Re‐flections on the Cover Age: A Collage of Continuous Coverage in Popular Music

Abstract

Abstract Since the 1980s, "Re" has been the predominant cultural mode. This condition is an endless lifestyle loop of repeating, retrieving, rewinding, recycling, reciting, redesigning and reprocessing. Popular music's backward spin accelerated and diversified dramatically during the Re Era. The past quarter century's "like a version" loop invites "The Cover Age" as a fitting characterization. Standardization, interpretation, incorporation, adaptation, appropriation and appreciation have been manifest in a multitude of musical manners and methods, including retrospectives and reissues, the emergence of rap and sampling as commercially dominant pop styles, karaoke, and a steady flow, if not stream, of cover compilations and tribute recordings which revisit a significant cross section of musical periods, styles, genre and artists and their catalogs of compositions. This essay is a collage and chronicle of the continuous coverage, intertextuality, and issues (imitation, ownership, apprenticeship, and preservation) within the karaoke climate of the music, mass media and marketplace triad, with artists, producers, record companies and consumers cohorts in the massive cover up.