Great piece about cover songs by Ben Zimmer in The Wall Street Journal, inspired by indie rocker Ryan Adams' full remake of Taylor Swift’s “1989,” consisting of cover versions of all the songs from her top-selling album. He writes that while Mr. Adams takes a musical homage to extreme lengths, the “cover” has been a basic bit of music-industry lingo for nearly 70 years.
Zimmer explains the entire history of the practice -- labels wanting to cash in on popular songs by having their own artists re-record the hits of the day -- but what I found most interesting is that he touched on something I've wondered all along:
If you never heard the original, is it really a true "cover" as the term was coined by Billboard back in the day? (He cites Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" as a prime example.)
I can think of a dozen songs off the top of my head that I didn't know weren't originals:
"Bette Davis Eyes" (Jackie DeShannon/Kim Carnes)
"{There's) Always Something There to Reminds Me" (Lou Johnson/Naked Eyes)
"Tainted Love" (Gloria Jones/Soft Cell)
"I Love Rock 'n' Roll" (Arrows/Joan Jett and the Blackhearts)
"Come Back and Stay" (Jack Lee/Paul Young), etc.
Billboard defined a "cover" as a song you know that's been recorded by another artist. I guess the thinking is songs like the ones I've listen above are more akin to what people like Barbra, Liza and Whitney do -- record material written by others, which doesn't necessarily make them true "covers."
(This, of course, is not the same thing as being musically ignorant, like a cashier who was shocked to find out "This Woman's Work" wasn't a Maxwell original or a 40-year-old bar patron who thought Bananarama penned "Venus.")
I know it's strictly semantics, but I kinda like this stricter definition -- which means“Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia isn't a cover (even though it was originally by Ednaswap) and Sheryl Crow's "The First Cut Is the Deepest" is.
P.S. Speaking of gender-flipped covers, I'm obsessed with them ... as I wrote HERE.
