Musicology 123 Paper 1
Starr and Waterman stated that cover songs/cover versions in the postwar era were used to “cash in on the potential popularity of a recording by creating their own (sometimes almost indistinguishable) versions of it.” However, the reason that a musician records a cover song has drastically changed since the late 1940s. Nowadays, musicians record a cover song to pay homage to their favorite musicians and to the musicians that have inspired them. This is exactly why Foo Fighters covered a song composed by Pink Floyd called “Have a Cigar” and in this paper will compare Pink Floyd’s version of the song with the Foo Fighters’ version.
“Have a Cigar” is a colossally popular Pink Floyd song from one of Pink Floyd’s finest …show more content…
Pink Floyd, being a psychedelic rock band, and Have a Cigar’s composition exemplifies this fact. On the contrary, Foo Fighters are a Rock band and hence their version of Have a Cigar represents this genre of music. Foo Fighters chose to make a plethora of musical choices that makes their version sound more like a Rock song and less like Pink Floyd’s version. The first choice they made was changing the instrumentation, Foo Fighters’ version does not use a synthesizer which was a key aspect of the melody section in Pink Floyd’s version. This part of the melody is played by the electric guitar instead of the synthesizer in the cover version. The absence of the synthesizer makes the Foo Fighters’ more straightforward and less complex because it takes away from the nuances of the original song and makes the cover song more direct. The removal of the synthesizer also makes the Foo Fighters version of the song a homophony while Pink Floyd’s version was a polyphony. Changing the texture of the song simplifies the original version. This simplification gives Foo Fighters more liberty to change other parts of the song. Additionally, a polyphony has many different elements and it is difficult to add complimentary elements to the pre-existing ones subsequently restricting the changes Foo Fighters could make hence changing of the texture would give them more freedom to alter the
Starr and Waterman stated that cover songs/cover versions in the postwar era were used to “cash in on the potential popularity of a recording by creating their own (sometimes almost indistinguishable) versions of it.” However, the reason that a musician records a cover song has drastically changed since the late 1940s. Nowadays, musicians record a cover song to pay homage to their favorite musicians and to the musicians that have inspired them. This is exactly why Foo Fighters covered a song composed by Pink Floyd called “Have a Cigar” and in this paper will compare Pink Floyd’s version of the song with the Foo Fighters’ version.
“Have a Cigar” is a colossally popular Pink Floyd song from one of Pink Floyd’s finest …show more content…
Pink Floyd, being a psychedelic rock band, and Have a Cigar’s composition exemplifies this fact. On the contrary, Foo Fighters are a Rock band and hence their version of Have a Cigar represents this genre of music. Foo Fighters chose to make a plethora of musical choices that makes their version sound more like a Rock song and less like Pink Floyd’s version. The first choice they made was changing the instrumentation, Foo Fighters’ version does not use a synthesizer which was a key aspect of the melody section in Pink Floyd’s version. This part of the melody is played by the electric guitar instead of the synthesizer in the cover version. The absence of the synthesizer makes the Foo Fighters’ more straightforward and less complex because it takes away from the nuances of the original song and makes the cover song more direct. The removal of the synthesizer also makes the Foo Fighters version of the song a homophony while Pink Floyd’s version was a polyphony. Changing the texture of the song simplifies the original version. This simplification gives Foo Fighters more liberty to change other parts of the song. Additionally, a polyphony has many different elements and it is difficult to add complimentary elements to the pre-existing ones subsequently restricting the changes Foo Fighters could make hence changing of the texture would give them more freedom to alter the