Since mankind has been sentient, there have been methods for us to entertain ourselves. One of the most popular of these is music. Many people who hear a piece that they like try to imitate it, something which we see incredibly often, through learning instruments, parodies and cover tracks. But are these versions just as good, or even better than the originals?

Firstly, there are parodies. Usually fan-made, they vary in quality greatly. One of the better creators is the famous ‘Weird-Al’ Yankovic, who has done lots of parodies. One of these is a remake of You’re Beautiful, by James Blunt. He completely reversed the theme of the song, changing the lyrics to say “You’re Pitiful”. The humour within the song is cleverly used, and it imitates the original in a very accurate way. According to one listener, “[You’re Pitiful] is just like the original! I love Weird Al!”. Whether a person likes the song or not depends on their personality, and their feelings about the original. Naturally, these views vary from person to person, and could be that they dislike the song because they are not fond of change, or didn’t like the original, or the complete opposite: they love the new version because they appreciate the humour or loved the original. Personally, I enjoy most parodies and their incorporated humour, although in many cases I do not feel that they are better than the original.

However, a more frequent dispute is one involving cover tracks, involving a band or performer re-releasing a track already well known amongst many of the population. For example, Queen’s massively famous Don’t Stop Me Now had a cover track done by McFly. Again, a person’s view on cover tracks depends on a number of things, including their opinions on the original band, new band and song, as well as the quality of the new track. Most agree, however, that the original is better. This could be partially psychological, that humans do not like the change of something they like and enjoy, however often it may be noticed that these changes are for the worse. To use McFly as an example, the instruments used in the cover track are different and create a slightly different effect to those in the original. Although there are occasionally a cover that is as good as the original, the majority of the time the cover tracks are inferior.