The term cover, from the English language, can be translated as “cover” or “lid”. In our language, its use appears in the musical field to refer to a song by an author or performer that is covered by another musician.
According to abbreviationfinder.org, a cover, in other words, is a different version of a song that was previously recorded by another artist. An example of a cover is the 1991 Guns N’ Roses version of “Live and Let Die”, a Paul and Linda McCartney song originally recorded by the band Wings in 1972. In this case, nineteen years passed from the original recording of the song to the recording of the aforementioned cover.
It should be noted that the same song can have many covers. Returning to the example of “Live and let die”, it was not only recorded by Guns N’ Roses: there are also versions by Geri Halliwell, Fergie and The Pretenders, among others.
Songs composed by Paul McCartney have become covers performed by other artists.
Cover album
There are bands that have decided to record an entire album of covers, without their own songs. That’s what the Ramones group did in 1993 when they released the album “Acid eaters”, made up of songs by The Rolling Stones, The Who, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Byrds and others.
It is also a cover album “Other songs”, by the Argentinian band Attaque 77, featuring covers of classics by The Beach Boys, ABBA, Erasure, Alberto Cortez and more artists.
Queen covers are very common.
Bands dedicated to paying tribute
It is important to mention that there are groups dedicated exclusively to the interpretation of covers. Many of them are tributes to other groups, such as The Beats (paying homage to The Beatles), The Musical Box (consecrated to the music of Genesis) and Dios Salve a la Reina (tribute to Queen).
Within this group of artists who have specialized in making covers of others, we come across in Spain the group called La Década Prodigiosa. It was in 1983 when this band was created that, although it came to represent the country in the Eurovision Song Contest with an original song (“Made in Spain. The girl I love”), became popular due to the medleys of songs from different decades and both national and international artists.
Among his most successful albums are some such as “The 60s Vol. I” (1985), “The 70s” (1987), “The 80s” (1988) and “The best live of the 60s, 70s”. and 80” (1990).
At present it is still on stage although its popularity is no longer the same and it is not made up of the original members, among whom were Andrea Bronston or Manel Santisteban.
The rise of covers thanks to the Internet
In addition to everything indicated so far, we cannot overlook the fact that since the Internet has been shaped, the term cover has begun to be much more widely used. And it is that more and more Internet users do not hesitate to make their covers of well-known songs and then upload them to platforms such as YouTube and even to the different social networks to achieve a certain popularity.
Thus, there are YouTubers who have specialized in covers and who have thousands of followers around the world, including on some occasions the artists themselves who cover them.
