Weekend self-care open thread: The art of the cover song

Before the Beatles hit the scene, most pop artists performed songs written by professional songwriters. With the Mop Tops being not only ace performers but songwriters as well, a lot of that business dried up. But even a self-contained unit reaches into the great world songbook to re-record pieces which speak to them.

Covering a song isn't just a case of replicating the original performance. What's the use in that? (If you really have any doubts about the pitfalls of faithful reproduction, take a gander at Gus Van Zandt's shot-by-shot remake of Psycho, which may be the worst movie in his oeuvre.) Artists, as they did regularly in the days before singer-songwriters, take the words and music written by others and make them their own. The art of covering a song lies not only in putting your own interpretation on it, but in choosing it in the first place, because it's a song you would have written had it not been done already.

Without further ado, let's dive in.

Enjoy the long weekend, everyone. As always, be good, be bold, be beautiful to yourselves and others.