When's a Cover Song a Cover Song?

[RLetson]

That is a *performance* of a CCR song--and a considerable rearrangement and reinterpretation.

Here's Hoagy Carmichael's 1930 version of "Georgia On My Mind":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY9RS1x8iHE

And Ray Charles' 1960 version--just a cover?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSCSXUcyqug

[mr. beaumont]

Ask Led Zeppelin...

There is a difference between a "cover" and a "rendition," an "interpretation" or something, I guess. I tend to associate cover with more or less copying the original.

Like, in jazz circles, we play a lot of other people's songs...but we don't ever use the word "cover." Because we are trying to reinvent them every time. At least hopefully.

Did Hendrix "cover" All Along the Watchtower?

[nostatic]

We're into semantics at this point. So I asked ChatGPT what they thought:

A cover song is a song that is performed by a musician or a band that is not the original artist or composer of the song. Cover songs are often performed at live music events, such as concerts or festivals. These performances can be a way for musicians to pay homage to their musical influences, or to introduce audiences to songs that they may not be familiar with. Cover songs can also be a way for musicians to put their own spin on a well-known song, and to create their own unique interpretation of it.

[RLetson]

An AI doesn't really know music history or lexicography--only the texts on which it has been trained, which might have the same limitations as the young guy I encountered at the open mike.

[12barBill]

Originally Posted by RLetson

That is a *performance* of a CCR song--and a considerable rearrangement and reinterpretation.

Here's Hoagy Carmichael's 1930 version of "Georgia On My Mind":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY9RS1x8iHE

And Ray Charles' 1960 version--just a cover?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSCSXUcyqug

"Performance?" ... "interpretation?"... I suppose those terms could be used. I still consider Willie's rendering of the song to be a "cover." No point in debating semantics. To me, it's a rendering of someone else's song (a song that is definitively associated with the original artist and rooted in musical culture) and I consider subsequent recordings of the song to be a "cover."

[Stonehauler]

A cover song is a song that is being performed by someone other than the original composer/artist.

So if I write a song that no one has heard about except my friend and my friend plays it at her show, she is doing a cover of my work. Trying to claim it as her own could get her in legal trouble. Let's say that her career really takes off and it becomes one of her signature songs. I go out and play it myself. I am not covering her song, I am playing my own (depending on how any contracts about the song were written) music. She is covering me, not vise-versa.

If she does a new arrangement, it's still a cover. For example, Total Eclipse of the Heart was originally performed by Bonnie Tyler. Nikki French did one cover that was very close to the original arrangement. She also did a dance version that was very much up-tempo, but the underlying melody and harmonies are very similar. I would consider this just a new arrangement and would still be a cover. Another example is "You Might Think" that was originally performed by the Cars and then by Weezer for one of the Pixar Cars movies (Cars 2?)

On the other hand, you have Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Cyndi Lauper did a complete rework of Robert Hazard's original work, completely changing the style and even some of the lyrics. Play them both (they are on YouTube) and compare them and you will see they sound nothing alike. The is a remake of a song.

Now, how much you can claim in terms of writing credits for a cover arrangement vs a remake? I have no idea. How much you need to pay in royalties to the original writers/performer for a cover vs a remake? Again, no idea. I would suggest consulting someone knowledgeable in the field.

The thing is, it doesn't matter if no one else has heard or knows the music when you play it. If you are playing someone else's music you are probably doing a cover.

[L20A]

Originally Posted by davenumber2

If you didn't write it, it's a cover. Seems pretty simple.

^^^^^This^^^^^^

[nostatic]

Originally Posted by RLetson

An AI doesn't really know music history or lexicography--only the texts on which it has been trained, which might have the same limitations as the young guy I encountered at the open mike.

If the language model is trained on music history documents, then it likely "knows" it. Arguably better than the young (or old) guy encountered at the open mike. What it can then do with that "knowledge" is another thing, but the creative world is going to change - and a lot quicker than some have been assuming.

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by fitness1

I always sought out the best tunes I could find by obscure singer/songwriters and performed them often. They comprised around 50% of the material I'd play in a night. I'd also play my favorite tunes by famous artists even if they were deep album tracks.

That's my wheelhouse too. My tag line is "obscure songs on obscure instruments." I play a lot of songs by lesser known artists and lesser known songs by better known artists.

My town, state and country are full of thousands of cover artists belting out the "classic" moldy oldies that were radio hits 30, 40, 50, even 60 years ago. They can do these songs justice far better than me. My goal is to introduce sounds and songs that people may never hear otherwise.

I don't particularly enjoy gigging, and I make more at my actual career than I could ever get playing bars, restaurants, brew pubs, wineries and farmers markets. So to get me to load up my gear and go play I have to really love the material I play, which is not the done-to-death covers played by others. The songs I play are still covers because I didn't write them, but they're fresh to the audience.

[Howard Emerson]

I do many unique arrangements of other composers songs.

