mr dave

the way i see it there are 3 ways to cover songs and you provide examples of all three. a copy / a personal take / a professional take

metallica did a straight copy. sure it's a little faster and a little rougher but still so close to the original that there's not much difference.

johnny cash didn't really improve on 'hurt' so much as record a personalized version. if anything rick rubin deserves far more credit for the end of johnny cash's career than the man himself. if it weren't for rubin pushing him to cover modern rock tunes i'm willing to bet most young people would have been saying 'who? / so...' when he died.

madonna's cover is a straight career move. hardly the first time a past radio hit gets reworked with a beat box. it's why disco lasted longer than a summer. i always hated that song, at least madonna has great tits when you drop the volume.

in any event the original artist usually does win out once their song is covered and released as a single whether it's a copy or crap. no one releases a cover of a single that's still getting airplay, so it will still draw indirect attention to the original song and group regardless of the quality of the cover.

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