"why's" a cover

[mr. piper]

why should a cover as we know them, be called a cover?

when someone plays mozart they aren't covering him,and so forth, see what i mean?

[Mattk]

it is contradictory isnt it ?

cheap covers get slagged off but then you hear all the 'expert' singers come out of the woodwork at xmas time with an album full of nothing but covers but for some reason thats acceptable ! 

99.9% of covers are a total waste of time  

[Yeah Bee]

There aren't any recordings of Mozart playing himself. What shouylkd we do just read the notes. A bad cover is when you make a song just for sales and not for the love of an artist. Like Johnny Cash i guess he has al the money he needs, or needed to be exact. He and many others do it like a tribute, Brittney doesn't. Then there is the thing when if you take an unknown song and perform it for the love of the song.

[sammy snake]

Like the answer above, Beethoven / Mozart and the likes just composed the music scores, they didn't 'perform' it as such.  Classical music is a totally different ball game as there are many different interpretations of a particular piece of music, performed by different Orchestras and conducted by different conductors etc.

Bob Geldof and Midge ure wrote 'Feed The World' for Band Aid but it isn't called a cover version just because they don't sing it themselves. 

 

Plus I think the phrase 'cover version' is a modern term used to describe a song or piece of music that has already been made famous by someone else performing it.  Classical music is generally not 'modern' so the phrase wouldn't really apply.

[Octavius]

A statement issued by Don McLean (apparently):

 

ON THE INCORRECT USE OF THE TERM �COVER�

The word �cover� is now used by music writers and music fans incorrectly. They use it to describe any attempt by an artist to perform old songs or previously recorded material. The use of this term gives them a bit of authority since it makes them sound like they are in the music business. They are in fact ignorant of what a cover version of a song really is.

Back in the days of black radio stations and white radio stations (i.e. segregation), if a black act had a hot record the white kids would find out and want to hear it on �their� radio station. This would prompt the record company to bring a white act into the recording studio and cut an exact, but white, version of the song to give to the white radio stations to play and thus keep the black act where it belonged, on black radio. A �cover� version of a song is a racist tool. Many examples can be found from �Sha Boom� to �Good Lovin�� It is NOT a term intended to be used to describe a valid interpretation of an old song. In that case every pop singer is nothing more than a cover artist (a derogatory description if ever there was one). I am not a �cover� artist and I do not do �covers�. The Crewcuts were cover artists.

The term has morphed into its present misuse and I suppose I�ll not see this change anytime soon but I do hope the readers of this website and fans who are kind enough to write concert reviews will not use this term.

Madonna did not �cover� American Pie, she just sang an old song, and made an old songwriter mighty happy.

 

 

[Yeah Bee]

Corrections to Sammy Snake, Mozart did perform his own stuff, he was an wonderchild and wrotec stuff at the age of 6.

Otherwise your answer was great,

then there is tribute albums like when new groups get together and record Clash or something. It is then a differnt reason.

The "COVER" can sometimes be better then the original like Hurt by Johnny Cash or Jolene by the White Stripes

[Yeah Bee]

You mean Don Mcclean as in American Pie Don Mclean