Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music

Covering"the musical practice of one artist recording or performing another composer's song"has always been an attribute of popular music. In 2009, the internet database Second Hand Songs estimated that there are 40,000 songs with at least one cover version. Some of the more common variations of this "appropriationist" method of musical quotation include traditional forms such as patriotic anthems, religious hymns such as Amazing Grace, Muzak's instrumental interpretations, Christmas classics, and children's songs. Novelty and comedy collections from parodists such as Weird Al Yankovic also align in the cover category, as does the "larcenous art" of sampling, and technological variations in dance remixes and mash-ups. Film and television soundtracks and advertisers increasingly rely on versions of familiar pop tunes to assist in marketing their narratives and products. The cover phenomenon in popular culture may be viewed as a postmodern manifestation in music as artists revisit, reinterpret and re-examine a significant cross section of musical styles, periods, genres, individual records, and other artists and their catalogues of works.The cover complex, with its multiple variations, issues, contexts, and re-contextualizations comprises an important and rich popular culture text. These re-recordings represent artifacts which embody artistic, social, cultural, historical, commercial, biographical, and novel meanings. Through homage, allusion, apprenticeship, and parody, among other modes, these diverse musical quotations express, preserve, and distribute popular culture, popular music and their intersecting historical narratives. Play it Again represents the first collection of critical perspectives on the many facets of cover songs in popular music.

George Plasketes is Professor of Radio-Television-Film and Popular Culture in the Department of Communication & Journalism at Auburn University, USA.

Introduction Like A Version, George Plasketes; Part 1 Front Cover: Treatise; Chapter 1 Further Re-flections on "The Cover Age": A Collage and Chronicle 1 This chapter is a remastered and expanded edition of an essay that appeared in the special issue on cover songs in Popular Music and Society in 2005. Thanks always to the journal's editor extraordinaire Gary Burns., George Plasketes; Part 2 Under the Covers: History, Ideology, Identity; Chapter 2 Charting Cultural Change, 1953-57: Song Assimilation Through Cover Recording, B. Lee Cooper; Chapter 3 The Cover Song as Historiography, Marker of Ideological Transformation, Sheldon Schiffer; Chapter 4 Cover Up: Emergent Authenticity in a Japanese Popular Music Genre, Christine R. Yano; Part 3 The Song Remains the Same? Song and Album; Chapter 5 From Junk to Jesus: Recontextualizing "The Pusher", Andrew G. Davis; Chapter 6 David Bowie's Pin-Ups : Past as Prelude, Stuart Lenig; Part 4 Look What They've Done To My Song: Gender, Identity, Media Makeovers; Chapter 7 Queering Cohen: Cover Versions as Subversions of Identity, Erik Steinskog; Chapter 8 Covering and Un(covering) the Truth with "All Along the Watchtower": From Dylan to Hendrix and Beyond, Russell Reising; Chapter 9 The Same Yet Different/Different Yet the Same: Bob Dylan Under the Cover of Covers, Greg Metcalf; Part 5 Don't Forget To Dance: Technique and Techno Transformations; Chapter 10 "Hide and Seek": A Case of Collegiate A Cappella "Microcovering", Joshua S. Duchan; Chapter 11 The Mashup Mindset: Will Pop Eat Itself?, David Tough; Chapter 12 Camp Transitions: Genre Adaptation and the HI-NRG/Dance Cover Version, Lee Barron; Part 6 Contemplating Covers; Chapter 13 In Defense of Cover Songs: Commerce and Credibility, Don Cusic; Chapter 14 Artist Intentions: A Case for Quality Covers, Remy Miller; Part 7 Back Cover: Epilogue; Chapter 15 Appreciating Cover Songs: Stereophony, Deena Weinstein;