Full Description
The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities examines histories, contexts, and critical perceptions of cover song practices that manifest in mimetic homages, nuanced reinterpretations, or radical transformations. Aimed at exploring genre variations, gendered and intersectional expressions, political implications, and international dimensions, the analyses collectively interrogate the implicit and explicit meanings of popular music covering and versioning, following a chronological pathway to illuminate evolutionary developments across phonographic history from the 1950s to the present. In 27 chapters, this handbook explores how covers create new 'vivid' versions that traverse social and musical boundaries and contexts.
By incorporating cross-cultural insights including postcolonial, indigenous, and sign language readings of recorded music texts, the authors foreground reinterpretive power as a vehicle for expanded awareness of under-examined cover contexts. Their goal is to invite reassessment of cover practices and their popular music presence, often by focusing on lesser known vivid versions and their commercial, technological, and compositional rearticulations. The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities is valuable for second through final year students on undergraduate courses devoted to popular music, composition, and production studies, and to postgraduate programs and researchers in a range of fields, including: popular music studies, musicology, creative music performance and composition, songwriting, and music production studies.
Contents
Introduction: The Recorded Song as Vivid Text
Mike Alleyne and Lori Burns
1. The Legacy of Cross-Racial Covers
Jeremy Orosz
2. Wakon-Beisai: Japanese Versions of "Jailhouse Rock"
Elvis Presley (1957); Michiko Hamamura (1957)
Akitsugu Kawamoto
3. Gesture, Text, Context: Post-punk and New Wave Interpretations of Early Soul and Funk
Barrett Strong, "Money (That's What I Want)" (1959); The Flying Lizards (1979)
James Brown, "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" (1970); The Flying Lizards (1984)
Tom Attah
4. A Microcosm of Punk Aesthetics: The Residents and Devo "Can't Get No Satisfaction"
The Rolling Stones (1965); The Residents (1976); Devo (1977)
John Encarnação
5. "Hey Joe": A Triad of Black Recorded Interconnections
Jimi Hendrix Experience (1966); Seal (1991); Black Uhuru (1990)
Mike Alleyne
6. Voicing Historicity in "Four Women"
Nina Simone (1966); Meshell Ndegeocello (2012)
Erik Steinskog
7. Two Sides of Motown: "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (1967); Diana Ross (1970)
Jaap Kooijman
8. "Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain": Donna Summer's "MacArthur Park" Cover and Disco Extravaganza
Richard Harris (1968); Donna Summer (1978)
John Howland
9. Black Sabbath: A Legacy in Cover Songs
"Black Sabbath" (1970); Thou (2009)
"Paranoid" (1970); Kylesa (2015)
"Solitude" (1971); Ulver (2007)
"Changes" (1972); Charles Bradley (2016)
"Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" (1973); The Cardigans (1994)
"Symptom of the Universe" (1975); Sepultura (1994)
Lori Burns and Patrick Armstrong
10. "Your Song," My Chords: A Phenomenological Analysis of Ellie Goulding's Cover
Elton John, "Your Song" (1970); Ellie Goulding (2010)
Pat O'Grady and Alex Chilvers
11. "There is your song from me": Re-imagining "Blue"
Joni Mitchell (1971); Arc Iris (2018)
Ivan Tan
12. Pictures at the Mekong Delta: Shaping Mussorgsky into Heavy Metal
Emerson, Lake and Palmer (1971); Mekong Delta, "Pictures at an Exhibition" (1996)
David Miguel
13. "Can't You Hear Me?" From Emotional Distress to a Social "SOS": Portishead's Version of ABBA's Hit Song"
ABBA, "SOS" (1974); Portishead (2016)
Gittit Pearlmutter
14. "Thin Dime Hard Times": Competing Trajectories of Genre and Authenticity in Bluegrass
Tony Rice "Church Street Blues" (1983); Punch Brothers (2022)
Charlie Edholm
15. Covering and Commercializing Soca: Transforming the Soundtrack of Carnival into Novelty Pop Tunes
Lord Kitchener, "Sugar Bum Bum" (1977); Swamp Dogg (2000)
Anslem Douglas, Doggie" (1998); Baha Men, "Who Let the Dogs Out" (2000)
Meagan A. Sylvester and Nigel A. Campbell
16. The Ironic Cover Song: "My Sharona" Meets the Alternative '90s
The Knack (1979); Veruca Salt (1995)
Theo Cateforis
17. "Midnight Rider's Prayer": Brothers Osborne's Recontextualization of Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again" in Post-2020 America
Willie Nelson (1980); Brothers Osborne (2022)
Victoria Malawey
18. Asserting the Missing Indigenous Voice in "Run to the Hills"
Iron Maiden (1982); Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham (2018)
Karen Fournier
19. Cover Songs & Queer Ontologies: A Case Study on Maxwell's "This Woman's Work"
Kate Bush (1988); Maxwell (1997)
Stephanie Doktor
20. Cover Conceptions and Boundaries: When a Cover Includes Original Artists
Metallica, "One" (1988); Apocalyptica (2024)
Ciro Scotto
21. Alternative's Alternatives: Radical Reimaginings of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Nirvana (1991); Tori Amos (1992); Think Up Anger feat. Malia J (2015)
Leslie Tilley
22. Friday I'm in Lofi: ASMR Aesthetics and the Gentle Pleasure of Phoebe Bridgers's Cover of The Cure
The Cure, "Friday, I'm in Love" (1992); Phoebe Bridgers (2018)
Bronwen McVeigh
23. Who is the Real Femme Fatale? Film Noir, Shifting Perspective, and Performance in "Things Have Changed"
Bob Dylan (2000); Bettye LaVette (2018)
Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith
24. Silencing Kim: Lingua Ignota's Transformation of Eminem's "Kim" Eminem (2000); Lingua Ignota (2020) Olivia Lucas
25. Signing Divas: Sign Language Covers of "Defying Gravity" Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth (2003); Sandra Mae Frank (2017); Rogan Shannon (2021); Amber Zion (2024); Joshua Castille (2024)
Anabel Maler
26. Abstract Orchestra Signifyin(g) on Madvillain's "Meat Grinder"
Madvillain (2004); Abstract Orchestra (2019)
Ragnhild Brøvig and Alex Stevenson
27. Shades of Heartache and the Aesthetics of Disturbance in "The Limit to Your Love"
Feist (2007); James Blake (2010)
Kai Arne Hansen
