Two of the more popular posts for pageviews on my site in the past year were originally written almost five years ago. Rock Artists Cover Country Songs and Country Artists Cover Rock Songs.
Between the two posts I talked about songs like Johnny Cash as in the above “Hurt” and also “Landslide”, “You’re Cheatin’ Heart” and “Move it on Over”. Some of you no doubt have favorites in these categories. In this upcoming series of Rock/Country Covers I am going to mix them up a bit. Some posts will be a Rock song covered by a Country Artist and some will be the Country Artist Covering a Rock Song.
To set things up for the coming series I will publish two posts on Songwriters. One for the most covered Country Songwriters and one for the most covered Rock Songwriters. This will give you an idea of where most recording artists draw their inspiration when covering a song. Of course not all the cover songs come from these elite songwriters but they have a disproportionate amount. I don’t know what the ratio is but based on my observations it is likely less than 5% of the songwriters in these genre account for 60-70% of the versions of all cover songs. That is, songs that have been recorded and documented.
Something to keep in mind, as this for the most part applies more to the Country Genre, not all the great songs come from the artist themselves. In fact the most recorded songs of all time are Christmas/Holiday Songs. For Popular music, Singer Songwriters tend to have the most songs covered, like Bob Dylan for example. However, many great songs were written by people primarily known as songwriters not performers. If you think of the category of Standards, these are songs from The Great American Songbook from legendary composers like the Gershwin’s, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and the list goes on. Each of them have songs that have been covered countless times by the greatest vocalists in history. Many of these songs came from plays and movies.
On the upcoming lists you will see names that are immediately recognizable, but for Country Music you have Fred Rose and Harlan Howard, two people most will not immediately connect with a famous song. Unlike if we see a Willie Nelson written song for example.
On the Rock Music side their are names like John Lennon and Paul McCartney and if we add in George Harrison (as Beatles and afterward) they have authored nine of the top 15 most covered pop songs of all time and 20 out of the top 30 according to the stats gained from Secondhandsongs.com. They dominate the cover song world in a way that puts the team of Lennon/McCartney so far above everyone else (from any other genre) that they are in class all their own.
Bob Dylan is also in a class all his own as a solo songwriter. He owns the record for the most song titles covered and as he continues to write. As some of his unfinished or unpublished works continue to be discovered, they will be recorded by someone.
While much of Dylan’s early work was Folk, he turned to Rock and has certainly switched up and done some blues and jazz etc. This creates a bit of dilemma for me. I could with a great amount of time and effort try and separate the songs from Dylan or for that matter, any other Singer Songwriter into genre. I will not do that for the reasons I just mentioned but also because even the songwriters themselves often did not write the song to be slotted into a genre in the first place.
Now that I have mentioned the members of The Beatles and Dylan, their cover songs are so ubiquitous that as much as possible I will steer clear of them. In part because I have mentioned many of their songs in the past. Like I said a lot of people are covering their songs and you have likely heard many of them. If I do tackle a song written by Lennon/McCartney it will be something a bit lesser known.
In the end I will go with where the music takes me. Sometimes I will search for songs based on the artist, sometimes it will be by the song itself and for others I will want to highlight the songwriter(s). One thing about Songwriters is that they don’t always write in a particular genre, as in the previous Dylan example.
If you author a song for Aerosmith, it’s likely a Rock song or a Power Ballad, if you then write a song for Celine Dion then it is probably a Pop Ballad. So you see my problem listing the top writers in any genre because the scenario I just gave is very common. This time it is the legendary Diane Warren I was talking about who has been writing hit songs for over 40 years.
So I shall endeavor to be as accurate as possible on the lists, and as for the cover titles, the sky’s the limit and who knows I might even use a Jason Derulo song (no). This may just remind you of the 1983 Irene Cara hit “Flashdance… What a Feeling”.
Sources: Secondhandsongs.com
Mostly Music Covers 