Do you ever get exhausted of hearing about 'legacy' artists?

[stevejamsecono]

This has come up a bit in the past few weeks so I thought I'd put it to the group:

A major pet-peeve of mine that's developed a lot in the last few years is the fact that it seems like releasing a steady stream of covers by approved "legacy artists" seems to be the latest click-baity tactic employed by up-and-comer indie bands and struggling music websites. Obviously covering other artists is nothing new and there are some artists who ONLY perform other peoples songs, but there's a specific kind of "here's a hypey indie band covering a song by XX approved-of canon artist" thing that's just really starting to bug me.

I rarely have a problem with the covered artists in question (still enjoy me some Bowie, Springsteen, whatever), nor necessarily the artists doing the covering, but it does sort of bother me that there seems to be this insistence on doing so as a bid for continued relevance/legitimacy at the expense of "new classics" coming out of all of this. Like, I'd much rather be impressed by a brand new song than be continuously bombarded by new bands trotting perfunctory covers of done-to-death songs ("Dancing in the Dark" or "I'm on Fire" in the case of the Boss) or doing really boring and generic 'slow somber take on an inescapable pop song' covers (Illuminati Hotties doing "I Wanna Dance With Somebody", etc.). Some really killer originals have been coming out in the past few years and I just don't get this obsession with covers.

I dunno, am I alone on this one? Are people really that insistent on hearing shit they already know?

[Danley]

I don't know if this is what you're getting at, because (to my shame) I don't even know where to look nowadays for information on the latest 'indie' artists or who they are; maybe some examples would help.

But in recent memory it's dumb when Weezer covers Africa or Take on Me in full wedding-band style. I'm all for artists changing over time, but they gave us 'In the Garage' and even more recently the 'White Album' (which is actually great,) so this is not 'growth.' Two years ago we saw them and they played 'Hey Yeah' (Outkast) at the same time as they did NOT play a dozen of their best songs. They even played 'Beverly Hills' at the same show so everyone could feel extra ripped-off.

Other than that, I guess there's the dumb, snoozey 'Summertime' cover by Lana Del Rey; which isn't a straight-up cover, but she was probably doing it as close as she could get. I guess Sublime is a 'legacy' act now for one thing- I don't hate everything she's ever done (maybe two songs I've heard are good) but really unnecessary IMO.

[marqueemoon]

Weezer covers Africa! OMG!

The music press is really falling down on the job.

I’m also thoroughly sick of the lingering Boomer influence in music.

[Larry Mal]

I’m also thoroughly sick of the lingering Boomer influence in music.

Bingo. To me, it's just that there was so few media outlets for most of rock and roll and pop music's history, and the Baby Boomers controlled and smothered almost all of it.

It's no wonder that a person might cover the "Boss"- and for the record, I've always loathed Bruce Springsteen. But then again, my dislike has not spared me from having been exposed to probably thousands of hours of his music, even if I never sought out a single minute of it.

Wait, that's not quite true. I had heard that "Nebraska" was good. It's not. It's very boring, and I turned it off almost immediately. That was the end of that.

But anyway, rock and roll is running on fumes, the greats haven't made any great music in decades, it's fragmented beyond belief and it has nothing new to offer and hasn't for some time.

There's just nothing new to replace it with.

But when you are force fed a certain canon of work, well, you're going to absorb it. Cover it faithfully, cover it ironically, doesn't matter- it's still a shared cultural reference that you have with people and sadly, your own original song isn't.

Maybe yours would be, but there's no monolithic cultural force like FM radio, where kids all across the nation would hear the same music. Now, you might reach a group of people that love what you do, but there's not really any kind of thing to break into that is at all like FM radio.

Back then, a DJ might put on your record on a local station, other stations would pick it up, a Boomer conglomerate would put in on rotation coast to coast.

Now, it's on the internet, someone might find it, might not, they might share it with a few dozen of their friends. Does it go any further?

[marqueemoon]

^That. I don’t really understand how anyone has the stomach to try to play original rock music for a living these days. Honestly it isn’t a smart thing to do in 2019.

