I like to watch "Så mycket bättre", a Swedish show where a bunch of Swedish celeb music artists collate and honour one in their midst per episode by covering that person's songs.

The show does a small space of good in that people who watch it and think of celebs as demi-gods sometimes get proof of the appearing celebs being human, although this view as presented through the media streams is sorted and heavily edited. But fuck that, the covers that are played on the show is the water cooler subject in this post.

When doing a cover, why desperately try to make it sound (and altogether feel) like the original? Isn't that what the original is there for? I came to think of this when Magnus Uggla tried to bore us all to death by covering Olle Ljungström's beautiful "Jag och min far" in the last episode. ((Admittedly, I first liked the cover but I fell for the old trap: I really like the original, which is not the same thing as liking the cover - today, I cover my eyes in shame and confess: I liked the cover for the wrong reasons. P.s. X says I claimed to "really like it just after I heard it, and hence I cower in shame some more.))

When performing a cover, why not re-compose the cover? Or at least remix it?

I remember Coil doing a remix of Nine Inch Nail's "Se7en" for the film by David Fincher. During the song, which I first heard when watching "Se7en", I remember wondering what that infernal, disturbing, wonderful, beautiful music was. Then at the end, one strand of vocal was heard: "You get me closer to god" - and I realised it wasn't an original song, but a remix. Wow. That much work was put into a remix? Yes, and it definitely paid off.

Or a cover could be a lot better than the original, as proven by The Avalanches when they remixed "So Why So Sad" by Manic Street Preachers.

The original

So Why So Sad by Manic Street Preachers on Grooveshark

The remix

So Why So Sad [Avalanches Remix] by Manic Street Preachers on Grooveshark

See? A sad drone of a track turned into a Hawaiian beach-fest. And the Manics had the good taste to state that the remix improved the original.

Actually, how does remixing and covering differ? Sure, remixing often allows for the remixer to use audio tracks that the original artist has produced, but it doesn't have to be that way. An artist that performs a cover could include bits ((Known as "interpolations" in the 2000s because of the tinted sound of the word "sampled"; surely a legal wrangler came up with the idea to use that word.)) from the original track. Hazy difference. Still, who gives a fuck? It's all about not composing/performing your own stuff.

Performing a cover that sounds exactly like the original is, to me, in 99,999% of all instances, plainly boring. It reeks of ego-fest: somebody likes the original track so much they sing and play it themselves and at times, unconsciously or not, sort of become the original artist. Isn't it like the act of communion? Eat the body of christ, become the body of christ. Hence - and cheer me now for pulling this rhetorical monkey out of my ass - doing an exact cover is cannibalism. Don't do it. Unless you're a vegetable.

It doesn't take much in order to cover a song and make it sound refreshing; I think you have to put your heart and soul into it, and don't be lazy. So gather up your lumps of ideas and use them, so that what once was gets re-used but in a new way, gat dämn it!