Obviously there are exceptions to the rule. But here is the difference no one will tell you. In the old days Led Zeppelin and the Beatles covered tunes while they honed their song writing skills. Nowadays no one has song writing skills to hone and cultivate.
I always ask this question to everyone that challenges my belief that most of music made in the last twenty years has minimal creativity: Can you name any songwriters that came into their own in the last twenty years in the league of Lennon-Mccartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Carole King, Randy Newman, Cole Porter, Glenn Frey - Don Henley etc. People who wrote stuff that you can hum now and hum twenty years from now.
Song writing is dead and that is all there is to it. So how can new music have much validity? What are the reasons?
1) Jack Black in School of Rock was right "MTV" (see video below)
2) Technology - slightly related to 1).
3) Quick money-
4) Success of the old- related to 3). Yes that is not an error. In the past it was impossible to make a lot of money over a significant period of time as musicians without touring a lot , selling a lot of records and *ghast* being good. The problem with that old paradigm is the successful act had the record company by the short hairs. The record companies did not want this. So better have 20 mediocre acts that you replace again in two years than to have one mega act since there will be more profit for the company. They wanted their acts good enough to sell in the short term but never good enough to last. Then just crank out the next set of star struck disposable fools.
There is so much to say about this topic and that's the beauty of a blog is you can keep adding.
Ed
You Know What’s Really Cool About That Cover Song? … Nothing
Posted Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:00am PDT by Gil Kaufman in GetBack
There’s no finer way in music to pay homage to an inspiration than the time-honored cover song. The Rolling Stones, Beatles, and Led Zeppelin essentially began their careers as glorified cover bands (or rip-off artists, depending on who you ask) before graduating to having their songs remade by everyone from Tiffany to Billy Joel, Bette Midler, Stone Temple Pilots, and Hootie & The Blowfish.
Covers versions can be great (think Johnny Cash’s take on Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”), but more often than not, atrocious (think Hilary Duff mauling The Who’s “My Generation”). And then there are remakes so bad they’re almost comical.
Which brings us to Korn’s Jonathan Davis. See, once upon a time, Korn were the leaders of the so-called “nu metal” brigade, a horde of frustrated boys who loved hip-hop and metal and decided to stick their Black Sabbath-inspired white chocolate into some gangsta peanut butter, essentially ruining two genres at once.
The dreadlocked Davis has made what is practically a second career out of questionable covers, from his band’s trashing of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall” to their bagpipe-assisted take on War’s “Low Rider” and an ill-conceived swing at Ice Cube’s “Wicked.” All fun and games, until Davis recently dropped his latest homage, a retread of Lil’ Wayne’s still-fresh “Got Money,” a bouncy clubber in which Davis cranks up the robotic AutoTune vocals and paints himself as some kind of flossy, flashy strip-club-alien lothario from the hood (assuming there is a hood in Bakersfield, California).
For the most part, efforts like Davis’ are meant to take an artist out of their comfort zone, so that got us thinking about some of the other cover catastrophies we’d rather forget.
CELINE DION
I could probably pick just about any of Canadian power elf Celine Dion’s covers and throw it on the fire, but her gender-switching decimation of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” is one of those car-crash horror shows that makes you unsure if you first want to gouge out your eyes or stick needles in your ears, or just do both at the same
PUSSYCAT DOLLS
“Tainted Love” is a great 1964 song that already survived a 1981 Soft Cell cover, which has actually become more popular than the original, and barely escaped with its life in 2001 when Marilyn Manson put his goth stink on it. And then the Pussycat Dolls dragged it through their cat box of horrible vocals and over-emoting in 2005, turning it into a pole-dancing anthem that went from reeking of heartbreak to just kind of, well, skanky.
BOWLING FOR SOUP
Generally, when you cover a song the idea is to bring your own unique perspective to it. Apparently, nobody told this to jokey rockers Bowling For Soup, who took Modern English’s classic 1980s hit “I Melt With You” and did nothing at all to it, except let their whiny-voiced singer make us forget what was great about it to begin with. And don’t even get me started on Limp Bizkit leader Fred Durst’s “homage” to the tune. At least he didn’t try to sing it, though his attempt at an ’80s dance is worth a chuckle.
Durst video:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A82542
http://robfrankel.blogspot.com/2004/08/mtv-is-root-of-all-evil.html
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