Take Cover!

troubling one. A good deal of it is classic indie-band drudgery: group convenes, wins a few battle-of-the-band contests, kindles to gig, grouses about lack of attention, changes name again, rekindles major-label curiosity, encounters an endless procession of label reps, despairs about dreary future. Then, after seven years of inertia, band finally finds itself in auspicious a cover tune.

of the Western world in 2000. While Out of Your Mouth did at number 5 on the MuchMusic Countdown.
“Because we’ve had some struggles getting things rolling,” lead singer Jason Darr mooted to one reporter, “we just wanted economic standpoint, it’s hard to fault his reasoning.

Brand recognition is key to selling anything nowadays, and the song memory. And that’s precisely where the problem lies. Out of versions.

in 1988, the song was Brown’s way of telling the media to butt out of his private affairs. Not content to dust off a forgotten gem, Spears uses the track to defend her own lascivious image in the court of public opinion. Evidently, the cover video.

In many cases, cover tunes are a low-risk strategy for bands looking to snare a new audience. Observe California’s The in 2002, the band’s label, Sony, recommended they include it could help them achieve that elusive breakout hit. Sony didn’t push them to release it as a single, but once the record began to circulate, radio programmers started playing The Boys of Summer, listeners eagerly requested it, and voila, The Ataris had unintentionally created a minor epidemic.

Now, taste in covers.
and 1,000 Mona Lisas (Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know) song. Talk about a dubious career.

enterprise. In the early part of the century, phonograph labels fetched big profits for their competitors. The advent of rock ‘n’ roll revealed an even more vexing inclination, as white crooners like Pat Boone re-did songs by black artists, sublimating to make them more palatable to white radio programmers.

The cultural appropriation, but they were at least open about into massive hits no doubt galled their black creators, but the material was handled with genuine reverence and respect.
knowledge of a coven of music critics, a cover tune is an opportunity for creative interpretation. The best covers, merely as an outline.

Such radical makeovers only serve to demonstrate the timelessness of the composition.
Not all interpretations are serious. Novelty covers have a fertile history, from Felix Arndt’s ragtime parodies of pop favorites to the canon of Weird Al Yankovic.

The novelty the juxtaposition of seemingly contrasting aesthetics, like postmodern hipster sing-speak. The treatment is insufferably glib and dismissive. The Flaming Lips, those critical sweethearts, Coyne’s woefully tremulous voice, they managed to turn a captivating come-on into a depressing dirge.

As a listening experience, it’s positively punitive.
twinge of nostalgia or creative paralysis. A cover makes for pass, rather than a license for self-aggrandizement.

The British Columbia Lions signed non-import wide receiver Paris Jackson to a contract extension on Wednesday.