Submitted by Safe-Helicopter-2424 t3_11r30ts in Music
For the life of me I cannot figure this out. I work in retail so most days I have to listen to whatever the radio pumps out. Mostly I'll ignore it, but then a song will come on but wait it's not that song. It's a crappy not-really-a-cover version where the artist has taken the chorus and melody of the song but stuck in their own (nearly always worse) lyrics and put it to some anemic synth or EDM or something.
So far I've heard:
Every Breath You Take
I'm Blue
Can't Take My Eyes Off You (at least that one seems to be a proper cover as the lyrics haven't been drastically changed).
Rocket Man
Dancing in the Moonlight (again at least seems a real cover even if I don't particularly care for the depressed EDM version it is).
Hey There Delilah (but the big and apparently great change according to an article I read was the only word that was changed was Delilah to Everybody).
With other swearing they've heard versions of:
In the End and One Thousand Miles.
I'm not against covers as a practice. A lot of everyone's favorite versions of songs are covers. I'm not against using the general melodic vibe of a song like Biz Markie using the beat from Freddie Scott's original You Got What I Need.
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It's just this feels not only wholly unoriginal but almost like theft and plagiarism, and I'm just trying to figure out what is letting this happen. Are we finally hitting that theoretical end point of culture?