Make it sound like you, not the original artist. Find something new by mashing different styles together, but make sure your version feels contemporary and says something about the times we currently live in as well. Perhaps most importantly, make sure this new version you have created is out of everyone else’s reach so as to steal attention from the original (How to Create…). These are only a few tips for how to create the perfect cover song in a 2015 BBC article appropriately titled “How to create the perfect cover version”. But what is a “perfect” cover song? Often, the public is unaware that a popular song is actually a cover of a lesser-known original. Take Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia” for example. The song was originally shot down by Gladys and recorded as Jim Weatherly’s “Midnight Plane to Houston”. It took another few years, reimaginings, covers as well as even a style transition for Gladys and her backup singers to consider the song again (Padgett). The rest is history, but the long road and many covers taken for that song to get to that point proves that BBC’s formula for the perfect cover song may not be as foolproof as one would like to believe, some of the most popular covers being a little off-the-wall themselves.
Stephen Thompson, editor and reviewer for NPR Music and author of “The Good Listener: Can You Build The Perfect Cover Song?” believes that “good cover songs are about necessity” (Can you build…). If the original song is amazing and nothing can be done to improve upon it, then why would someone need to change it whether that be a cover or a remix? For this reason, artists must be careful about what songs they choose to focus their attention upon as some songs work better than others for an artist to cover. Thompson argues that a general disguise of the genius of the songcraft of a song gives an artist reason to reinvent a song or re-create a song word-for-word, but some artists such as Kanye West disagree. A self-proclaimed “creative genius, and there’s no way around it”, West is famous for his narcissism and not following the rules when it comes 
to making music, meaning he most definitely won’t shy away from taking a song and putting his own spin on it no matter how amazing his fans or outlandish his critics say it is (jnelliott). Two songs West uses outside material from are “Pt. 2” from the Life of Pablo and “Blood on the Leaves” from Yeezus. Both were fairly successful and broke Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, yet neither follow any one specific cover song formula. Taking BBC’s article once again, for example, one can see how two very different cover songs can be equally successful while ignoring the status quo surrounding how they should be written.
“Pt. 2” is a complete reimagining of Desiigner’s “Panda” and appears on West’s seventh studio album titled the Life of Pablo. The first point made in the BBC article was that a cover has to “sound like [the cover artist], not the original artist”, but this brings into question whether or not Kanye West even has a particular sound to call his own because “Pt. 2” doesn’t sound that much different from the original “Panda” (How to Create…). As a matter of fact, half of “Pt. 2” is Desiigner’s version with roughly thirty seconds of The Life Of Pablo-esque lyrics and a very slightly remixed beat to accompany it on either side. Two other points of BBC’s article are to “unearth new meaning” not seen in the original song and to make sure your cover says something about the current times. This is questionable in “Pt. 2” as both “Pt. 2” and “Panda” speak of West and Desiigner’s immense respective successes. West does change some lyrics in order to bring attention to the long road he had to traverse in order to get to “Atlanta” and even mentions his own very successful Yeezy clothing line as one of his bragging points, but the gist remains the same between songs. One could guess what “Panda” is about after listening to “Pt.2”. “Blood on the Leaves”, however, is a different story.
”Blood on the Leaves” hails from West’s sixth studio album titled Yeezus. It is the opposite of “Pt. 2” as it samples Nina Simone’s “Strange Fruit” rather than covering it, but the BBC article can still be applied. “Blood on the Leaves” accomplishes the feat of redefining the sound of a song to fit the cover artist considerably well as the whole song sounds like it belongs on Yeezus, even Simone’s “parts” which come from a completely different song in a completely different time period. As for unearthing new meaning from the original, Simone’s “Strange Fruit” is a song written about historic black struggles, specifically the lynching of African American males in the Jim Crow south. Why, then, is West using clips from that song in his own song about the struggles of a high-class, arguably toxic, twenty-first-century relationship? Sure, new meaning is brought to Simone’s original in the context of current times, but not the new meaning co-founder of The Velvet Underground John Cale meant when he said, “If you unearth new meaning, or someone else realizes something, it’s, ‘Holy cow! That’s what that song is about!? It’s great” (How to Create…). The title might vaguely suggest it, but one wouldn’t know that “Strange Fruit” is about the struggles of black men during the Jim Crow Era after listening to “Blood on the Leaves”. “Pt. 2” is very different from “Blood on the Leaves” in West’s manner of covering, but they may not actually be as different as they seem at their first glance.