I still pay the Harry Fox Agency a fee every time I record one, no matter how unique my arrangement is.

It's still a recording of a song I did not write. Probably the most important thing to me is giving the actual writers of the song due credit. I never, ever, give credit to the performer whose version is the most famous, like Peggy Lee doing Fever.

She didn't write it, and I still prefer the original recording by Little Willie John most of all, but he didn't write it either.

It was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell.

Their estates split the fee with Harry Fox.

If you didn't write it, it's a cover, for better or worse.

Howard Emerson

[upsidedown]

Originally Posted by davidd

My rule of thumb is unless you have originals that are far better than a cover in the same vein you shouldn't bother playing them for an audience. IMO nothing worse than boring originals with somebody pouring out their inner angst for the world to witness. A singer/guitarist isn't necessarily a good songwriter and doesn't need to be to be an entertaining artist. Self-awareness rather than self-indulgence is very important when an audience is involved.

So, instead of an occasional new song in the mix, let's just listen to a watered down version of Wagon Wheel for eternity. No thanks.

No, not all singer/guitarists are great songwriters, but some of them are. And who ever said that because a song is original it has to be self-indulgent and angst-ridden?

But to the OP's point, I'd say Jimi Hendrix's version of All Along The Watchtower is more a performance than a cover of the original. Same with Janis doing Me And Bobby McGee. Two examples where the originals were blown out of the water (IMHO).

[jay42]

Seems like if you release a cover for profit and don't have to pay someone else mechanical royalties, then it must be out of copyright and yours...not a 'cover.'

[Mark Stone]

Originally Posted by davenumber2

If you didn't write it, it's a cover. Seems pretty simple.

I think of a “cover” as an interpretation of a previously recorded song. I have a lot of friends that have written material (that has never been recorded) that I use frequently, but I wouldn’t consider my renditions “covers” - but then again, it depends on how we define the term.

[RLetson]

I have some training in linguistics and semantics and a lot of experience with music history, which prompts the following:

First, of course language changes, and the sense of "cover song" is currently as attested by most of the posters here. Which does not mean that it was always used in that broad sense.

Second, what lexicographers do is establish how words have originated and been used via examples--generally in print, though I suspect that other media are now included. (The current Word of the Year came via Tik Tok.) Here's a look at how the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) traced "cover song":

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.usag...eAjZDYEJ?hl=en

The OED examples are from UK publications, with the earliest from 1966. I haven't found a US-equivalent etymology on-line, but if I were assembling one, I would start with music-biz publications, look for the earliest examples, and note its sense. But I strongly suspect that if you were to ask a non-music-biz person in, say, 1952, what a "cover song" was, you would get a blank stare. It was at that time a music-biz term, and it indicated exactly what I outlined in my post above.

Third, it might be useful to investigate what second and subsequent recordings of popular songs were called in, say, 1935, when show tunes were not recorded by the stage performers but by others, who might have made them hits. And a really popular tune would be picked up by other performers and become a "standard," part of the repertories of any number of artists, most of whom did not mimic the "original" but put their own stamp on it.

Here's an experiment: Seek out the earliest recording of "Mack the Knife"--or, to use its original title, "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" from The Threepenny Opera. There's a 1929 recording of Bertoldt Brecht singing it in pretty much its stage form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L37d5lfr324

But the version most of us are familiar with is probably Bobby Darin's in 1958, which is in turn a somewhat jazzed-up version of Louis Armstrong's 1955 recording of Marc Blitzstein's 1954 translation--pretty close to a cover, but still its own take on the tune. Most performers since have tended to follow the Armstrong-Darin approach. (Sidenote: There's a famous recording of Ella Fitzgerald doing it and blowing the words partway through--and name-checking Darin and Armstrong.)

(BTW, when fact-checking my recollections, I found that the Wikipedia article on "Mack" has a very illuminating performance/recording history.)

Now--how useful is it to characterize everything after the Brecht version (which seems to have surfaced in 1960) as a "cover"? The melody remains stable, but the words, the tempo, the delivery all change significantly--until the Armstrong-Darin version stabilized it, at least for non-theatrical performance. (New translations and productions of Threepenny Opera have continued to evolve the original text.)

So: In 2022, and probably since 1970 or so, "cover song" has come to mean simply "a song performed not by its original performer." But there's a history beyond that sense, tied to the practices and assumptions of the music business up through the 1950s. And it does not deal with the fact that there is a whole realm of musical performance in which the performers do not do material they originated.

BTW Part Deux: anybody familiar with the distinction between "cover band" and "variety band"?

[Kyle215]

Originally Posted by davenumber2

If you didn't write it, it's a cover. Seems pretty simple.

I feel like there is a separate category for traditional songs, which often nobody knows who actually wrote them. Maybe there is a particular iconic recording - like if I were to play Shady Grove just like Doc Watson - that would probably fall under “cover”. But that song has like 80 verses and everyone usually chooses different ones.

Or in jazz they’d be called interpretations of standards, or something similar.