Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song

Mike Alleyne is Professor Emeritus with the Department of Recording Industry, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) and Visiting Professor at the Pop Akademie in Germany. His work has been published in journals such as Popular Music & Society, Rock Music Studies, Popular Music History, Ethnomusicology Forum, and American Music Perspectives.Lori Burns is Professor of Music at the University of Ottawa. Her interdisciplinary research explores representations of gender and sexuality in the lyrical, musical, and visual texts of popular music. She has published articles in journals such as Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, Popular Music, Popular Music & Society, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, IASPM Journal, American Music Studies, and Metal Music Studies.

“This handbook handles a breathtakingly broad bank of musical material—a gauntlet thrown down by any ‘covers’ project but rarely taken up with such commitment to the cause. The essays assembled here address everything from Bob Dylan to Madvillain, from Metallica to Mussorgsky, from Soca to Sign Language, and much more besides. Vivid Versions is a vital volume for anyone interested in the questions coming out of the musical matrices that remade songs represent.”—Dr Freya Jarman, Reader in Music, University of Liverpool“There is probably no better way to explore the past seventy years of recorded popular music in all its stylistic, cultural, and sonic diversity than through the lens of the cover song. In The Routledge Handbook to the Popular Music Cover Song: Vivid Versions and Musical Subjectivities, Mike Alleyne and Lori Burns have assembled an impressive collection of essays from among the world’s leading popular music scholars, each of whom offers a close analysis of how a specific cover song transforms the original version in profound and interesting ways, using an array of approaches and methodologies that are as diverse as the cover songs themselves. Brimming with insightful observations in every chapter, this volume will prove essential reading not only for those interested in the phenomenon of the cover song but also the reception history of recorded popular music more broadly.”—Mark Spicer, Professor and Chair of Music, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York “I’ve found Vivid Versions especially compelling in the way it treats cover versions as a lens on how songs travel through bodies, scenes, industries, and histories. Across the volume, contributors show how re-imaginings can newly animate an original, rescue it, or even boldly attack it—and why those shifts matter socio-culturally as much as they do musically. What I particularly value is how the chapters connect close listening to questions of identity, power, and oppression without sacrificing musical specificity. And rather than leaning on familiar canonical touchstones, the book draws on a wide stylistic range and favors lesser-known cases that, in many instances, have even more to say.”—Prof. Ralf von Appen, Director of the Department of Popular Music, MDW - University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna

