The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song by Alleyne, Mike; Burns, Lori;

Short description:

The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities examines histories, contexts, and critical perceptions of cover song practices that manifest in mimetic homages, nuanced reinterpretations, or radical transformations.

Long description:

The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musica Subjectivities examines histories, contexts, and critical perceptions of cover song practices that manifest in mimetic homages, nuanced reinterpretations, or radical transformations. Aimed at exploring genre variations, gendered and intersectional expressions, political implications, and international dimensions, the analyses collectively interrogate the implicit and explicit meanings of popular music covering and versioning, following a chronological pathway to illuminate evolutionary developments across phonographic history from the 1950s to the present. In 27 chapters, this handbook explores how covers create new “vivid” versions that traverse social and musical boundaries and contexts.

By incorporating cross-cultural insights including postcolonial, indigenous, and sign language readings of recorded music texts, the authors foreground reinterpretive power as a vehicle for expanded awareness of under-examined cover contexts. Their goal is to invite reassessment of cover practices and their popular music presence, often by focusing on lesser known vivid versions and their commercial, technological, and compositional rearticulations. The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities is valuable for second- through final-year students in undergraduate courses devoted to popular music, composition, and production studies, and to postgraduate programs and researchers in a range of fields, including: popular music studies, musicology, creative music performance and composition, songwriting, and music production studies

 “This handbook handles a breathtakingly broad bank of musical material—a gauntlet thrown down by any ‘covers’ project but rarely taken up with such commitment to the cause. The essays assembled here address everything from Bob Dylan to Madvillain, from Metallica to Mussorgsky, from Soca to Sign Language, and much more besides. Vivid Versions is a vital volume for anyone interested in the questions coming out of the musical matrices that remade songs represent.”

—Dr Freya Jarman, Reader in Music, University of Liverpool

“There is probably no better way to explore the past seventy years of recorded popular music in all its stylistic, cultural, and sonic diversity than through the lens of the cover song. In The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities, Mike Alleyne and Lori Burns have assembled an impressive collection of essays from among the world’s leading popular music scholars, each of whom offers a close analysis of how a specific cover song transforms the original version in profound and interesting ways, using an array of approaches and methodologies that are as diverse as the cover songs themselves. Brimming with insightful observations in every chapter, this volume will prove essential reading not only for those interested in the phenomenon of the cover song but also the reception history of recorded popular music more broadly.”

—Mark Spicer, Professor and Chair of Music, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

“I’ve found Vivid Versions especially compelling in the way it treats cover versions as a lens on how songs travel through bodies, scenes, industries, and histories. Across the volume, contributors show how re-imaginings can newly animate an original, rescue it, or even boldly attack it—and why those shifts matter socio-culturally as much as they do musically. What I particularly value is how the chapters connect close listening to questions of identity, power, and oppression without sacrificing musical specificity. And rather than leaning on familiar canonical touchstones, the book draws on a wide stylistic range and favors lesser-known cases that, in many instances, have even more to say.”

—Prof. Ralf von Appen, Director of the Department of Popular Music, MDW - University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Recorded Song as Vivid Text
MIKE ALLEYNE AND LORI BURNS

1 The Legacy of Cross Racial Covers
JEREMY OROSZ

2 Wakon-Beisai: Japanese Versions of “Jailhouse Rock”
Elvis Presley (1957); Michiko Hamamura (1957)
AKITSUGU KAWAMOTO

3 Gesture, Text, Context: Post-Punk and New Wave Interpretations of Early Soul and Funk
Barrett Strong, “Money (That’s What I Want)” (1959); The Flying Lizards (1979) James Brown, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine (Part 1)” (1970); The Flying Lizards (1984)
TOM ATTAH

4 A Microcosm of Punk Aesthetics: The Residents and Devo “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
The Rolling Stones (1965); The Residents (1976); Devo (1977)
JOHN ENCARNAÇÃO

5 “Hey Joe”: A Triad of Black Recorded Interconnections
The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1966); Seal (1991); Black Uhuru (1990)
Mike Alleyne
6 Voicing Historicity in “Four Women”
Nina Simone (1966); Meshell Ndegeocello (2012)
ERIK STEINSKOG
7 Two Sides of Motown: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”
Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (1967); Diana Ross (1970)
JAAP KOOIJMAN

