Under The Covers

This morning I, and anyone else who happened to be listening to the same station at the same time, was "lucky" enough to have my eardrums surprised with Alanis Morrisette, whom we haven't heard from for a while, covering Seal's classic "Crazy". The DJ was very excited to start the week with this new track: I, unsurprisingly, was not as excited.

Ah, Covers. They are traditionally tricky to perform, and they're also rude and presumptious to sell: It is one thing if you're covering a song to honour the original artist, or to raise money for charity. It is another thing altogether if you are clearly out of your own ideas but still expect the music-savvy public to shell out their hard-earned in exchange for your "talent". (Westlife, anyone?) Yes, so as you see, I'm generally not a fan of this "genre", unless the artist has one really pushed the song to the limits and does something extraordinary. Anyway, it isn't rocket science! Slow it down or speed it up, substitute an instrument, sample, change the gender of the singer, change the key, make some effort. Don't just sing over the old tracks with an trademark trill or two! I'd expect such low-stoopage from the regulars at "Capricorn" (or insert sleazy local Karaoke dive of your choice) not from a multi-million selling, allegedly talented singer-songwriter who used to be quite good!

Maybe it was all a figment of my imagination: Today has been weird like that so far. Nobody has acknowledged me yet this morning, either physically or telephonically or cyberspatially. Perhaps the song was the universe's way of trying to tell me something?

Or perhaps not. Perhaps this is the start of the fall of our 90's Music Idols, as they fall over themselves to cover each other: What can possibly be next? Oasis covering Bjork? Spice Girls "doing" Radiohead? Celine Dion re-recording an obscure Nirvana track or two? Oh, Nevermind. (Geddit?) I hereby give up trying to understand the music industry.

Which doesn't mean I won't still moan about it.