1) I like to know who I'm chatting with : are you the same Loophole that posted back in days then changed its pseudo then went back to the old one ? If you are him, then welcome back, we missed you.
Yep. I disappeared for at least a year, maybe more. I decided to go back to the first name because "Paul" is too common.
I don't think the original is always better. Just usually. The more I think about it, that's probably because one great song often results in hundreds of covers (which can't all be good). So it's a numbers thing.
What I'm most interested in right now are covers that are better than (or equally good and different from) the original. Mr. Tambourine Man is a great example. I'm not going to say that it's better than Dylan's recording, but the Byrds' recording adds a lot to the song.
What prompted me was finding a list online of 33 covers that are better than the original. I disagreed with almost all of them. In particular, they said The Higwaymen's version of "Pancho & Lefty" was better than Townes Van Zandt's and that U2's version of "Helter Skelter" was better than The Beatles.
Although I hated the list, I like the idea of covers that are better than originals.
Most of the times that covers are crappy is when it sounds THE SAME as the original. I find that completely pointless. What most people don't realize is that a quality cover of a song could have it's lyrics replaced and it's name changed and It would be an original.
Back during the 2008 songs poll I asked if anyone included both the original and cover versions of any song, having done so with the Beatles' and Stevie Wonder's versions of "We Can Work It Out." I was trying to draw out Anthony (whose passionate, knowledgable, and curmudgeonly input I miss on these boards). Sure enough he responded "Each of the 200 spots were too precious to waste on listing (what essentially boils down to) the same song twice." Well, it wasn't the first time he and I disagreed.
The whole concept of "covers" has to be a relatively recent phenomenon, though, right? The popular songwriters of the first half of the 20th century didn't perform their own work... they hoped it would be widely performed. So if I think Dinah Washington's is the best version of "I've Got You Under My Skin," (and I do) what "original" is it better than. Similarly, my No. 6 song of all time, the Flamingos "I Only Have Eyes For You," was introduced in a 1934 film musical and performed for a quarter of the century by numerous popular artists before the Flamingos delivered their definitive version.
And the technologies that grew in the last thirty years have made the question of what constitutes a "cover" more difficult. How much does a song have to sample an original to wind up being considered a cover (e.g., I'd consier Kanye West's "Stronger" a cover of Daft Punk's original (albeit, not better). And what about mashups?
