Covers V Originals Playlist

Before I jump into the playlist I made I wanted to comment on how hard I found this assignment to be. I make a lot of playlists myself and was excited to make one for class, but it ended up being very difficult for three main reasons. one, ten songs is not enough tracks, choosing a topic, and deciding an order. choosing a topic was hard because there were so many directions I could take. I debated on using music to explain a communication theory or making a breakup playlist or giving people a sense of my music taste by highlighting songs with fantastic instrumental backgrounds. All of these topics are biased off of playlists i already listen too, but all of them have way more than ten songs and I found it difficult to remove tracks from them. lastly, I normally play music on shuffle, so I found it hard to orange then tracks in an appropriate way.

In the end I decided to start from scratch and make a playlist that showcased covers of songs. I listen to a lot of music, but I’m bad at keeping up with popular or “classic” music so for all of these tracks I heard the cover before the original. I wanted to make a playlist of a few of my favorite covers and include their original version as well. I meaningfully put the cover before the original because that is the order that I had heard them in. Whether or not the person has heard the songs previously I hope they enjoy the playlist. I put them back to back, so the listener would have both versions fresh in their mind and make meaningful comparisons.

Throughout this article I will say how I comparied the songs and where my preference lies, but I hope for the listener to make their own comparisons and preferences as well.

I thought this was a good song to start the playlist with because both are upbeat and fun.

I’ve always been a big fan of Chvrches and one day this song came on during a workout and I loved the beat and the message. The lead singer of Chvrches has a fantastic voice, but the duo is much more focused on the beat and instrementals that go into their music. Houston on the other hand, clearly has a much more soulful and 90s sound that puts much more focus on her vocals. Although I love the Chvrches cover and listen to it much more, I believe the original, by Whitney Houston, has more emotion and depth. ultimately it depends on the situation and the listeners mood.

I chose to put “Dreams” next because it is also pretty up beat. I also feel like they people that recognized “It’s not right, but it’s okay” by Whitney Houston would also recognize this song. For those people I think they would be comforted, but also a little shocked because I found Gabrielle Aplin’s rendition to depart from the Fleetwood Mac song in many ways.

Gabrielle Aplin is one of my favorite artists because of this song. She worked with another one of my favorite bands, Bastille, on this track and I absolutely love their vocals. In addition to this, I think Aplin’s rendition has much more of a spooky and dreamy effect that makes it much more interesting to me. That being said the lyrics and message are fantastic so I'm glad Fleetwood Mac had the artistry to write this song in 1977 so Gabrielle Aplin and Bastille could be inspired by it thirty years later.

This song has a similar tempo to feel as “Dreams” however Chance the Rapper is very popular right now whereas the previous songs were originally written earlier.

I wanted to take a moment to appreciate the cover art on these two. One, Chance’s is just really nice and recognizable. two, MisterWives did a nice tribute to it by keeping the background and then replacing the blue image of Chance to a blue image of the animals that is on their own album.

When I first heard this song I did recognize it but hadn’t heard all of the song. Mandy Lee from MisterWives showcases her vocals very well on this track and led me to obsess over MisterWives for the remainder of the summer, but that wasn’t the best component of the song. This song is fantastic because of the composition and that was all from Chance the Rapper’s mind. I really like the message and Chances use of a choir. in conclusion MisterWives did a fantastic job covering this song, but my preference is with Chance’s original composition.

Since all of the songs so far have been a similar tempo I decided to go with a much slower song for the seventh and eighth tracks.

I wanted to put this song on the playlist because a lot of artists have covered it even though I don’t think it has ever been that popular of a song on its own. Imogen Heap has almost 900,000 less monthly listeners than Amber run on Spotify. You might also recognize the bridge of this song from the 2010 summer hit by Jason Derulo, “Watcha Say”

Imogen Heap wrote this song about her parents’ divorce which is a topic many can relate to. The lyrics are very emotional, and the simplicity adds to the mood of the song. On the original track she only used her voice and a vocoder. Amber Run added some simple instruments and took out the vocoder but stuck to the intended idea.

I liked how simple Imogen Heap made the song, but I really can’t deal with listening to four and a half minutes of a vocoded voice.

The last two tracks are the song “Sober” I decided on this track to finish the playlist because I think most listeners will recognize the song.

I personally like when Childish Gambino performs this song better because the mood is much happier, and the bridge is much more interesting. I think Verite mainly recorded this track to be recognized since at the time she was not very popular. She made a bouncy rhythm into a very moody song that I just don’t enjoy as much.