• Introduction: The Recorded Song as Vivid TextMIKE ALLEYNE AND LORI BURNS1 The Legacy of Cross Racial CoversJEREMY OROSZ2 Wakon-Beisai: Japanese Versions of “Jailhouse Rock”Elvis Presley (1957); Michiko Hamamura (1957)AKITSUGU KAWAMOTO3 Gesture, Text, Context: Post-Punk and New Wave Interpretations of Early Soul and FunkBarrett Strong, “Money (That’s What I Want)” (1959); The Flying Lizards (1979) James Brown, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine (Part 1)” (1970); The Flying Lizards (1984)TOM ATTAH4 A Microcosm of Punk Aesthetics: The Residents and Devo “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”The Rolling Stones (1965); The Residents (1976); Devo (1977)JOHN ENCARNAÇÃO5 “Hey Joe”: A Triad of Black Recorded InterconnectionsThe Jimi Hendrix Experience (1966); Seal (1991); Black Uhuru (1990)Mike Alleyne6 Voicing Historicity in “Four Women”Nina Simone (1966); Meshell Ndegeocello (2012)ERIK STEINSKOG7 Two Sides of Motown: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (1967); Diana Ross (1970)JAAP KOOIJMAN8 Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain”: Donna Summer’s “Macarthur Park” Cover and Disco ExtravaganzaRichard Harris (1968); Donna Summer (1978)JOHN HOWLAND9 `Black Sabbath: A Legacy in Cover Songs “Black Sabbath” (1970); Thou (2009); “Paranoid” (1970); Kylesa (2015); “Solitude” (1971); Ulver (2007); “Changes” (1972); Charles Bradley (2016); “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” (1973); The Cardigans (1994); “Symptom of the Universe” (1975); Sepultura (1994)LORI BURNS AND PATRICK ARMSTRONG10 “Your Song,” My Chords: A Phenomenological Analysis of Ellie Goulding’s CoverElton John, “Your Song” (1970); Ellie Goulding (2010)PAT O’GRADY AND ALEX CHILVERS11 “There Is Your Song from Me”: Re-Imagining “Blue”Joni Mitchell (1971); Arc Iris (2018)IVAN TAN12 Pictures at the Mekong Delta: Shaping Mussorgsky into Heavy MetalMekong Delta, “Pictures at an Exhibition” (1996); Emerson, Lake and Palmer (1971)DAVID MIGUEL13 “Can’t You Hear Me?” from Emotional Distress to a Social “S.O.S.” Portishead’s Version of ABBA’s Hit SongABBA, “S.O.S.” (1974); Portishead (2016)GITTIT PEARLMUTTER14 Covering and Commercializing Soca: Transforming the Soundtrack of Carnival into Novelty Pop TunesLord Kitchener, “Sugar Bum Bum” (1977); Swamp Dogg (2000) Anslem Douglas, “Doggie” (1998); Baha Men, “Who Let the Dogs Out” (2000)MEAGAN A. SYLVESTER NIGEL A. CAMPBELL15 Thin Dime, Hard Times”: Competing Trajectories of Genre and Authenticity in BluegrassTony Rice, “Church Street Blues” (1983); Punch Brothers (2022)CHARLES EDHOLM16 The Ironic Cover Song: “My Sharona” Meets the Alternative 90sThe Knack (1979); Veruca Salt (1995)THEO CATEFORIS17 “Midnight Rider’s Prayer”: Brothers Osborne’s Recontextualization of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” in Post-2020 AmericaWillie Nelson (1980); Brothers Osborne (2022)VICTORIA MALAWEY18 Asserting the Missing Indigenous Voice in “Run to the Hills”Iron Maiden (1982); Tanya Tagaq and Damian Abraham (2018)KAREN FOURNIER19 Cover Songs and Queer (Musical) Ontologies: A Case Study on Maxwell’s “This Woman’s Work”Kate Bush (1988); Maxwell (1997)STEPHANIE DOKTOR20 Cover Conceptions and Boundaries: When A Cover Includes Original ArtistsMetallica, “One” (1988); Apocalyptica (2024)CIRO SCOTTO21 Alternative’s Alternatives: Radical Reimaginings of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”Nirvana (1991); Tori Amos (1992); Think Up Anger feat. Malia J (2015) LESLIE A. TILLEY22 Friday I’m In Lofi: ASMR Aesthetics and the Gentle Pleasure of Phoebe Bridgers’s Cover of the CureThe Cure, “Friday, I’m in Love” (1992); Phoebe Bridgers (2018) BRONWEN MCVEIGH23 Who is the Real Femme Fatale? Film Noir, Shifting Perspective, and Performance in “Things Have Changed”Bob Dylan (2000); Bettye LaVette (2018)KATIE KAPURCH AND JON MARC SMITH24 Silencing Kim: Lingua Ignota’s Transformation of Eminem’s “Kim” Eminem (2000); Lingua Ignota (2020)OLIVIA R. LUCAS25 Signing Divas: Sign Language Covers of “Defying Gravity”Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth (2003); Sandra Mae Frank(2017); Rogan Shannon (2021); Amber Zion (2024); Joshua Castille (2024)ANABEL MALER26 Abstract Orchestra Signifyin(g) on Madvillain’s “Meat Grinder” Madvillain (2004); Abstract Orchestra (2019)RAGNHILD BRØVIG AND ALEX STEVENSON27 Shades of Heartache and Musical Identity in “The Limit to Your Love”Feist (2007); James Blake (2010)KAI ARNE HANSEN