INSIGHT

Cover Tunes

Authenticity and mimicry are not synonymous.

“Good artists borrow. Great ones steal.”

– Not ironically questionable origins

For what follows to have any credibility, dear reader, I offer you a small bit of exposition:

In a former life, I was a professional musician. I mean to use “professional” strictly in the academic sense. I had no other job. What paltry income I earned came from strumming “Lady In Red” with a bandmate in the subway for the bridge-and-tunnelers who had come in for a bit of shopping, or teaching tweens how to smash a Green Day song mostly correctly. It was an amazing time. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Nor would I go back to those times for any reason.

Exposition concluded. I do want to go back to this idea of “mostly correctly” though.

Mostly, in this context, is wonderfully incomplete. Mostly makes room for a dash of individuality and maybe innovation. Mostly acknowledges that entirely is not ideal (or even possible, really).

Take Jimi Hendrix, for example. He is often seen as entirely self-taught and completely original. Truth is, he emulated some great blues players who came before him. He asked Richie Havens to ask Bob Dylan to write down the chords and lyrics to “All Along the Watchtower” for him. (Bob obliged and the world was a slightly lovelier place. True story.) He didn’t invent the Dominant 7(#9) chord, or the pentatonic scale—two very, very Hendrix guitar things. (Hoping the last two sentences offer credibility. References available upon request; comments from guitarists unwelcome.)

The idea that anything or anyone being cut from whole cloth and completely original is apocryphal nonsense. Canonizing a 27-year-old who lit his guitar on fire (just to piss off Pete Townsend, no less) as “completely original” requires a little bit of magical thinking to get the immutability of sainthood all the way around the bases.

What Hendrix did was use things that already existed, like others had before but a little less exactly, like no one really had before. He was mostly the same. The tried-and-true sounded a bit different once shaped by his experiences, his point of view, his life, what moved him, and the time in which he was doing his thing.

These small shifts—the ones that mostly doesn’t include—afford us opportunities atop the shoulders of giants. We owe it to ourselves and our audiences to add our part. To copy exactly and expect the same results as the original is to misunderstand, devalue, and degrade the original entirely.

Second Take.
I’m in my second, current professional life (100% more health insurance, 50% less glory). It is here that I’ve heard this from intelligent leaders of credible companies more times than you can imagine:

“Our visual identity should be super clean… lots of white space. Understated and classic. Make us look just like Apple. You get it.”

- Client X

There are many reasons for these statements (fear, weak leadership, pushy boards, a lack of or misunderstanding about what a brand actually is, investors with agendas, et. al.); none are advised. Visual identity is an expression of a brand. A brand is underwritten by integrity. To establish and maintain that integrity, we have to be willing to step out of what we know about the success of others and trust that our success will be different and entirely possible based on our own merit.

Mimicry’s benefit is safety; its tax is being indistinguishable from the original. Conversely, innovation’s benefits (that is, doing something mostly the same, but your version of it) are differentiation and integrity; its tax is the potential that the marketplace receives your poorly, or not at all. Innovation, however, is not the same as invention. Innovation relies on a mostly the same tactical playbook for brand expression but will produce unique results every time. The processes will come to fit the brand, rather than the other way around.

Liner Notes.
The idea for writing this piece came from learning a few songs I’d always wanted to play but hadn’t ever got around to. “Covering” a song can reveal an awful lot to a player: where they are stuck, where their own habits, tone, and approach emerge, the hidden little gem they admire in the original that gets some extra time in the limelight.

From a place of admiration comes an opportunity for innovation and self-expression, furthering a wisened, more accomplished player—one who knows their own tendencies and capabilities and can use them to express themselves, mostly, rather than recite a tune note for note. Something new but not entirely unfamiliar can be discovered, honed, and given to the audience.

The rest is up to marketing.

Hidden Tracks.
Writing this piece made me dive into some well done covers. Each exemplifies, in some way, what I am trying to get across. Here’s the playlist on Spotify.

It’s maddeningly incomplete. Got another great cover to add? Tell me and I’ll add it – just give me the cover and the original.

Process, volume, and often a mindset of non-attachment are critical for success. And, given that most organizations do this once (or twice), and agencies like is + at do this all the time, our process and stamina are valuable assets.

Shameless plug; also true.

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Matthew Thornton
22 August, 2022