Music Lesson 1: Covers

Let’s talk for a minute about doing cover songs!! I am a HUGE fan of when my favorite artist covers a song I loved from another era in music. One example is when Dustin from Thrice covered “Round Here” by counting crows. I love “Round Here” and I loved Thrice and sure enough it was epic. One thing I have always stressed for an up and coming artist to do in there live shows is play a cover during the set. Now it’s not always necessary but it can drastically help pull your audience in and make them pay attention to you if they hear a song that takes them back. This little tidbit of touring insight is most crucial when you are a new act and playing to people in clubs who have really no clue who the fuck you are, they are just there for the drinks and to see the band after you cause they blew the guy once when they were in high school. Covers can be fun to play too. I have this friend who is part of a big act, but she plays small acoustic shows from time to time between “tours” to keep up the routine when things go stale, as they often are for long periods of time. One thing that I told her to start doing was just the above, now you don’t have to play the whole song even, just enough for people to go “hey! I remember this song, I love this song!” Here is how it went down; she would play a couple of her songs and people of course would be not paying attention cause it was LA and people a fucktards here, and then she would say "here is a new song I just wrote, I hope you like it” and play the first verse of “Hey There Delilah” when the song was at it’s peak in early 2007 (after being put, for the 3rd consecutive album, on their newest one too). Then she would stop and say, I’m just kidding I didn’t write that, now I’ll play one of my real songs” and people would laugh and start paying attention. That’s pure marketing genius right there.

Here is where it gets sketchy. What about putting a cover on my real album? Great! Once. Ever. You must be careful when coving songs on your studio release. It should always be a song from a different era and should never be the single you lead with. If you do lead with that you’re fucked (See Alien Ant Farm, Orgy, etc)! I would recommend saving them till the second record much like Atreyu did. Cause if you even make it to your second record people should already start to know who you are and not “those guys that covered that Michael Jackson song.” On the 2nd record you sprinkle in the cover so that the people who already knew who you were fall in love even more and THEN new people can hear it and say “wow!” and hopefully the older fans can say “yeah, you should hear their first album too!” and BAM! Stardom.

Sometimes artists can get really excited about covers. Sometimes they can put out an entire album of them. God knows why you’d want to cause it’d make a nightmare for royalty payments and pretty much make you look like a clown and destroy any “creative” artist reputation you had because you are now a total lazy cop-out. (Exceptions of course being Christmas albums, which I think are stupid to do anyway Kelly Clarkson. The Rat Pack ones will always be the best versions of those songs.). I recently saw an artist do three on one release. THREE! Why? Two were actually on the album and the 3rd was a fucking B-side to the same album. God knows why you would ever do that. The really shitty thing about the whole situation was that one of the songs was a purchased song (not written by the singer) and was just sang by Hilary Duff LAST YEAR! No one told the singer who’s name was going on the album either! They just made her do the song, and then threw her to the wolves. Now she is getting crucified on every comment section and message board around the world! They even are constantly vandalizing her Wikipedia page on an almost daily basis! The worst thing about it is that she has a team of people that are supposed to be watching and protecting her, doing research and making sure that every t is crossed and all i’s and lower case j’s (thank you Wayne’s World 2) are dotted and they did NOTHING! I even found all the info in 5 minutes with a simple Google search! It’s almost like they wanted it to happen, like in some way they said to themselves “this is a great idea to a quick and easy path to make her a superstar!” The artist even had enough material to put out a full album with no covers and they opted to include three. Granted one of them was a song contributed to a compilation CD this last summer, but I think that compilation cover songs should NEVER be included in a official studio release by an artist. Those are separate and can be later B-sides on reissues 10 years from now. Plus if it’s not included, the consumer will go out and buy that compilation too if they really want it! Sounds like more money for everyone to me!

So basically what I am trying to say is this: Cover songs are great for live performances and great to put out ONCE in a career, and somewhere in the middle of your catalogue.

Rules for covers:

Never on a first album!

Never more than once in your career on an official release!

Never play one twice in the same city on tour!

Pick a different era then the one you are in if you can as it attracts a broader audience, otherwise pick a recently popular song outside your genre!

Make sure it hasn’t been done recently!

If you are playing it live, make sure you SAY that you are playing a cover! Otherwise you run the risk of people thinking you are playing all covers and there goes your respect as an artist. Differentiate the two!

PEACE!

Next entry will be tips and tricks for playing a good live show that people actually care to watch!