A Music Post

So, this morning as I was making all of my message board rounds, I stumbled across something that really made me worry about the future of America as a whole.  No, it had nothing to do with sports (those are typically the message boards I read, after all).  It had nothing to do with an impending category 4 hurricane that's about to hit the Gulf Coast again.  It even had nothing to do with this upcoming presidential election.  

What I saw was...

Everlast covering Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."

WHAT?

There are some songs you can cover and get away with, no problem.  There are other songs that only the greats should try to cover.  There are some songs that are just untouchable.  And there are some artists, as a whole, who are untouchable.  Folsom Prison is one of those songs, and Johnny Cash is one of those artists.

It's kind of a disturbing thing in music these days though.  I mean, covers have always been popular.  "Hallelujah" has been covered so many times that people have a tough time remembering who originally wrote it - Leonard Cohen.  The occasional cover of an 80s song by some pop-punk band is fun from time to time.  But people are starting to cover classics - and butchering them.  "Sweet Child of Mine" and "Behind Blue Eyes" are two in particular.  The one that hurts me most, personally, is Uncle Kracker's cover of Dobie Gray's "Drift Away."  And I think the reason it bothers me is that kids now look at these songs and say "Oh, that's a Limp Bizkit/Uncle Kracker/Sheryl Crow song" instead of whoever originally wrote it.

The other thing is...it's just lazy.  When Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," he basically rewrote the music to the song.  In the aforementioned covers, they just play the song the way it was written, record it, and make money.  There's nothing to it - somebody else wrote it, somebody else recorded it, somebody else made it famous, so all you have to do is get on a tab website, learn how to play it, and record it EXACTLY THE SAME and you make a million.  Super easy.  

It's ridiculous, and it needs to stop!  If you're going to do a cover, at least do something to make it your own.  If not, then just don't bother.