[Embenny]

Yeah, I think it's a symptom of a bigger underlying disease in the world of music.

The truth is that the music industry, such as it once existed, is on life support, and everyone is clamoring to find ways to make money and/or "become known" in a world where there is no longer a system with gatekeepers and tightly controlled distribution.

If you want to make a splash online, you need to game search engines, YouTube, streaming services etc - you need to cast a wide net where people typing in common searches have a shot and finding you, and algorithms have a chance of selecting you as a related video of song.

That forces everyone to cover popular songs, and select from a relatively small pool of them, to be honest. There are only so many ways to do that in a way that can preserve whatever image the artist is trying to create - like you said, it either has to be of an "approved" artist who is "cool" enough (accepted by their target audience), or an "ironic" cover where they try to subvert what is "clearly" a song they and their audience would not normally listen to, except they are listening to it, but want to save face over it.

Nobody is getting served up as a recommended video to hundreds of thousands of people if their first cover is a deep cut like a Melvins B-side from an import release.

It's the same reason YouTube is a cesspool of videos in the "distracting levels of affectation for the sake of building a brand" style of speaking. That's the game you gotta play if you want to "make it" in this new world of unboxing videos, suicide forest explorations, and commentated video
game-playing.

[Danley]

Youtube sucks. 99% of the content on YouTube has no business being a video- or even an audio recording. If you are absent any content that involves motion (not a bordlerline static picture of some guy’s ugly face in front of a messy room and a computer) or audio (not just muffled read-aloud commentary more easily/efficiently digested as an article,) you have no business wasting everyone’s time with a 45 minute video.

If I covered the Melvins I’d be afraid people thought I invented it myself.

[Larry Mal]

Perhaps we are talking about this kind of thing?

[soggy mittens]

I generally don't put myself in the path of suchness but sometimes it comes apparent through youtube. Like it has been mentioned before pedal video on youtube where people just play tired old blues licks, a sign of the kind of stream these people live in. I try not to let it influence me., like the viral infection that it is.

[s_mcsleazy]

yes. the worst part is if you're on youtube a lot, youtube thinks you want to hear about a lot of these legacy acts. i have never clicked on a beatles video in my life, why does youtube think i want to hear a boomer talk for the 800th time why they are the greatest band ever. or worse. the endless videos talking about the conspiracy theories about them. i think part of youtube's algorithm must state something like "if user clicks on any song made before 1995, bombard with boomer bollocks"

as for smaller bands covering classics, i get it..... you have to play the game to get results. but god damn am i getting tired of it. rarely do they make it interesting. the one thing i'll give the modern hiphop industry is that they aint pandering to the old crowd..... they pander in a different way. i'll be honest. i discovered xiu xiu through their cover of sharp dressed man and actually kinda enjoy them. but does it mean i want constant versions of punk versions of africa - toto? nope. i'm sick of it.

oh also, youtube. i dont want to watch the 10000 "pop-punk if you sing, you loose" videos.

[stevejamsecono]

yes. the worst part is if you're on youtube a lot, youtube thinks you want to hear about a lot of these legacy acts. i have never clicked on a beatles video in my life, why does youtube think i want to hear a boomer talk for the 800th time why they are the greatest band ever. or worse. the endless videos talking about the conspiracy theories about them. i think part of youtube's algorithm must state something like "if user clicks on any song made before 1995, bombard with boomer bollocks"

as for smaller bands covering classics, i get it..... you have to play the game to get results. but god damn am i getting tired of it. rarely do they make it interesting. the one thing i'll give the modern hiphop industry is that they aint pandering to the old crowd..... they pander in a different way. i'll be honest. i discovered xiu xiu through their cover of sharp dressed man and actually kinda enjoy them. but does it mean i want constant versions of punk versions of africa - toto? nope. i'm sick of it.

oh also, youtube. i dont want to watch the 10000 "pop-punk if you sing, you loose" videos.

