what *exactly* is a "cover song" anyway

@Felthry an artist performing another artist's song

@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