You Know I'm A Liar

I fucking hate...

Angst over music covers- Music nerds and pretentious twats seem to love getting a rise over covers of songs. Should you ever find yourself in the company of these people, make sure to tell them that you love that Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon song written by Urge Overkill for the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Just make sure you have a tarp or rain coat for when their blood inevitably starts bursting from their temples as they think of all the derogatory names they want to call you while they correct you. I understand the logic behind some people's hatred of covers- it can be incredibly frustrating when a song by a band you like gets attention because someone else is singing it. You liked the original band, and you want them to get credit. That's fine. But that doesn't mean the cover itself is garbage. The case in point for tonight is the song Fire, originally written by Bruce Springsteen. It's a great song, but here's my problem: fuck Bruce Springsteen. He's boring, and aside from Spirit in the Night and Dancing in the Dark his only purpose is to be played softly by masturbating middle-aged women who want to remember their rock-n-roll glory days. A few years after Springsteen recorded and released Fire, it was notably covered by The Pointer Sisters, and you know what? It was fucking awesome. Just like with Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2. I don't hate this particular song, but I do hate U2. But give that song to Saul Williams and Trent Reznor to cover? Fucking magic. My point is, I understand wanting an artist to get credit for writing their own music, but hating a performance of a song just because it's a cover, even if it far out-stripes the original? Fuck that.

And yet I fucking love...

Getting angry over samples and covers- As both a nerd and a pretentious twat, I can't help but feel that I have no right to bitch about people hating covers when I get angry over new rap music using samples of songs I love. Remember that Kanye West song where he sampled Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk? I don't, because my memory blanked out in a fit of rage around the time someone first told me they loved that Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger song by Kanye West, not so much for his rapping, but for the awesome techno chorus. The same goes for whoever that bitch who sampled Tainted Love was. Growing up in the Napster-fed piracy-friendly generation I don't find anything inherently wrong with sampling, but I still love shitting all over someone's favorite song or artist by pointing out how little of the music they actually created. Here's where I get off justifying this to myself though, given what I just spent a very fat paragraph bitching about above: Tainted Love and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger were awesome songs to begin with. Their original versions were good enough. Kanye and Mystery Bitch's new versions of the songs are not covers and are therefore not homages to the originals. They also weren't creative enough samplings and reworkings to create new, personal versions of the song. Instead, they fell somewhere in the middle where you're not paying your respects and you're not creating something new, you're just being a lazy shit who capitalizes on other people's music. And that makes you an asshole.