Artists that Sing Cover Songs are not as talented (as those who don’t).

Ok hold your hand up if this is what you believe. Ok good, only a few of you did but you few are apparently not alone. The more research I do the more I run across some misinformed or misguided sentiment that if you ‘only’ cover a song(s) you are somehow not as talented. And some are wondering if perhaps there is some truth in this, the short answer is NO! The longer explanation is a bit more complicated. First, different genres have different ‘feelings’ for lack of a better term about who writes, who sings and who plays. But songwriters come from all over the music map, and making music is a lot more than just about the writers. With the odd exception as …

 once in a century you get a Bob Dylan

He can play several musical instruments, he can write songs like few others and he can sing. This Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees list of accolades include a Pulitzer Prize special citation, 10 Grammy’s, an Academy Award, a Nobel Prize in Literature and the list goes on. Now, just for fun let’s just suppose for a moment that if Bob Dylan were in to Classical music he would be interpreting Beethoven and DeBussy and not writing “Like a Rolling Stone“. And unless you were listening to Classical music you most likely never would have heard of him. A silly supposition but it helps (I hope) to try and prove my point. Would Bob Dylan the Classical musician be any less talented than the Bob we have come to know and love? No. Would Bob Dylan be composing (writing) as is the term, new music in this genre? Most certainly, but who would actually notice? Would Bob Dylan then be a popular musician? No, at least not outside of the Classical circle and maybe the odd Movie soundtrack. So getting back to reality, if Bob Dylan the writer of hundreds of songs now covers someone else’s song which he has done over 200 times, so…is he now somehow less talented? The question seems as absurd as it was at the beginning of this post. So you say well that’s Dylan, he gets a free pass on cover songs. So then it gets more absurd trying to and pick and choose who is talented based on whether they cover just one song, just a few or hundreds.Read More »