On The Cover And The Innovation Of Popular Songs

In popular music, a cover version of a song often involves the reinterpretation ofthe original arrangement, giving the original song a new lease of life as well as adding a morepersonal touch that is unique to the performing artist. There has been numerous commerciallysuccessful songs throughout the history of popular music; the same original song covered bydifferent artists can have vastly different effect through their unique voice and performance.During the recent hit TV series “I am a singer”, the author found that almost all artistswere giving their own unique interpretation while performing some of the old classics, thequality of these performance is mostly flawless, some of the artists were even able to give theoriginal song a whole new meaning via their own interpretation. Through extensive literatureresearch, audio books and the likes, the author has found that the opinions of how a coversong should be performed varied vastly between domestic and foreign students. The author’sview leans toward being completely innovative, with the aim of making the song their own.Although a question need to be raised, how exactly should a cover song be performed in orderto give it a new lease of life.The thesis consists of4chapters.Chapter1is on an overview of cover versions,especially the current situation and doubts around them. There are2subsections.Subsection1talks about the overview and status quo of cover versions, whilst subsection2deals with thequestions raised by "I’m a Singer" on cover versions.Chapter2analyses the value of coverversions, and has two subsections. Chapter3is about the means of cover versions, through ananalysis of4songs. There are4subsections. Subsection1analyses the lyrics, subsection2compares various music styles, subsection3on the processing of music composition andorchestration, and subsection4talks about variation of tonality. Chapter4is the mattersneeding attention of cover versions.The conclusion of this being: An artist possessing certainskill sets should not merely imitate the original song, instead they should think of ways ofhow the original song can once again be innovative, using their own understanding andexperience to alter the lyrics, style, the arrangement to give a completely new interpretation ofthe song.