Covers

When I got out of my car yesterday, I was surprisingly angry. I had been listening to the radio, which is always a mistake, and the station[1] played two pretty bad songs within ten minutes of each other.

The songs were covers. The first was Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” the second was The Smashing Pumpkins’ cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.”

As the above footnote introduces, I have problems with the mission statement of the particular station playing these songs (which, by the way, I hear played on the station a few times a week – which I think is quite a bit of airtime for songs that genuinely suck and aren’t popular, interesting, current or culturally relevant). It’s an alternative station that really doesn’t play alternative music, not that I really know what alternative music is.[2]

But, I’ll tell you what alternative music isn’t. It isn’t a garage band playing a decades-old song performed by the greatest pop artist of all time and playing it note for note and chord for chord. It also isn’t what’s left after giving the same treatment to one of the most heartfelt songs ever written. This is the kind of shit Glee pulls, and they barely get away with it.

Covering a song, especially a song that was already wildly popular, is risky business, and the decision seems to be made more out of commercial than artistic interests. Hell, you already know people like the song. Pull off a good cover and suddenly your band gets attached to the image of the original performer. If you absolutely kill it, your version of the song might outshine the work of your predecessor, as Jeff Buckley and Manfred Mann did.

What causes me the most dismay is when artists simply replicate songs. Compare AAF’s “Smooth Criminal” to Jackson’s. They sound exactly the same. The instrumentation is the same. The melody is the same. The tone of the singer’s voice is a pitch for pitch match to Michael’s. The same can be said about the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Landslide.” Acoustic guitar: check. Wispy, lonesome voice: check. It’s a cheap replica.

What’s the point? Why make the song, practice it, pay to record and release it if all you are going to do is duplicate a song that already existed? And why should anyone be interested in listening to it when the original still exists?

The Smashing Pumpkins’ failure really demonstrates my point. Maybe the band or the singer connected with the song. Who doesn’t? So they started playing it themselves. And they liked it. And sure, the song is technically good. Nobody’s singing off key or playing out of tune. And it sounds almost exactly the same as Fleetwood Mac. And that’s why if fails. Music is more than notes on a page. Stevie Nicks wrote the song. She created it out of a place in her heart, an experience in her mind and imbued a special energy into it. That energy, unlike the tone of a singer’s voice or the wispiness of a guitar, cannot be replicated. That’s why the Smashing Pumpkins cover rings hollow.

To channel my inner American Idol judge, you’ve got to make the song your own. Put your own energy into the song. I think that’s what separates Jeff Buckley’s version from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and what gives Buckley’s song a special place in the vast library of musical covers. While playing similar notes and singing the same lyrics to Leonard, Buckley ended up with a completely different song with a completely different feeling and a completely different energy.

It’s what makes his cover magical and other completely unremarkable.

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[1] The station purports to play “alt-music”, but really only plays pop hits that are older than five to ten years. I really have no idea what to define as “alt-music” or how it relates to other genres of music, but a song that make the Billboard-100 isn’t “alt” or “indie”, no matter how old it is. I still enjoy most of the music played on this particular station, I just object to calling its musical choices “alternative.”

[2] My main objection is that I’ve never heard this station play The National, the most awesome and interesting of alt bands. In fact I’ve never heard this station play a song that I haven’t heard on another station.