Monday Musings: When are covers inappropriate?

Ever since the dawning of the Neanderthals when Og stole Thog's idea for making fire, people have been putting their own spins on other people's ideas. Now, music-wise, we can talk about sampling and we can talk about cover songs. But what does my title say I want to talk about today? It looks like we're gonna talk about cover songs.

This is Aerosmith's version of one of my favourite Beatles songs, as you might recall: "Come Together". What do I think of it? Well, I love Aerosmith and I love "Come Together", but I think The Beatles' version is still superior. Although I still like this version a lot. It's a harmless cover, and it gets the job done.

But harmless covers are not the type I'm going to talk about today. No, today we're going to talk about when cover songs are inappropriate, or just not very well-thought-out. What makes it so?

I think that part of the problem with some cover songs is that if you're going to cover a song, make sure it's not one that has that extra-special meaning to the original artist. I mean, obviously all songs an artist writes, composes and performs will have some kind of meaning attached to them, but there's a difference between covering The Beatles' "Come Together"...

...and covering "Let it Be".

I still think I'm in the minority here, but I absolutely loathed this performance. Right down to that intro. When John Legend was talking about Paul writing the song about his mother I thought, "So let him sing the song then, you jackwad." And believe you me, I don't throw words like "jackwad" around lightly, I tell ya what.

You can't touch "Let it Be", in my opinion. No one can except Paul McCartney. Because that song is very personal to him, and it comes from a special place in his heart and in his mind. I mean, at least they played it at a Beatles tribute and not some separate performance on their own. But it still rubs me the wrong way.

I'll delve into more specifics later with my upcoming Top 10 list this week, but I'll leave this post on this note: You have to know and feel what you're singing in order to sing a song well without it sounding like amateur hour at a karaoke bar, no matter who you are. You could be John Legend, you could be Aretha Franklin, hell, you could even be Paul McCartney. Think before you sing. That's all. Thank you.