you ever just learn something that feels so utterly *alien* to how you understood an entire class of art that you can't seem to understand it at all

@noiob is this an unusual enough thing that it needs a distinct name for it??

@Felthry why would it need to be unusual to be named?

@noiob I don't know, it's just like

the way we look at it, a performance of a piece by its composer is the more uncommon event, the performance by someone else ought to be considered the default, or something

@Felthry no, not like that

if someone writes a song for me and I perform it (as in I'm the original performer), it's not a cover, but if you then perform said song it's a cover

@noiob that's strange

since when are songs written for a specific performer

@Felthry well, most bands write their own songs, for starters, or the producing company has songwriters write songs for them

@Felthry it's very much a pop music thing, it's not called a cover if someone plays a Bach piece

@noiob I don't understand pop music

@Felthry well that won't help with understanding pop-music-specific phenomena

@Felthry but, like, most people who write music also play said music? I don't think that's a strange thing

pop musicians then sell recordings said music to be played on the radio/ sold on CDs/ whatever happens nowadays

@Felthry a big part of pop music is also live performances of said musicians

note that pop music especially in its roots didn't necessarily include writing down notes, a big part of stuff like blues or rock is "jamming", just sitting down to play whatever comes to mind

@noiob I guess we've just never known this stuff because we actively avoid pop music

vocals in music make us very uncomfortable so everything we listen to is either soundtrack music or classical music, pretty much

@Felthry there's instrumental pop music! Most jazz is instrumental. I'd classify a lot of soundtracks as pop music, too

@noiob I don't know what it is then

like, our entire conception of music is rooted in it being something that one person writes and many different people play, not something that one person writes and one person plays and then other people play but their performances are branded as lesser by the term "cover"

@noiob I don't know, this is just really weird

@Felthry they're not necessarily seen as lesser! There's a bunch of covers that became more popular than the original song. A good example would be Johnny Cash singing "Hurt", which was originally a Nine Inch Nails song, but even their singer was like "yeah that's Johnny's song now, his interpretation blows mine out of the water"

(I like the Nine Inch Nails version better, personally)

@Felthry but if someone writes a song specifically for themselves or someone, they can account for, e.g. a singer's strengths and usually also tell their personal story, so songs are usually closely associated with the original artists

@noiob @Felthry The best covers are ones that understand what it is awesome about the original and preserves it, while being willing to modify everything else to make their own artistic statement. If someone does a cover version that's exactly the same as the original but with different performers it's kind of pointless since recorded music is a thing. But covers that take a song and bring it to a place that is completely different from the original can be a thing of beauty.

@starkatt @Felthry yeah, and "Hurt" is an amazing example of that, Johnny Cash sings that song as if he specifically wrote it for himself, while only having changed one word of the lyrics (and don't get me wrong, I like his version, too, but I can identify a lot more with the NiN version)

another great example of an often-covered song is "Hallelujah" but honestly for me it's Cohen's voice that makes the original and every cover is just so plain in comparison

@noiob @Felthry I kinda want to give more examples but only if you'd find that helpful. If you don't want vocals I can give some instrumental examples. Though, tbf, the line between cover and re-arrangement is real blurry.

@Felthry @noiob The concept of a "cover version" might have originated in the 1940s and 1950s US, when the music market was heavily segregated into white and black music, the former counting for the "Pop" chart and the latter for the "Rhythm and Blues" chart. In this era, when successful records by non-white artists came out, white artists would quickly record copies of these songs for a white label so white radio stations could play the song and white record stores sell the song without actually acknowledging the existence of the non-white musicians who originated it.

I don't know exactly how the word "cover" was chosen, but the word was probably originally coined for the purpose of identifying and denouncing this exploitative practice.

That said, the word seems to have stuck around, and these days, most recordings based on previously-released material are up front about the existence of a prior release and produced for artistic reasons instead of to steal commercial sales. Which is ethically very different, but philosophically similar enough that the same word ended up being used.

@packbat @Felthry interesting

it's sad how most of pop music is built upon exploitation non-white artists

@noiob @packbat @Felthry And it still continues to this day.

*side eyes that cover of Rihanna's "Diamonds" for a perfume ad with Julia Roberts in it*

@noiob @Felthry *nods*

The exploitation is probably why people in genres that connect back to pop and rock frequently talk about "covers" instead of "rearrangements" or even just "performances" - they come from a community where "cover" is a familiar term, so they use it even thought the circumstances that led to its coinage* have changed.

* if I'm right about its origins - I'm not a music historian.

@Felthry for the entire time pop music has been a thing? I'm pretty sure?