When I was growing up in the 1980s, there seemed to be a lot of cover songs on Top 40 radio stations. To pick one year at random, 1987, I count at least five just in the top 50 for the year:
La Bamba, Los Lobos (originally Richie Valens)
I Think We’re Alone Now, Tiffany (originally Tommy James and the Shondells)
Mony Mony, Billy Idol (also originally Tommy James and the Shondells)
Lean on Me, Club Nouveau (originally Bill Withers)
You Keep Me Hangin’ On, Kim Wilde (originally The Supremes)
(forgive me if there are any errors or omissions)
Here is the 2013 list. I don’t think there are any straight-up covers in the top 100, not counting sampled songs (e.g., “Feel This Moment” sampled “Take On Me” by a-ha).
Is there a reason for this? Did musicians suddenly figure out they can make more money writing their own songs?
Well for every cover done for legitimate musical reasons, many more were done to hook casual listeners with a familiar song. Why bother doing that today if you can just outright sample the song?
Plus top 40 has less interest than ever in melody, which means covering a song because you like the tune is pointless. Artists today spend a lot more time on rhythm tracks to make their songs stand out.
Related to what others have said is the easy availability these days of the originals. When Phil Collins released “You Can’t Hurry Love” (for example), depending on your age maybe you had heard the Supremes original on the radio once, maybe not…even less likely, but just maybe, you owned the original on vinyl. In any case, for most young people it was an entirely new song, and for most older people it was a cover, but of a song they would only hear the original of a few more times in their lives, at moments out of their control (i.e., on the radio).
So, simply due to the changing technology of musical consumption choices, covers were rather less “coverly” back then, and so more worth an artist’s effort to try a new take on an old tune.
Some of this still applies today (especially, many young folks assuming a cover is an original), but now it’s so easy to find and enjoy an original version at your convenience, the polish wears off of most new cover versions pretty quickly, unless they really bring a novel approach to the song (enough to make it nearly unrecognizable), and/or the original was by a little-known artist and the cover is by a well-established one (such cases I don’t even call “covers,” they’re merely examples of the performer and the composer being different people).
There are still covers, but the practice has kind of flip flopped in a way.
Lightweight pop stars have always been susceptible to having their artistic credibility called out. I think it’s in pushback to this that writing credits are high priority for pop stars nowadays. Whether it’s a pop star who happens to also have some songwriting talent, a pop star who collaborates with professional songwriters leaning heavily upon the talent of the lesser known collaborators, all the way to the far extreme of the pop star’s management having a contract with a staff of songwriters specifying that the pop star will have a shared writing credit regardless of contribution.
80s pop star Tiffany’s cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now” was mentioned in the OP, she also covered “I Saw Her Standing There” on the same album. Kylie Minogue’s first hit was a cover of “The Loco-motion”. These days I think pop stars- who are already accused of not being able to really sing- would only face further derision if they were trying to launch their careers on the strength of cover songs.
On the flip-side of that coin.
Back in the day, artists who wanted to maintain strong artistic integrity avoided cover songs. These days, strong indie-cred gives an artist the freedom to reinterpret an older song. Independent artists today truly are independent in a real sense of the word (we used to refer to an artist as “indie” when they had a record contract with a small independent record label, these days independent artists have to be their own record labels).
Independent artists, being truly independent, are making all their own business decisions now and many of them are becoming quite business savvy. Independent artists will record a cover with the aim of getting it to go viral with a YouTube video which will draw attention to their original works. They’ll record covers for film soundtracks or T.V. commercials. They’ll record covers to market towards music subscription programming that services supermarkets/malls/elevators/etc. These covers can sometimes bring in some nice supplementary income but they generally don’t end up on the charts.
There are many reasons to do cover songs. It’s not always about not being able to write songs yourself, but often about paying homage to older artists or simply updating/revising great songs in your own style. I’ve read that Eddie Van Halen didn’t want to do any covers, but it’s hard to argue that VH’s cover of The Kinks “You Really Got Me” isn’t a great new version. When The Kinks released a live album a few years later, it’s obvious that they borrowed back from VH’s version.
Dwight Yoakam includes one cover song on many albums, and has done quite a few country versions of rock songs. His version of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” is terrific:
Now, none of this answers the OP question of why there are fewer covers being made, or at least on the charts. I have a feeling it’s a matter of ego. Everyone has to fancy himself/herself as a soul-baring, important song writer. I fail to see how doing a cover song once a year damages anyone’s songwriting cred.
In addition to the other suggestions, I wonder if shows like American Idol have satisfied whatever craving the public has to hear new interpretations of old songs.
It wasn’t all that long ago that the cast of *Glee * broke or came close to every record for songs in the Top 100.
Were any of those NOT covers? Music is always in reaction to whatever was just hot, so maybe the trend away from covers has this as a source. Especially since *Glee *is dead on the buzz charts.
Yeah, except for the ten million times they didn’t.
The rock/pop music scene always has had two distinct but simultaneous threads: the artists who mostly wrote their own material and the artists who took the songs given to them by their producers. (Producers who worked with the artists and wrote or co-wrote their songs, like with The Four Seasons, are a smaller but important group.) You see this in every decade.
The only variable is which side seemed dominant. The Beatles, like every other British Invasion group, started out by covering songs, usually American. They only became important, though, after they insisted on recording only self-penned songs. For the rest of the decade most of the 60s icons played their own songs. I’m trying to think of 60s icons who didn’t, but the list is short. The Byrds sang a lot of Dylan and Hendrix will always be remembered for “All Along the Watchtower,” but how many other examples can you give? Take any list of 60s icons - Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Doors, Jefferson Airplane, James Brown, Ray Charles, Them, Cream, Zappa - and the total number of songs they covered from each other might be as low as the single digits. Motown is mostly producer given and several groups would record the same songs, but that’s not the same thing.
The Black Eyed Peas song “The Time (Dirty Bit)” was on the chart in 2011, and that was sort of a re-working, if not a cover, of a previous song. Though the Wiki article says it merely “samples” from the older song.
Some acts of the late 60s became famous by covering songs by other rock group.
There was Joe Cocker, who in the 60s and 70s distinguished himself by recording songs by other composers, and who came to prominence with Beatles covers: “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” (also covered on the Youngbloods’s excellent High on a Ridge Top album of covers) and “Something.” He also had a hit with his version of Traffic’s “Feelin’ Alright.”
Rod Stewart started out his solo career doing covers; he and the Faces did a cover version of McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed.”
Led Zeppelin, of course, did a lot of covers on their first album, even if they didn’t admit it.
Eric Clapton’s solo career included a lot of covers; he had a number one with “I Shot the Sheriff.”
The Grateful Dead did covers live, and their live albums were usually about half cover songs.
So there were acts that did covers back then. Most wrote all their own music, but some would add covers as part of their album.
Sure, and I could add many others. How about the Beach Boys’ hit versions of “Barbara Ann,” “Sloop John B,” and “I Can Hear Music”? Three Dog Night was the world’s greatest cover band. But GrumpyBunny’s comment was that 60s’ icons were covering *each others’ *songs, and that’s just nuts.
