Making your band create a crappy version of a great song doesn't just cause people to get annoyed because they enjoyed that original song, it also causes people to hate your band because they now have an instant reference point; Limp Bizkit once did a number of covers of songs by The Who, causing me to hate them before even listening to their own unique output. Why? because I'd heard what The Who had done with these songs, making them into operatic yet conservative pieces of enjoyable rock, clearly songs made in the 60s/70s yet also not at all trapped into the cultural landscape like so much music from that time is. I could instantly compare that sound - which represented all that The Who was (and apparently still is, despite wanting to "die before I get old") - with the sound of the Limb Bizkit version, which felt like another piece of generic rock music. Their cover of "behind Blue Eyes", my favorite Who song, was their biggest offense, mainly because they took off the uplifting second half of the song and replaced it with some weird technology-heavy weirdness (or so I remember, I'm listening to Zeppelin right now and sure as hell aren't turning them off to listen to Bizkit).
So where am I going with this? and what the hell does it have to do with the title. Well I could scour the internet for every cover version of all your favorite songs, but I want to draw your attention to just one of your favorites: Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and the Miley Cyrus version I first heard only last week. For your own viewing pleasure (instant disapproval?) I've embedded the video below:
Now before I talk about that I want to say that i do know what the generally accepted terms of a good and bad cover song is. The obvious choice for what a bad cover song is obviously one that ruins the original music simply through a strange instrumental choice, bad music skill, or bad singing, but I'd also argue that a bad cover would also be a song which boringly tries to replicate the original exactly how it is. A good cover on the other would be a musical act using the original song as the basis to create their own piece of great music. I'm not saying it has to deride that far from the original source, but a carbon-copy of the original song isn't a cover, it's band practice.
So where does that Miley Cyrus cover fall. If you look at all of the comments on other uploads of the video on Youtube (that particular one disabled comments, wonder why?) and you'll see nothing but hate from Cobain-worshiping Nirvana fans, and surprisingly few Cyrus fans running to her aid.
Yet there is a lifetimes worth of amateur guitarists trying out Smells like Teen Spirit on youtube, and quite a few famous musicians as well. The amateur ones are as you'd expect more advertisements for the uploaders guitar skills than there for entertainment, while a live cover I find by James Morrison just sounds like a poor imitation of the original. One you might expect might have some heart in it was a cover by Patti Smith, yet she sounded so uninterested, like she had just woken up that morning and decided that out of all the hit rock songs she could cover that day, that Nirvana's breakout hit was the one most perfect for the job.
But this Miley Cyrus one is something different. I heard it a few days ago and while never returning to it since to have another listen, it for some reason stayed in my head. Love or hate the sound of Cyrus' version, it accomplishes the goal of a cover song.
How? I hear you ask in a sweaty panic, worried that I am saying the closest thing we have to Kurt Cobain now is Miley Cyrus. I mean no such thing. What I am saying that-that song there isn't really a Nirvana song at all. Its the Miley Cyrus version. I'm sure Kurt Cobain cared atleast somewhat about those sarcastic swipes at teenage angst, and his garbled singing voice - making the lyrics completely indecipherable to some listeners - became a real part of the song (and all other Nirvana songs for that matter). yet Cyrus cares more about the dance moves, seducing her audience (and causing widespread applause) as she sings "a dirty word". her voice makes the words clearer, yet she sings them without sarcasm. If Cobain sold the song as one big joke on the mainstream then Cyrus buys into it completely, making it a song to appeal perfectly to her teenage audience, who probably think they're more rebellious than they really are.
Maybe some people will simply see me praising the Cyrus version as an ask for hatred from Nirvana fans (of which I'm proud to call myself) yet it really isn't. The Cyrus version doesn't out-rank Cobain's version in my eyes, it simply creates something so Miley Cyrus-y that I can't help but applaud. Maybe I find it funny, it is of course a sign of the times that Cyrus shortens the 5 minute song to just three minutes in fear that her fans simply couldn't last that long, and that she doesn't strum a guitar to this song; she simply sings along to a backing track. Or maybe I just find it in some strange way pleasing to see a celebrity with such a squeaky-clean image do something a bit rebellious.
I can't explain (the name of a damn good Who song) why I wrote this, and for my first post no-less. Maybe I just felt that-that cover says more (good and bad) about the state of modern music than any post I could have written.
Or maybe the music snob in me wanted to praise a Miley Cyrus version of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Limb Bizkit eat your heart out.
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