What's a cover version?
Recently Rage started playing a cover of “Echo Beach” by Newcastle band, The Humm.
A friend emailed me to complain about it, which started me thinking about covers and their role in popular music. Originally of course, covers were designed to make music recorded by unsuitable (ie, black) artists available to a white audience. This continued the long separation of professional songwriters from professional musicians. As history and popular myth would have it, The Beatles were the first to break this separation (although six of the fourteen tracks on their first album were covers).
In later years, the cover became a good way for an up and coming (or let’s face it, second-rate) band to gain immediate recognition, and I suspect that’s the way “Echo beach” is being used by The Humm.
But there is another use of covers: when a version of a song develops the original to a point where it can almost be considered a different piece. This is where my friend comes in:
I’ve never been one for minimalistically dealing with musical heritage. If you’re going to redo the song, you should aim to do better than the original, not just “do it our way”. It should be a tribute to the song, not an ego-thump by muscle-heads like The Humm.
Without sounding like an Arts graduate, there are some serious philosophical musicological issues that disturb me here. Are we a world artistic community celebrating and developing our heritage or a bunch of competing cave-persons displaying our gym-enhanced biceps? Showing only that we aren’t really good enough to bother covering those songs…? It’s vandalism!
I won’t say that I disagree with everything Jon says here, but there are a few points. Maybe not “better than the original”, but certainly different to it. A few years ago The Foo Fighters released a cover of Jerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” that was almost indistinguishable from the original, except that the sax solo was played on guitar. Why bother? Working out and playing accurate covers is a really good exercise for trainee musicians, but pointless for anyone else.
Compare that with my favourite cover: Cake’s version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. The disco version was recorded as a club vehicle and was intentionally bright and upbeat, and it became almost an incipient “girl-power” anthem, with its positive lyrics and female vocal. The Cake version, on the other hand, with typically lo-fi instrumentation and down-beat male vocals almost reverses the meaning of the song. No longer a celebration of independence and self-reliance, this is a note of world-weary and stoic acceptance by a guy who’s had his heart ripped out. I’m old enough, and nerdy enough to quite like the disco version, but the Cake cover is awesome.
So why listen to covers? I’m with Jon in wanting the music to which I listen to be fresh and innovative (which doesn’t necessarily mean “avant-garde”); which acknowledges its musical heritage, but isn’t derivative of it; and which says something meaningful (which could be as simple as “hey, listen to my cool new guitar sound”).
Obviously, these sorts of debates are usually couched in terms of authenticity and inauthenticity, but as I have said elsewhere (oh yeah, that’s right, in my thesis) that distinction is difficult to sustain (summary: we all have our own versions of authenticity, so it’s meaningless to generalise). But when arguments of authenticity do arise (and that’s all the time) one of the main tropes is of creativity and originality. Pretty obviously this is going to dismiss the Foo Fighters’ cover, and allow Cake’s.
Maybe it would be fun to start a list of favourite covers. Please contribute…
Your Comments
LeisureArts writes:
While researching this topic more broadly, spanning not just covers, but karaoke, fan fiction and other forms of appropriating, or taking ownership of pop culture – we found this distinction on Wikipedia to be useful:
“Some collectors and researchers, however, distinguish between a “cover version” and a “remake:” “cover version” means one made soon after the original to cash in on its success, while “remake” means one made much later, usually at least partially for artistic reasons or as an homage.”
Perhaps it is of some use for you as well…
Posted: 30 01 2007 - 14:18 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
The Cure’s cover of “Purple Haze” caused the readers of Guitar World Magazine to collectively puke (though the editors liked it). Which is reason enough to be fond of it.
The whole discourse around covers is mostly absent from other popular genres, isn’t it? Folkies don’t go around worrying about bad covers of Scarborough Fair, do they? And once you go into classical music, the concept has no real meaning given the focus on the composer rather than the performer.
Posted: 30 01 2007 - 15:05 | Permanent link to this comment
John Gunders writes:
Thanks LeisureArts, that is a useful distinction. I haven’t had a chance to read Shane Homan’s book on tribute bands as yet, but I gather many of the contributors make similar points.