8 Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain”: Donna Summer’s “Macarthur Park” Cover and Disco Extravaganza
Richard Harris (1968); Donna Summer (1978)
JOHN HOWLAND

9 `Black Sabbath: A Legacy in Cover Songs “Black Sabbath” (1970); Thou (2009); “Paranoid” (1970); Kylesa (2015); “Solitude” (1971); Ulver (2007); “Changes” (1972); Charles Bradley (2016); “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” (1973); The Cardigans (1994); “Symptom of the Universe” (1975); Sepultura (1994)
LORI BURNS AND PATRICK ARMSTRONG

10 “Your Song,” My Chords: A Phenomenological Analysis of Ellie Goulding’s Cover
Elton John, “Your Song” (1970); Ellie Goulding (2010)
PAT O’GRADY AND ALEX CHILVERS

11 “There Is Your Song from Me”: Re-Imagining “Blue”
Joni Mitchell (1971); Arc Iris (2018)
IVAN TAN

12 Pictures at the Mekong Delta: Shaping Mussorgsky into Heavy Metal
Mekong Delta, “Pictures at an Exhibition” (1996); Emerson, Lake and Palmer (1971)
DAVID MIGUEL

13 “Can’t You Hear Me?” from Emotional Distress to a Social “S.O.S.” Portishead’s Version of ABBA’s Hit Song
ABBA, “S.O.S.” (1974); Portishead (2016)
GITTIT PEARLMUTTER

14 Covering and Commercializing Soca: Transforming the Soundtrack of Carnival into Novelty Pop Tunes
Lord Kitchener, “Sugar Bum Bum” (1977); Swamp Dogg (2000) Anslem Douglas, “Doggie” (1998); Baha Men, “Who Let the Dogs Out” (2000)
MEAGAN A. SYLVESTER NIGEL A. CAMPBELL

15 Thin Dime, Hard Times”: Competing Trajectories of Genre and Authenticity in Bluegrass
Tony Rice, “Church Street Blues” (1983); Punch Brothers (2022)
CHARLES EDHOLM

16 The Ironic Cover Song: “My Sharona” Meets the Alternative 90s
The Knack (1979); Veruca Salt (1995)
THEO CATEFORIS

17 “Midnight Rider’s Prayer”: Brothers Osborne’s Recontextualization of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” in Post-2020 America
Willie Nelson (1980); Brothers Osborne (2022)
VICTORIA MALAWEY

18 Asserting the Missing Indigenous Voice in “Run to the Hills”
Iron Maiden (1982); Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham (2018)
KAREN FOURNIER

19 Cover Songs and Queer (Musical) Ontologies: A Case Study on Maxwell’s “This Woman’s Work”
Kate Bush (1988); Maxwell (1997)
STEPHANIE DOKTOR

20 Cover Conceptions and Boundaries: When A Cover Includes Original Artists
Metallica, “One” (1988); Apocalyptica (2024)
CIRO SCOTTO

21 Alternative’s Alternatives: Radical Reimaginings of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
Nirvana (1991); Tori Amos (1992); Think Up Anger feat. Malia J (2015)
LESLIE A. TILLEY

22 Friday I’m In Lofi: ASMR Aesthetics and the Gentle Pleasure of Phoebe Bridgers’s Cover of the Cure
The Cure, “Friday, I’m in Love” (1992); Phoebe Bridgers (2018)
BRONWEN MCVEIGH

23 Who is the Real Femme Fatale? Film Noir, Shifting Perspective, and Performance in “Things Have Changed”
Bob Dylan (2000); Bettye LaVette (2018)
KATIE KAPURCH AND JON MARC SMITH

24 Silencing Kim: Lingua Ignota’s Transformation of Eminem’s “Kim” Eminem (2000); Lingua Ignota (2020)
OLIVIA R. LUCAS

25 Signing Divas: Sign Language Covers of “Defying Gravity”
Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth (2003); Sandra Mae Frank(2017); Rogan Shannon (2021); Amber Zion (2024); Joshua Castille (2024)
ANABEL MALER

26 Abstract Orchestra Signifyin(g) on Madvillain’s “Meat Grinder” Madvillain (2004); Abstract Orchestra (2019)
RAGNHILD BRØVIG AND ALEX STEVENSON

27 Shades of Heartache and Musical Identity in “The Limit to Your Love”
Feist (2007); James Blake (2010)
KAI ARNE HANSEN