Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime.

There's something fun about learning to play one of your favorite songs for yourself.

You know, learning the lyrics, figuring out the chords and the rhythm and deconstructing all the

constituent parts. Then you get deeper.

You begin to appreciate how everything fits together. The artistic's decision made by the

songwriter, what kind of musical skill is required, the sort of production that was employed,

and all that. And by the time you've learned the song, you've learned a whole bunch of other things as well.

And you're probably a better musician as a result. This is why learning to play other people's music is so important.

Now, let's look at it from the other side. If a song can be interpreted multiple times by many different people and still sound good,

then you could call that a great song.

The best compositions not only sound great when played by a full band,

but could also sound great when performed by one person around a campfire.

And finally, there's the fan aspect

of all this. People love to hear songs done in different ways by different artists. Sometimes the

cover is even better than the original, or at the very least, is revealed to be something more,

or at least something different, in the hands of someone else.

With all this in mind, I've assembled a list of cover songs. We're going to go through all of

them to determine what makes them and the original so great. This is the ongoing history of

new music podcast with Alan Cross.

Hello again, I'm Alan Cross, and there isn't a single original song on this program.

These are all cover songs, examples of recordings made by someone who did not write the song.

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