Why Do We ‘Cover’ Songs? (Part 2)
(Continuing on from Part 1)…
All this thinking about my own motivations in this area got me wondering about all the other possible motives people have for covering music. I looked far and wide across the interwebs (okay, mostly this Wikipedia article, which is quite good by the way, if you’re interested in the subject) and ended up with a list over a page long of various reasons why covers are done. In (almost) closing I’d like to share some of my miscellaneous notes from that here (then wrap this up so I can salvage what’s left of my Saturday):
The cover is often done as a tribute to those gone before, to ‘the greats’, or to any influences, past or present, who’ve inspired and helped shape an artists’ own work. There are a lot of tribute albums out there (see the Wikipedia article).
Somewhat conversely, there is the song parody, in which the artist may or may not change the lyrics (depending on whether he’s Weird Al or Richard Cheese), but will always change the style in such a way as to make the song seem silly or absurd. Either way, it is a form of cover song.
There’s also the ironic cover, or the ‘reverse-parody’ (to use my own made-up term) which involves taking a song generally disliked or looked down upon by a particular subculture and remaking it into something ‘cool’ to said subculture; cool for two reasons: 1) because it’s ironic - a shared inside joke, and 2) because the song has received a makeover - it’s been ‘coolified’ yo - made aesthetically pleasing to the tastes of the demographic it’s meant for. Think White Stripes covering Dolly Parton, or any number of ‘coolified’ renditions of cheesy 80s tunes (though, for most of us who grew up in the 80s, I think cheesy 80s tunes will always carry a certain nostalgic charm all their own)…
That ‘coolification’ aproach is a subcategory of a broader and longer-standing tradition of cover songs which is the “crossover”: taking a song from one genre and remaking it in the style of another in order to appeal to a new audience (and allowing the owner of the song to make more money).
A further variation on that would be taking old songs from a previous era and ‘contemporizing’ them. This often has the effect of reviving a song, and in some cases, reviving dead careers (Fleetwood Mac getting back together after the Dixie Chicks’ covered Landslide and made it huge with ‘the kids’ comes to mind). This can be good, not only for the band who gets to make a comeback but for the ‘people’, because it exposes a whole new generation to good music that they might otherwise never appreciate, either because they weren’t aware of it or because it’s ‘their parents’ music. Appreciation for the past is always a good counterbalance to the over-embracing of the new.
Then there are the people who just like to perform for the fun of it, and perhaps for money, but don’t consider themselves songwriters. Here you have the ever-present local cover band. I used to be down on this brand of musician, but I realize not everyone wants to be an ‘artist’. Some just want to entertain. And people in bars usually just want to be entertained, with familiar songs.
Not everyone’s a songwriter, and that shouldn’t preclude anyone from using the talents they do have and making a living from those talents in whatever way works for them. Cover bands bring many good old songs to life again, in a live setting, including music you literally can’t experience live otherwise, because the original artists are, you know, dead.
Some cover bands do branch out beyond local bars and get really creative with their covers, as you’ll see if you make it to near the end of the Wikipedia article. (Example: the Easy Star All-stars. I hear good things).
Most if not all aspiring musicians use other people’s songs as ‘training wheels’ in the initial stages of their development, whether it be learning an instrument, learning different styles or techniques of playing, training one’s voice, ‘finding’ one’s voice, or just generally building confidence. It’s part of a natural maturation process for an artist, progressing from imitation, to interpretation, to deconstruction and re-invention, to pure innovation.
You learn a lot about music from playing other people’s songs. You learn a lot from comparing various versions of a song. Just as you learn what makes good writing by reading a lot of writing, both good and bad, and then also, preferably, writing your own interpretations and tangents based off of the things you read, so there is a musical equivalent. Ultimately the best writers are the ones that finally f#$% it all and write their own books, in their own voice, but that, too, is in part a culmination of all the reading and writing-about-what-they-read that came before. Likewise, there is the musical equivalent.
It’s worth noting here that many of the ‘Greats’ (ie: from the late 60s on) began their careers as bar bands doing mostly covers. Covers can be an effective means of endearing yourself and your personal style to a new audience, by first mixing it in with enough familiarity to get people to pay attention at all.
In that sense, cover songs act as gateways between unknown artists and potential listeners, in that while the band or artist may be relatively unknown, they can use a song that is well known as leverage; as a way to showcase their own style, distinct from songwriting or composition. If that style is appealing enough, people will then be drawn to check out that band or artist’s originals. If the originals suck, well, covers will only get them so far, but if the originals are good, the covers have served as a useful means of self-promotion. This kind of thing ultimately serves the proliferation of really good, original art that otherwise might be lost to obscurity.
And last but not least, Part 3…
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Onward to Part 2… 1f6c …
(Continuing on from Part 2)… …