Back in the heyday of Usenet, music forums such as rec.music.rock-pop-r+b.1950s would insist on making a distinction between a cover version and a remake of a record.
In this strict terminology, a cover version is released around the time of the original in order to take advantage of the song's current or potential popularity. Several versions of a song could be selling well at the same time, especially in the pre-1960s era, but there are many later examples. (In the 60s it wasn't unusual to hear covers of tracks from the latest Beatles album.)
Judy Stone's version of Born A Woman (June 1966) came out soon after the original by Sandy Posey (May 1966), qualifying it as a true cover version. In Australia Sandy and Judy co-charted in some surveys.
The same goes for Johnny Farnham's cover of Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head (December 1969), originally by B.J. Thomas (October 1969). Again, these two records appeared side-by-side on some Australian radio charts.
On the other hand, at Usenet, if you called Billy Thorpe's version of Poison Ivy (1964) a cover of The Coasters' original (1959) someone would quickly point out your gaff. No, no, no, after 5 years, Billy's version was a remake. Of course I stuck to this convention (I used to say, unkindly, that Usenet was where you asked a civil question and got an insulting answer).
Nowadays, though, cover version is so widely accepted to mean any later version that the remake distinction would be lost on most readers. The big song history sites The Originals, Second Hand Songs and (obviously) Cover.info all use cover to mean any later version, and these are run by experts in the field.
A clincher for me was when I realised that cover was already used by songwriters to mean any recording of their published song. I first noticed it in an email from an American songwriter who said one of his songs got a lot of covers. From a songwriter, this indicates that a song was successful, that it did some good business, regardless of when it was recorded.
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| James Taylor covers some old songs in 2008 |
