Covertura - The Sincerest Form of Flattery

October 2, 2010 8:47 AM

Covertura - The Sincerest Form of Flattery
Covers of songs. Inspired in no small part by all the fantastic posts and questions about covers on the blue and the green, I'm posting one cover every day. Popular posts have been
Bat for Lashes: "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen
Yann Tiersen: "Life on Mars" by David Bowie
Placebo: "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush.
I would appreciate any opinions, criticism and/or ideas to make it better. Thanks.
posted by Cobalt (3 comments total)

I love the idea. I love covers. You totally lost me when you said Limp Bizkit's Behind Blue Eyes is good and if I hadn't found the site here I'd wonder if someone was paying you to do this.

Really, there's no reason not to include bad covers. Avrigl's Chop Suey for instance. Go ahead and say that they're bad if they are.

Finally, and I'm not saying this to be mean, either copy the stuff from Wikipedia or don't. Honestly I'd rather hear what you have to say about the band than what Wikipedia has to say about them.

All of that being said, I'm adding this to by RSS feed. It looks like it will be a cool idea.
posted by theichibun at 1:26 PM on October 3, 2010

Hi, and thank you very much for the feedback. It's the first opinion I've received from someone I don't know IRL and I really appreciate it, so I might get a little too eager and long-winded. If that happens, please accept my apologies.

Limp Bizkit: Jeez, you're just like my friend Pagani, who really skewered me for that one : )
I actually like it quite a bit, especially the Discovery part you mentioned. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that The Who were not a serious part of my musical upbringing -as The Beatles were, for example- so I don't enshrine them as much. I concede that the rest of the song is not very original from a strictly musical point of view, but that a band so ill-regarded by the cognoscenti managed to not hiphopize it and just plain ruin it seems worthy of recognition.

That Avril monstrosity, no. Just...no. Thanks for pointing out its existence but...damn...what was she thinking? It's repulsive! I can't believe how unprofessional that was.

Wiki or not? I've been struggling with aspects of that myself. When I first started, there was only the cover, later on I added the link to the original, then I added the Wiki links -for further study and context- and finally I added my commentary.

I do want to keep the Wiki links, for those who might not be familiar with song or artist. I don't want to pass it off as my own. Is the placement of my commentary ahead of the links implying that the info is mine? Perhaps I could change the links to "more from Wikipedia". Would that work? As for my own opinions, I'm still struggling to find my footing and voice. I'll concentrate on doing better.

Now I'm off to find decent covers of "Chop Suey" and "Aerials".
posted by Cobalt at 5:06 PM on October 3, 2010

If you're still looking for cover songs, Stephen Merchant (co-writer of the original Office series) had a radio show on BBC 6 (which sadly only ran from 2007-2009). During the first year or so, he always included one cover song in a segment he called "Mr. Cover Cover." I only mention it because they were usually quite good and some of them were a bit on the obscure side. That's where I first heard the Bat for Lashes version of I'm on Fire. Some of his inclusions were Aztec Camera - "Jump"; Kathryn Williams - "Bird" and Patti Smith - "Because the Night." The tracklist for the entire Mr. Cover Cover series is over on the Pilkipedia Wiki.
posted by kaybdc at 9:45 AM on October 14, 2010