When rock ’n’ roll first exploded in the 1950s, its success was built on cover songs. Elvis and his white contemporaries didn’t just reflect what was first called “race music” and later “rhythm and blues,” but released their own versions of Black artists’ songs, which – lo and behold – found a home on the white-owned, racially segregated radio stations of that time.
In fact, the King’s early era was almost entirely covers, from debuting with bluesman Arthur Crudup’s That’s All Right to his epochal take on Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog. Bill Haley recorded Shake, Rattle and Roll while Big Joe Turner’s 1954 original of the song was topping the R&B chart; and Jerry Lee Lewis’ Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On arrived in 1957, two years after Big Maybelle’s single.
By the 1960s, popular music began shifting its focus from 45 RPM singles
to LP (or Long Play) “artist albums.” In the wake of singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, recording “covers” of other people’s material got little respect.
Well, except for Aretha Franklin’s Respect, but few remember Otis Redding had released it two years before she spelled out whose song it really was. Or Twist and Shout, the Beatles’ triumphant take on the Isley Brothers’ take on the Top Notes’ original.
See, a quirk of music copyright law allows anyone to record anyone else’s song – even without permission – as long as the songwriter gets paid, resulting in everything from 1964’s The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits to this December’s Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road.
But that inability to exert quality control also resulted in cultural disdain, at least until super-producer Rick Rubin kicked off a surprisingly fresh reappraisal – first with Run-DMC’s 1986 rap recast of Aerosmith’s 1975 Walk This Way; then, in the ’90s, helming Johnny Cash’s American Recordings albums, with iconic covers of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt and Cohen’s Bird on the Wire. (Not surprisingly, Cohen’s songs are catnip for other artists – there are over 300 takes on his Hallelujah.)
This love and, yes, respect is showing up live, too. Cover bands have been surging post-pandemic – perhaps as a reaction to sky-high ticket prices for original artists (if you can even get them!), or just people wanting to relive their pre-streaming past when everyone still shared a musical monoculture. Either way, Ontario’s Dwayne Gretzky, a 10-piece band that can play 700 songs “we all forgot we loved,” has graduated from house parties in the early 2010s to sold out gigs at Toronto’s renowned Massey Hall.
Jann Arden, another Massey Hall regular – and Canadian Music Hall of Famer – clearly agrees. The Calgary singer-songwriter recently released her third covers album, Mixtape, where she’s relishing ’90s hits – from BTLC’s Waterfalls to Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game – telling Zoomer, it’s a “throwback to a killer decade that completely defied any kind of genre.”
“I obviously love doing covers, and I think I always will,” says Arden, 62. “There’s something so exciting and satisfying about reimagining songs that you loved hearing and singing along to for decades.”
While she’s confident her nostalgic fans appreciate how “music transports us all to very specific times in our lives, some of them great and some of them incredibly poignant,” Arden also digs the way covers help young folks discover “new” music from decades past: “Their minds get completely blown. Music never ages. It’s eternal.”
A version of this article appeared in the December 2024/January 2025 issue with the headline ‘Cover Bands’, p. 106.
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