Cover Songs: Pop, Power and Personal Taste
However much you may cringe when another John Lewis piano ballad is played, or turn your nose up at a sparkly tiktok’d version, we are psychologically wired to like covers. There’s something about the deep familiarity, the delights of new twists and turns that fascinate me time and time again. Almost always the artist puts their own stamp on a song, and I enjoy comparing the differences between versions. Unfortunately, there’s a prevailing snootiness around covers and cover bands: I think they’re an entire corner of music that’s often shelved with karaoke. But by looking at music through the lens of covers, we can open up a whole new conversation about power, song-writing, genre and personal tastes.
Covers can foster an appreciation for lyrics that defy genre, and shows the universal nature of song writing. Take ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You’: a song with beautifully simple lyrics that capture how it feels to be completely in love with someone. I came to realise this after listening to the version by Lauryn Hill, which is sandwiched between longing tracks such as ‘Hurts so Bad’ on her debut solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Without the cheesy, crooning horns of the original distracting me, I could focus on and appreciate the lyrics better.
Sometimes, a cover brings a whole new dimension to a song - like my favourite cover of all time, the Staple Singers’ version of Talking Heads’ ‘Slippery People’. The original is pared-down, yet the Staple Singers version kicks off with a dramatic drumroll and funky bass line, and from the beginning its clear this version will take it up a notch. It’s something about the upped tempo, the increased insistent synth, and Mavis Staples’ soaring vocals that adds a dash of MSG to the cover.
And on the other end of the spectrum, it’s a testament to an artist’s talent when they can effortlessly cover a song exactly like the original. Earlier this year, Harry Styles covered Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ on American radio show The Howard Stern Show. Right down to the synth and the vocals, Styles nails Gabriel’s energy (luckily, without the creepy music video). If I could go back in time and tell 14-year-old me that I was shamelessly grooving to Harry Styles during work hours, I would have thought you some impostor - because at the time, I considered Oasis the pinnacle of musical achievement and Harry Styles a seriously uncool pretender. Even considering the future possibility of enjoying his music was on par with a conspiracy theory. My appreciation for this cover, and all of Styles’ solo work, shows how much my tastes have changed from my grotty, Britpop-obsessed beginnings.
However, in the way that someone takes and changes work, covers are inherently political and dynamics of power are evident. When a cover shoots to fame, generally the song comes to be associated with the more ‘famous’ act, and in many cases eclipses the work of the original artist. For example, just under half of the songs featured on the Beatles’ debut album Please Please Me are cover versions. Every single one of these covers are originally by Black artists. ‘Anna, Go To Him’ is originally by country soul singer Arthur Alexander, while ‘Chains’, ‘Boys’, ‘Baby It’s You’ and ‘P.S. I Love You’ are by girl groups The Cookies and The Shirelles. An Instagram post by @pocvoicesheard highlights this: examples include ‘Tainted Love’ by Gloria Jones and ‘Hound Dog’ by Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, which were covered by Soft Cell and Elvis Presley respectively. “In the cases we’ve outlined in this post, the songs were heavily commercialised and made so popular that the cover artists reaped the benefit from the songs while the creators were forgotten.” This implies that music created by Black artists can only enter the heights of success through popularisation by white artists - casting a shadow on those who pioneered the genre in the first place.
This notion is evident on Please Please Me: even the one of the most popular and well-loved songs on the album (and indeed the entire Beatles discography), ‘Twist and Shout’, was released by vocal group The Top Notes in 1961, two years previous to the release of the album. The success of this hit especially has obscured the song’s beginnings by Black musicians. For a long time, like many people, I thought Twist and Shout was a Beatles original.
Undoubtedly, the Beatles appreciated these songs and played them at their early shows because they liked them. In turn, these songs found their way onto Please Please Me: and as @pocvoicesheard mention in their post, “It’s okay to cover songs and use samples from other people’s music, the problem is when this is done without full credit given to the original artist.” In the review printed on the back of the vinyl sleeve, there is a mention of the Shirelles, but nothing of the Cookies or Arthur Alexander. This information is mostly lost to a streaming audience, too. It’s important to remember the origins of these songs - the Beatles didn’t invent them, they just made them more palatable for a white audience.
Maybe you prefer the original, maybe you prefer the cover: arguing this in the pub over a pint is a rite of passage. It’s important to understand and explore the politics and power dynamics in music, too - nothing is produced in a vacuum. Both originals and covers are valid and it brings joy to explore songs in a new dimension and appreciate them from angles you’ve never considered.
Written by Molly Cheek
Molly works in communications but prefers to be hunched over a book rather than a laptop. She performs poetry and music in and around Bristol.