Cover Songs (or, Quit Looking at My Humps)

Hi folks -- since everyone in the entire blog world
is apparently featuring, linking, or otherwise talking about this, here
it is in quick fashion: Canadian singer Alanis Morissette (vanguard
of the mid-90s chick/grrl-rock revolution) did a down-tempo
piano cover of the Black
Eyed Peas song 'My
Humps', complete with parody video -- it can now be found on
YouTube:

Viral,
much?

(Link via too many sites to mention, though I did find the video of the original song and the link to the cover video in the AOL
Video Blog.)


The video is very obviously a parody; the song is less obviously so,
since it's done in something close to her stereotypical
style. On its own, I don't think it's a
particularly good song (nor is it meant to be).

However, one thing the
slow, solo-piano delivery does is show how painfully
stupid the original lyrics are. They're terrible, and they
hardly rhyme, but they're attached to an annoyingly catchy hook, it has
a good beat and you can dance to it. (Guess that's all it takes to win a Grammy Award these days.)


(See more overanalysis about the song in the Metafilter
discussion thread, especially where user solistrato
suggests something that could be used as their motto: "HI I'M ON
METAFILTER AND I COULD OVERTHINK A PLATE OF BEANS.")


This is another example of artists crossing genres to do covers, which
ranges from the ironically self-aware (say, Ben Folds doing gangsta
rap), to earnest (Johnny Cash singing Soundgarden), to weird (Pat Boone
covering Metallica).


Why the appeal? At they're core, it's about people doing things you
wouldn't expect them to do (say, presidential adviser and conspiracy theorist favorite Karl
Rove rapping and... dancing?).


Some covers are funny (The Austin Lounge Lizards singing a bluegrass
version of Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon'); some of are them are
good (The Donnas covering Judas Priest's 'Living After Midnight'); some
of them are both (The Gourds doing Snoop Dogg's 'Gin & Juice'); and
some of them are neither (too many to mention).


(Incidentally, as I was writing this entry, I did some searching around
and found The Covers
Project, which is a Web site that catalogs cover songs. Not
sure if it's still current. My friend Pat likes making mix CDs of
cover songs -- I'll have to send him the link.)


Got a favorite cover song of your own that works (or doesn't work, but
in spectacular fashion)? Leave a comment and tell us. Better yet, if
you do a cover of your own, upload a video
and share it.


Thanks -- Joe

Tags: cover songs, black eyed peas, metafilter, covers project