Melting the Archive: The Irreconcilable Cover Song and Rock’s Recorded History

Abstract In this article, I consider a set of curious cases from the world of rock music: putative “cover versions” that differ from their corresponding canonical tracks to such an extent that it seems doubtful whether they even count as performances of the same songs. Though I address the ontological question of how or whether these tracks could be classified as actual cover songs, in this paper I am more concerned with the evaluative question of how we should attempt to appreciate them as such (as we are invited to do, I argue, according to the recordings’ metatextual cues). I will argue that these irreconcilable covers, as I call them, are best appreciated as conceptual artworks that function in a manner somewhat analogous to how Arthur Danto argues that Andy Warhol’s famed Brillo Box sculptures function; prompting us to reflect on the nature of art (and non-art). Through adopting a strategy that is, in some respects, the inverse of Warhol’s, these covers make a similar invitation to listeners to consider the nature of rock covers and covering practices, and to reflect on the stances that we—listeners and artists alike—might take in relation to rock’s past and its ever-available recorded archive.