces quite well the experimental behavior of the spectra of radially excited states as well as orbitally excited states.