Although West chooses to listen to and ignore different steps BBC outlined in order to create the perfect cover song for both “Pt. 2” and “Blood on the Leaves”, he chose to use two of the same tips in both songs. Arguably one of the most important of BBC’s points is to “find something new by mashing different styles together”, which West most definitely did in both “Pt. 2” and “Blood on the Leaves” (How to Create…). By mixing Desiigner’s trap hit with the Life of Pablo’s smooth, deliberative lyrics, West “put the song out of everyone else’s reach”, as BBC’s last point instructs (How to Create…). “Blood on the Leaves” does essentially the same thing by mixing Simone’s jazzy, old-school, drawn-out vocals with Yeezy’s trademark fast-tempoed aggression. Why were these two songs so popular, then, if West chose to ignore some of what BBC deems are vital elements for any decent cover song? And how are they both so popular if they both chose to ignore different parts of the formula? An NPR 1A podcast titled “Take Me On: The Art Of The Cover Song” seeks to answer that question.
Joshua Johnson, host of NPR’s 1A, believes that there are many different ways to make a cover song successful whether that be “a total reimagining, like Devo singing “Satisfaction,” … or a performance that brings a new energy or feeling to the original, like Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Got To Get You Into My Life””. One of the only things that Johnson’s guests Ray Padgett, author of the book “Cover Me,”, Amanda Petrusich, staff writer for The New Yorker and Scott Bradlee, creator of “Postmodern Jukebox,” a music collective that makes vintage covers of pop songs could agree on during the nearly fifty minutes long podcast was that a cover is about the intention more than anything else. Of course, all three have their own views on what makes a cover song successful to their ears, but those criteria largely did not stay the same from person to person. Likewise, Kelsey McKinney’s father (a solid Gen X-er and avid grunge rock listener) hated Britney Spears’ “Satisfaction (I Can’t Get No)” so much he introduced her to the Rolling Stone’s original, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (McKinney). This example proves that different cover songs are successful in different people.
Johnson and his guests didn’t seek to define a good cover song, they only sought to identify good and/or famous cover songs as well as bad/infamous cover songs and identify what made them so good and famous or bad and unpopular. What Johnson and his guests found was that no specific formula exists for a good cover song. With so many different music tastes, how could one cover song satisfy all of the wants of every audience? Furthermore, using the same formula for every cover song runs the risk of cover songs sounding repetitive and getting boring. This is where artists like Kanye West step in. Kanye makes his critics’ jobs very easy when he chooses to bend the rules in the making of his music and step out on a limb, but he has also created some very popular music despite the critics. The key to writing a good cover song is to recognize that no one specific kind of cover song exists. The more one tries to tailor a cover to their audience’s needs, the more they alienate themselves from the audience that made them famous in the first place. When an artist begins to realize that the only person they have to please with their music is themselves, they will start to please their audience too, and that’s what their music is all about.
Works Cited
Aaron Overfield. Nina Simone: Strange Fruit. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnuEMdUUrZQ. Accessed 15 Oct. 2018.
“Can You Build The Perfect Cover Song?” NPR.Org, https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2013/05/15/184350690/we-get-mail-can-you-build-the-perfect-cover-song. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018.
DesiignerVEVO. Desiigner – Panda (Audio). YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NJlUribp3c. Accessed 15 Oct. 2018.
How to Create the Perfect Cover Version – BBC Music. 5 Nov. 2015, https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/articles/0adabb48-dcad-4c01-9fd2-68ccff6bf8e8.
jnelliott. “‘I’m A Creative Genius, There’s No Other Way To Word It’, Kanye West Explains.” The Source, 5 Dec. 2013, http://thesource.com/2013/12/05/im-a-creative-genius-theres-no-other-way-to-word-it-kanye-west-explains/.
Kanye West – Topic. Blood On The Leaves. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn0Pu2Qun-E. Accessed 14 Oct. 2018.
—. Pt. 2. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT1LJFP7uJo. Accessed 14 Oct. 2018.
McKinney, Kelsey. “The Art of a Good Cover Song.” Splinter, https://splinternews.com/the-art-of-a-good-cover-song-1793848557. Accessed 10 Oct. 2018.
Padgett, Ray. Cover Me: The Stories behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time. Sterling, 2017.
“Take Me On: The Art Of The Cover Song.” 1A, https://the1a.org/shows/2018-01-18/take-me-on-the-art-of-the-cover-song. Accessed 26 Sept. 2018.
Whoopi Goldberg, Monica Lewinsky and Kate Hudson Read Kanye West’s Tweets | Daily Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3475395/I-love-right-Brilliant-video-sees-stars-like-Whoopi-Goldberg-Monica-Lewinsky-Kate-Hudson-doing-dramatic-readings-Kanye-s-bizarre-tweets.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2018.
