Cover Songs: Philosophy and Taxonomy on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #129

Is re-play­ing or re-record­ing a song writ­ten and per­formed by some­one else an act of love or pre­da­tion? Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by Too Much Joy’s Tim Quirk, the Gig Gab Podcast’s Dave Hamil­ton, and the author of A Phi­los­o­phy of Cov­er Songs Prof. P.D. Mag­nus to talk about dif­fer­ent types of and pur­pos­es for cov­ers, look a lit­tle at the his­to­ry, share favorites, and more.

A few of the many cov­er songs we men­tion include:

• Too Much Joy’s “That’s a Lie” and “Sea­sons in the Sun“
• Otis Redding’s “Respect” (not a cov­er; this is the less­er known orig­i­nal adapt­ed by Aretha Franklin)
• The Clash’s “Police and Thieves” (the orig­i­nal is by Junior Murvin)
• R.E.M.’s “Super­man” (much more famous that the orig­i­nal by “The Clique“)
• Bit­ter Bill (Dave’s band) “Min­nie the Moocher“
• Poison’s “Just What I Need­ed“
• Willie Nelson’s “Amer­i­can Tune” (orig­i­nal is by Paul Simon)
• Tom Jones’ “Kiss“
• Sid Vicious’ “My Way“

This playlist includes most of the songs men­tioned in P.D.’s book.

To prep for this, in addi­tion to read­ing P.D.’s book (which is free), we looked at var­i­ous lists of best and worst cov­er songs of all time: from timeout.com, bestlifeonline.com, Rolling Stone, Radio X. Also check out this episode of the Ghost Notes Pod­cast.

Fol­low us @news4wombats (for P.D.), @tbquirk, @DaveHamilton, and @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.