Must get around to reading that!
Posted: 31 01 2007 - 16:26 | Permanent link to this comment
Jonathan writes:
My original email to John which he quotes above was actually driving more at some sociology. I’m an engineer – bizarrely – but engineering is “about how things work” as I tell my kids, and I’m fascinated by how human society works, and how the values and common humanity we share are perceived. If we choose to create a unified co-operative society, our covering will be by means of tribute, extension and celebration of heritage. If we are living in competition and using someone else’s song to elevate our own standing with no thought to the justification of whether we are entitled to do so, I think that is a lesser world society.
So the consumer’s taste in covers will in fact contribute to culture, to how humans feel about each other, to whether they will steal ideas or compliment them. I also tell my kids to try to see “the heart behind the art” and everytime I see a cover this point really strikes me. Why did they cover that song? Aren’t they good enough to come up with their own? Are they leveraging off someone else’s work and doing so poorly? In which case my “heart behind the art” alarm goes off and I write sardonic emails to people who might appreciate them – unfortunately few I know…
Bottom line – bad covers for bad reasons leads to nasty non-tribute competitive behaviours amongst humans. Leads to bad politics, wars, corporate/union thuggery…
Posted: 4 02 2007 - 19:25 | Permanent link to this comment
Ian Rogers writes:
I too am suspicious of covers. I think the legacy of what John mentions still hangs over them; the exploitation of black music via the cover version – used explicitly and as deceitfully as it was – strikes me as one of the music industry’s darker hours. And I’m talking about an industry that has always been pretty dark, pretty dirty.
The cover song smacks of commercialism. It is a music product that often has a very short shelf-life. Thus they present something of double-edge sword to aspiring musicians. They may broaden a band’s appeal in the short-term but it rarely lasts. Whatever ground a band might win with a cover is lost in an instant if there isn’t more to them. Thus bands that have something to say, who have a catalogue of great original material, they rarely stoop to doing covers; this is because musicians worth their salt tend not to be cynical. They’re believers, that’s why their music doesn’t suck. So bands digging up good songs and dancing around with their corpses, they’re not something I consider a blight on music heritage. Cashing in also is – unfortunately – music heritage. To me, these hucksters are easily spotted and easily negated. I worry more about the band’s totting ‘originals’ that seem to fit remarkably snugly into current trends. What were these assholes doing two years ago? Do they mean it? That’s what I think about.
My favourite cover? I think Brisbane City’s own annual Ramone-a-thon deserves a mention. It is a full-proof plan. The profits go to charity. Its organiser Tim Brenan (of Tym Guitars) is one of the nicest people you’d have the fortune to meet. And the theme is very simple: every band plays a few Ramones covers. Last year’s event had over 20 bands drawn from here, down south and overseas. Here is an artistic community celebrating and developing its heritage. It’s not a nationally focused heritage of course but The Ramones do represent an attitude to music making that is universal, and widely adopted in Brisbane. Namely, that playing music should be fun and about what you can do, not what you can’t.
The Ramones initially wrote originals because they weren’t gifted enough technically to play covers. Ramone-a-thon works because it celebrates this: nearly every band can play a Ramones song. So the event ends up being a bit of a triumph of Jonathan’s ‘heart behind the art’; a hundred shitty covers but totally embodied by the joy of making music in and of itself.
When my band played the event a few years back we threw ‘I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone’ by Sleater-Kinney in there for good measure. At the time, we figured S-K were our Ramones and it was a hunch that played out: that cover sounded a lot better than our tired Ramones work-outs (the crowd were very polite), even more pertinent was the fact we found it much easier to play.
Posted: 5 02 2007 - 18:22 | Permanent link to this comment
Catherine Howell writes:
Nick wrote: “And once you go into classical music, the concept has no real meaning given the focus on the composer rather than the performer.”
Sorry (cough, cough), Nick, I couldn’t let this one go past :-) I agree the concept of a ‘cover’ has no place in the culture of classical music, but in terms of copyright it sort of does. Sheet music, classical music’s material form, is protected by copyright, and living authors retain certain other rights (eg. performance / broadcast royalties), just as in pop.
