With the help of youtube, everyone can share their brilliant renditions of popular songs. Did I say brilliant rendition? I meant crappy clones. I don’t see how learning the chords to a song and recording yourself playing them equals cover. There are some professional covers that do sound very similar to the original, but usually for the most part artists put their own spin on things. Jimmy Eat World covered Heatmeiser’s “Not Half Right” a few years ago, and it sounds very similar, but it’s still really good. I was just on youtube looking up people doing their own versions of Kings of Leon’s “Sex on Fire”, and um…not one good one. First of all, way to just copy it. Second of all, way to copy it badly. They all sounded way too upbeat and hokey. It’s a very sexy song, and they all just kind of took the sexy out. It would have been alright to just copy it if they copied it well. An even better thing would have been to try to put an original spin on it. The Cure’s “Lovesong” has been covered many times over, but the covers always sound different, so it’s like a new song, same meaning, same lyrics, different music. The Killers’ cover of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay” is probably my favourite cover ever. They definitely made it sound different, they kept the meaning and the tone, but I actually like it better than the original.

I understand doing a cover of a song is not being original in itself, but if you can’t be original, then just don’t. Please. Don’t. Just stop.