Is it just me?

This morning I stumbled - by accident - on yet another cover of Gotye's hit. I don't know how many I've heard (so far). Between the moment the song hit the charts and the moment when everyone started putting out cover versions, there must have been a down time of maybe, say, 37 seconds...

Then I remembered when people started saturating the market w/ covers of Cohen's Hallelujah - seems every one and their brother did a cover of that song for a while. Or the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army. Was there ever a period where that song was allowed to rest and to age a bit?

I recently heard of someone doing a cover "The Tea Party's song, Messenger" - which, of course was originally a Daniel Lanois song.

Don't get me wrong I absolutely love doing covers - I particularly like taking more obscure pieces of an artist catalogue and breathe a new life into them, twist them around and make them mine. If it's something that has already been covered by someone else before (as is often the case, anyway), I need to have some pretty serious reasons to do it - I have to believe that what I'm doing is bringing something new. 

But something that's just been released last year or the year before? No way. And something that's already saturated the market? No way. Who wants to hear another cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart, seriously?

It's almost like people's musical culture is now limited to the last 18 months. 

A friend of mine who plays in bars recently remarked - if I play a classic song, my best bet to get a reaction from the crowd when I introduce the song is not to introduce it w/ the name of the artist, but instead, tell them in which recent movie it was... 

Like, here's a song from Shreck 2 - and then proceed to play Bowie's Changes... 

Speaking of commercialism and short attention spans, how was Love, Rain?

Overall - A splendid time is guaranteed for all. ;)

I've heard all the original songs a hundred billion times and I had heard the remixes before. I've listened to them on everything from crappy desktop speakers to studio monitors. , But I had never quite heard The Beatles as I did last night at The Mirage... (Oh yeah, and the visuals weren't too shabby either.) 

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2689523

Methinks Bapu would have liked A Day in the Life. ;)

I do not listen to Ga Ga..  or Goaty a

Nobody has done a cover of any of my songs yet....and some of them have been out for years.... one guy threatened to do one but never did.... 

Quoting Christopher Titus:

"Music is dead because Lady Gaga lives"

"Lady Gaga is proof that David Bowie raped Carol Burnett"

I didn't know who Carol Burnet was when I heard it... I'm thinking Titus may be on to something.

Well, I don't know how this thread degraded to a point where it was neccessary to insult several artists. Cover tunes are just affirmations of the original work. In an artistic way it says, " this is how that work made me feel, this is how I see it." For someone to take the time to cover a tune is an act of honoring that tune. A way of promoting that idea.

I see what Rain is saying - especially with the Gotye song - which I loved until I realised it was a cover of baa-baa black sheep and now I can't listen to it without hearing that instead. ;)

However, I think it has probably always been the way  that more people are going to pick up on the massive hits, the main thing that has really changed is everyones ability to put there version out there. There were probably many thousands of Beatles wannabees back in the day and still are many thousands of Elvis impersonators, we just didn't used to be able to see / hear them all. I guess also that some songs are more easy to play than others - not everybody is a virtuoso, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't have a go at what they can do.

Personally, I have no problems with covers either being much the same or totally re-worked as long as they are done with a passion or meaning of some kind by the performer and not just "well let's do a Beatles song because lots of people will buy that". Great songs are meant to be enjoyed and enjoyment takes many forms.