The advent of the recording industry dramatically affected the consumption of classical music as it affected all popular musical consumption: it made it possible to compare ‘versions’ or ‘interpretations’ of the same work, and to compare them more closely than ever before. Broadcast channels now have entire programs devoted to comparing different recordings of the same work, sometimes by the same artist.
In terms of the general public and its consumption of classical music, then yes, the individual work – or the composer and his/her oeuvre – is often the point of focus. But there are many exceptions. Classical music has its own complex performance norms, rituals, and conventions, its own rhetoric of ‘personality’ and cult of the ‘star’. This has always been true of opera in particular.
Isn’t this whole debate really about money – protecting copyright, IPR, and fees/income? (taking us back to John’s point about the separation of composers and performers).
Posted: 7 02 2007 - 07:20 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
Catherine,
You’re right of course, and I was painting with a fairly broad brush with my comment above.
In fact, now that I think about it, isn’t there a good deal of insistence that a piece of music always be referred to in terms of specific performances/condutors etc, rather than simply be cited by title and composer? That it’s not so much a case that a ‘cover’ is less ‘authentic’, but that particular performances have a specific identity and status that even well-regarded covers of popular songs lack.
Posted: 7 02 2007 - 17:43 | Permanent link to this comment
John Gunders writes:
Thought I’d just throw this in:
Issues of authenticity in relation to classical music are not a million miles away from the sorts of things I was referring to in relation to covers. For instance many composers, including Mozart, embellished Handel’s Messiah with arrangements that would have been considered thoughtful and appropriate at the time. But as the oratorio’s canonicity grew, the “authenic” version was considered to be Handel’s original arrangement.
In 1883, Sir George Grove (he of the Dictionary) called for the bicentennial performance of Handel’s Messiah to discard “the ‘additional accompaniments’, even of Mozart, and restor[e] the many oboes, bassoons, trumpets, and horns, which Handel employed” (Howard Smither, “‘Messiah’ and Progress in Victorian England.” Early Music 13 (1985): 339-48.)
Posted: 7 02 2007 - 18:17 | Permanent link to this comment
Catherine Howell writes:
Interesting! Yes, the notion of authenticity in classical music is linked to a whole web of ideas about authorship, originality, and the ‘identity’ or ‘integrity’ of the work in question. ‘Authentic’ groups or performances are often linked to so-called ‘early music’ of the European pre-Renaissance / medieval periods. ‘Historical’ or ‘authentic’ performances attempt, as you both suggest, to restore a composer’s score to its ‘original’ form, but also to re-create the historical performance style of the composer’s time (eg. ‘authentic’ performances, eg. of Bach, would eschew the ‘Romantic’, ‘19thC’ style of a conductor such as Von Karajan.) Of course, this desire to retrieve / reconstruct historical performance styles is a highly modern and technology-dependent phenomenon.
You could draw a parallel with ‘auteur’ cinema and the notion of the ‘director’s cut’. With attendant emphasis on a return to the artist’s / composer’s ‘intentions’.
The notion of a musical work ‘existing’ in a Platonic (or public) ideal form, requiring interpretation by the performer in order to be instantiated / enacted (folk music arguably works in this way), is replaced by the idea that the ‘original’ work is primary—the work exists in and of itself, and in a specific form. Hence the emphasis on musical scores, and on identifying ‘original’ and ‘subsequent’ versions of a given score.
The need to assert the identity of a work, to assert authorship, is obviously all about power, recognition, reward (including financial reward).
Posted: 17 02 2007 - 01:28 | Permanent link to this comment
John Gunders writes:
Good point Catherine. Isn’t it interesting that ultimately, all these things lead back that old chestnut “authorial intention”.
The author may be dead, but geez, he still won’t shut up!
Posted: 19 02 2007 - 13:07 | Permanent link to this comment
Catherine Howell writes:
:-) Not where the royalties are concerned, anyway…
Posted: 20 02 2007 - 01:13 | Permanent link to this comment
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