Cover Jobs...

I found a new-to-me place on the net today, jukesy.com  It's a site that lets you type in a song or type of music & starts loading videos from Youtube.com  that fit the description.   I typed in Pop Muzik  & it loaded several options.  The first of course was the original song from the 70's.

Then it went to 90's revamp from A Night At The Roxbury.  Then it started taking some unforeseen turns.  There was an odd rendition from U2 of all bands.  Of course, some rapper had to use the title & have absolutely nothing to do with the original song.  An English speaking J-band named eX-Girls did a screechy cover.  Jedward did some weird, teenish cover.   Fler did a scary, German rap thing unrelated to the original. Dub Spencer & Trance Hill did something sort of related to the original & then there were others again totally unrelated. 

Covers are a touchy subject for me.  I love a lot of covers, but I hate far more.  Covers should show respect to the original song.  They should be more than someone sampling a base line or a riff.  At the same time the cover should be made the singer/band's own.  It should have their impact on the song.  A complete copy of the original song is not a cover, it's a tribute.   There are places for tributes songs, albums & even bands, but they aren't covers, they're sound-a-likes.

Take Blue Monday by New Order.  Orgy's cover was good, but really not that different, just screamier.  The same goes for Fear Factory's cover of Gary Numan's Cars.  An example of a good cover is Prince's When You Were Mine as covered by Cyndi Lauper.  Then Tegan & Sara did what seemed like a tribute to Cyndi's version of the song.

Covers are like life.  We all have to deal with what were handed & most often what we find in front of us are hand-me-downs & stuff recycled a zillion different times.  You not only have to make it work, you have to make it yours.  So what if you now live in a house that's had four different owners, you can still make your home, showing your personality.  I guess the hardest part of this is knowing who you are & accepting the limitations of your materials; your clothes, yours music or your house.  Being original isn't about having everything brand new.  It's about making whatever it is, no matter how old, scream that it's yours.

Try to do one thing today that just screams YOU!