Dangling Conversations

Colour commentary on the world we live in

The Art of the Cover: Part 0 of some

Posted 21 Oct, 2005 at 21:21 by matt in /Music | Permanent link

Because I clearly don't post enough about the music in my life...

Cover songs in modern pop music are an interesting phenomenon, because they're something of a throwback. Time was, a popular song was not just for the people but of the people: you heard it being sung on your wireless set, and you could go into town or downtown the next day and the music stores were selling copies of the sheet music. It was expected that a good song would be done by multiple artists, each having their own take on it.

Rock music was born into an age of recording technology, though, and all of a sudden the idea of ownership of a song became... relevant? Conceivable? Between that and the rock mythos of individualism, it gradually became the norm for an act to perform (and record, of course) its own original songs, rather than just performing cover versions of others' works.

(This was a gradual process: much of the Beatles' first couple of albums consisted of songs written by others, and of course the whole industry of white people playing rock started out with producers putting together groups of bright-eyed boys to cover songs by black artists... slightly cleaned up, for the most part. Bill Haley and the Comets' version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" doesn't make a great deal of sense lyrically, mostly because the majority of sexual references in the original verses were bowdlerized into nonsense.)

So now when an artist does a cover -- particularly, when they record a cover -- it's something special. It's a tribute of sorts.

Next week I'll be writing intermittently about specific covers: what works, what doesn't, when a cover beats the original version, and why "Master of Puppets" is so perfectly suited to the right kind of cello quartet. If you've got suggestions for exactly what you'ld like me to talk about (or not), feel free to leave them in the comments. Or, you know, just babble randomly as is the blog-standard across the world. It's all good.

Comments (3 comments so far)
Looking forward to it :)
Posted 2005/10/22 07:01:36 by wendy
Out of curiosity, I just took a look at my current playlist of 291 songs, and I recognize 17 of them as being covers. I'm hoping that I've formatted this correctly:
  • Apocalyptica - Fade to Black (Metallica)
  • Apocalyptica - Master of Puppets (Metallica)
  • Apocalpytica - One (Metallica)
  • Orgy - Blue Monday (New Order)
  • Disturbed - Land of Confusion (Genesis)
  • Dave Edmunds - Cruel to be Kind (Nick Lowe)
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers - Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder)
  • Hole - Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
  • Rammstein - Stripped (Depeche Mode)
  • Overkill - Frankenstein (The Edgar Winter Group)
  • The Ataris - Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
  • Metallica - Turn the Page (Bob Seger)
  • Eric Cartman - Come Sail Away (Styx)
  • The Jeff Healy Band - While My Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles)
  • Johnny Cash - Hurt (Nine Inch Nails)
  • Orbital - Fade to Black (Metallica)
  • Anthrax - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (Black Sabbath)
That's the cover artist on the left and the original artist in brackets. I'll leave that list to speak for itself, except to mention that I only have the original version of one of those songs also on my playlist - Master of Puppets.
Posted 2005/10/24 11:03:01 by RobRoy
Just thought I'd add my 2c to the conversation... I just did a list of covers I've been listening to recently on my site, you can check them out at: http://sevennine.net/2005/10/19/covers-you-need-to-get/
Posted 2005/10/27 15:02:17 by Marc
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