What's On Tonight & Pop Culture: Totally Tunes: Why Dontcha Cover The Whole Thing Up?

Don't you just love it when artists are original? If you answered to that with a sound no, then this article is right for you! It's okay, I'm not dragging on bands and performers who now and then do a cover version of a song... but I am kiiiinda dragging on bands and performers who do a whole album comprised of covers. I mean, it's great and everything, but is it really necessary, though? Can't complain much, considering some of my favorite songs have come out of said cover albums, but still, imagine all that time doing 'em invested in some original stuff. Yeah, sounds great.

"Cover", you get it? Aaaah, wocka wocka! Via Pexels

So, as I mentioned before, some of my favorite songs are from cover albums, and most of said songs happen to be by Robbie Williams. I just really like it when he covers classic tunes, okay? Don't judge me! He's done two swing albums, one back in the early days and one a few years back, the first being 97% covers (the other one is split even between covers and originals), both albums got really interesting guests, too:

If there's an artist that REALLY loves doing cover albums, that's Rod Stewart. Heck, a huge chunk of his recent discography is one cover album after another, to the point where I once joked he'd do The Rod Stewart RodStewartBook, covering his own stuff... and he kinda ended up doing that.

It's not just solo performers, bands can do it, too. Otherwise, ask Placebo, who in 2003 released a bonus disc with 10 covers, one better than the previous one. They still play some of them from time to time.

Some bands just go wild with the concept of cover albums, like Mexican rock oddity group Molotov, who took famous tunes and did their thing with them. And by "did their thing" I mean totally wrecking that stuff up.

You know what kind of songs artists really love to cover? Broadway songs! Just look at Malcolm Merlyn, putting his pipes out for the felines from his B-Way cover album: