Original vs. Covers

Music has always been something inspiring for artists, and musicians like other artists have found other works from their field, to be inspiring. Sometimes a good work is a good work, if it is a famous painting, a great movie or a good song, so artists always look back to the roots to learn what did work in a particular time and why.

Making a cover for a song could be easier that composing something original, but making a good cover isn’t anything easy. If an orchestra is interpreting a classical piece, they are reading from a music sheet exactly what the original composer intended to express, but a cover version of a song is sometimes different in interpretation than the original. This is done by bringing old tunes to todays “standards” by artists who want their personal touch in a classic song that had success some time ago and might have today, but by playing it in their own style can make it stand from the crowd.

A cover version, or simply cover, is a new rendition (performance or recording) of a previously recorded, commercially released song. Sometimes if a cover is good enough it could have an effect to revive the original song and to bring it into attention once again, if it wasn’t already. Some artists made very successful careers out of presenting revivals or reworkings of once popular tunes, even out of doing contemporary cover versions of current hits. Musicians now play what they call “cover versions” (e.g. the reworking, updating or interpretation) of songs as a tribute to the original performer or group.

Others try to pay a tribute to older bands by playing some songs of the artist, but there are also bands who call themselves tribute bands and play only covers of a particular band.

While music became more and more diverse it has become more and more interesting to hear different original songs covered in many different ways, like for example Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s cover of ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”, who made it with a powerful metal feel. Some would like the new versions, others won’t but diversity is interesting. Some metal bands try a different approach, to cover songs generally not listened to by metal fans, such as pop, punk, or classic rock songs. For example Children of Bodom’s cover of Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did It Again” was originally recorded as an in-joke amongst the band members but ended up being released as a bonus track on one of their EPs. Blind Guardian, another metal band covered many old songs like surf-rock hit “Surfin’ Usa” as well as 50’s hit “Mr. Sandman” and oldie rock and roll “Barbara Ann”.



Other bands made covers in a different genre like Run-D.M.C.’s 1986 cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way”, which featured the original band, is a notable example of a hip-hop group remaking a popular song from another genre, and the list goes on.



Here on Sensoria.ws I will try to present the most interesting covers and their originals, starting a category in “Music”, “Original vs. Covers”, so check back from time to time.