# What's the Point of Some Covers?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-some-covers/379633>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [November 9, 2006, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-some-covers/379633 "2006-11-09T00:10:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![John\_Corrado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a88e4f/32.png) [@John\_Corrado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Corrado)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2006, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-some-covers/379633/21 "2006-11-09T19:16:47Z")

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[QUOTE=RickJay]  
Is it really puzzling? You guys can’t think of a single reason why someone would cover a good song and release it as a single?

Let me give you a hint:

$  
[/QUOTE]

Except that from everything I’ve read about the music industry, the person who gets paid the most out of song royalites is the _writer_. It’s why Robbie Robertson ended up disliked by the other members of The Band (as he was the only listed “writer”, he got all the royalties), why George Harrison got pissed off at the other Beatles, why “Weird Al” gets permission to re-list _himself_ as the writer of his parodies, etc. Someone doing a cover of a song is giving more money to the original writer than they’re getting for themselves from the cover.

Besides, if a mediocre group covering a good song makes more money than a mediocre group with an original but mediocre song, why isn’t the radio _flooded_ with covers? As it stands, cover songs are pretty rare - maybe one in twenty or thirty songs I hear on the radio is a cover of someone. And maybe one half of those songs are covers of _actually popular_ songs, which it would seem to need to be for it to be an instant cash cow. I’d never heard “Drift Away” before Uncle Cracker did it, and I doubt most people who listen to Gnarles Barkley have clue _one_ who the Violent Femmes are.  
I think the other reasons are more likely - it’s a way to get a new audience for an old song that the performer likes.

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**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\
**Post date:** [November 9, 2006, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-some-covers/379633/22 "2006-11-09T19:35:20Z")

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[QUOTE=John Corrado]  
Besides, if a mediocre group covering a good song makes more money than a mediocre group with an original but mediocre song, why isn’t the radio _flooded_ with covers?  
[/QUOTE]

I think there are a lot of great performers out there who lack song-writing chops. There are far more who just suck all around. The former can get a lot of milage out of a well-crafted cover. The latter just make it all the more glaringly obvious how much they suck. Not many people cover great songs because they _can’t_. Not without making fools of themselves, anyway.

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