Musical Pet Peeve

There's a phenomenon on the radio these days that really bothers me (and no I'm not talking about Gwen Stefani...or the Black Eyed Peas). Last night I was driving home from dinner with the fam and I'm scanning the dial and I come across what I think is "Lips of an Angel" by Hinder. (I will save for another post on another day how much I loathe this song and the band of foul miscreants who have foisted it upon us.) I had been around the horn 2 or 3 times and hadn't found anything better so I thought "I'll just bear down and get through the last half of this song and maybe something good will come on after this". What I began to notice though was that although the song still sucked mightily (and believe me...this song is the suckiest suck that has ever sucked), it sucked in a slightly different, slightly twangier fashion. As I continued to listen, the feeling of horror that crept over me was indescribable. It slowly dawned on me that what I was hearing was actually a country version of the aforementioned Hinder crapsterpiece.

Now don't get me wrong...I love cover songs. When one artist sings a song made popular by another artist and does it with style and originality I think that's awesome. An artist may make an unexpected song choice that forces you to re-examine the song in a different context (think Johnny Cash's amazing rendition of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails). When a cover song is done properly I don't think there is any higher musical compliment. (As a point of reference check out Goldfinger's version of "99 Red Balloons", The Presidents of the United States of America doing "Video Killed the Radio Star" or My Chemical Romance's cover of Queen's "Under Pressure"). But I think there is a big difference between a band doing an interesting cover song and this type of shameless cross promoting that is about nothing but revenue dollars and market penetration.

As much as I hate Hinder (and believe me...I do) it's not like this is all their fault. Some weaselly record exec figured out at some point that the label owns the songs and that that they can record different versions of the songs and expose them to an entirely different market segment to generate more dollars...clearly at the expense of the band's artistic integrity. It's not like Hinder is the first band to do it either...There was a country version of Aerosmith's monster ballad "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" that was out at the same time as the original song. "I Can Love You Like That" was also done by country singer John Michael Montgomery and boy band All-4-One. I guess my point is that I think it would be one thing for an artist of any genre to look at a song and think that they can maybe offer a different interpretation or put their own spin on it or maybe even just say "I like this song...I want to sing it". That would be fine. That's not what's happening here though. This is not tribute to another artists song...it's musical prostitution. It's a record label whoring out their artists material for a few more dollars. It's the worst type of sell-out and it makes me sick.