I read an interesting thing about black audiences in an article about the white "afro beat bands" trend. The author was African and had grown up on afro-beat, and basically said something to the effect of:

"You don't see a lot of black artists doing revivalist stuff because revivals are for people who weren't there in the first place. Artists like Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones were great, but they tended to have white audiences."

And honestly, I can understand and appreciate that. Why not get excited about something new and different and ignore stuff that is old hat? That seems healthier

[s_mcsleazy]

yes. the worst part is if you're on youtube a lot, youtube thinks you want to hear about a lot of these legacy acts. i have never clicked on a beatles video in my life, why does youtube think i want to hear a boomer talk for the 800th time why they are the greatest band ever. or worse. the endless videos talking about the conspiracy theories about them. i think part of youtube's algorithm must state something like "if user clicks on any song made before 1995, bombard with boomer bollocks"

as for smaller bands covering classics, i get it..... you have to play the game to get results. but god damn am i getting tired of it. rarely do they make it interesting. the one thing i'll give the modern hiphop industry is that they aint pandering to the old crowd..... they pander in a different way. i'll be honest. i discovered xiu xiu through their cover of sharp dressed man and actually kinda enjoy them. but does it mean i want constant versions of punk versions of africa - toto? nope. i'm sick of it.

oh also, youtube. i dont want to watch the 10000 "pop-punk if you sing, you loose" videos.

I read an interesting thing about black audiences in an article about the white "afro beat bands" trend. The author was African and had grown up on afro-beat, and basically said something to the effect of:

"You don't see a lot of black artists doing revivalist stuff because revivals are for people who weren't there in the first place. Artists like Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones were great, but they tended to have white audiences."

And honestly, I can understand and appreciate that. Why not get excited about something new and different and ignore stuff that is old hat? That seems healthier

kinda reminds me of something one of my black friends said. "things dont tend to exist until enough white people say they do"

[Jaguar018]

kinda reminds me of something one of my black friends said. "things dont tend to exist until enough white people say they do"

I am pretty sure that the things that eventually show up on the white pop culture radar actually exist just fine on the black culture radar and eventually cross over if it has enough 'mainstream' appeal.

I agree that the FM Radio juggernaut (that bloated fat bastard) is on life support. The way to become a successful Top 40 artist still involves a lot of the same phony bullshit, but you have to pay off different people now.

BUT... how many of you here on OSG regularly listen to pop music on youtube these days? There are people that do sure, but let's be honest. Since I was like say, thirteen or fourteen I have been striving to find the more interesting stuff. There was that time around 1991 when indierock broke or whatever, and that was great for a bit, but it was a flash in the pan. "Corporate Rock" stamped that down, and in just a few years, "Alternative Radio" was pumping out fresh garbage to a new generation of people that didn't want to put much effort into following music.

I guess this legacy trend is, as noted, rooted in some evil algorithm of mining 'forgotten' catchy tunes of yore-- and that is annoying, but popular music is annoying. I mean shit, it's designed to be full of annoying ear worms. Shitty commercial pop music is still pumping out the same formulaic catchy garbage--sometimes it hits a sweet spot and you'll like it. Good music to you is good music.

If you really want to find new music you have to work at it. This has not changed. There are bands, new and old, out there making music you would enjoy. This has not changed. Complaining about popular music and the kids these days hasn't changed either.

[Maggieo]

Well, that pretty much scuppers all of Jazz and the Great American songbook.

[stevejamsecono]

If you really want to find new music you have to work at it. This has not changed. There are bands, new and old, out there making music you would enjoy. This has not changed. Complaining about popular music and the kids these days hasn't changed either.

I honestly don't really have a problem with popular music as much as I have a problem with a relentless number of covers of it by new and promising artists clogging the blogwaves in favor of original material. I think right now is honestly a great time for actual art in that the sheer math of it would imply that some of the best music ever made must be being made today, but I'm never going to hear about it if I have to stomach multiple Springsteen or Bowie or Beatles or whatever covers from artists every time I open up Stereogum or somesuch.