What has my dander up?
Big Time Rush.
Sure, I'd heard of them, but paid very little attention to them. After all, I've never been big on that aimed-toward-the-teeny-boppers pop 'music', devised by a certain branch of the record business to do nothing more than cash in on a vulnerable age group in need of an object to fangirl (yes, I've been there, AND done that, so don't look at me that way). The extent of my knowledge of this band is that they have a television show on Nickelodeon (as a 90's child, that sentence felt awkward to type). That, and there was somewhat of a fuss made about them semi-covering All Time Low a few months back (it was a big deal at the time; I even wrote out a blog post for it, but decided against releasing it to the wilds of the Internet). Personally, I wasn't too pleased about it, especially after hearing how they completely lost the meaning of the original song.
Original...
Cover...
However, when a band makes a statement saying that another band's cover is OK, then it must be so (even if the cover makes your skin crawl).
That being said, imagine my surprise when I see Big Time Rush in my Beatles news feed.
What have the industry big-wigs decided to destroy this time?
Um. What?
The article I read included a synopsis of the film: something about a spy gadget called "The Beetle"; shock of shocks, the film is set in London; and they named a character Penny Lane.
Really?
I mean, really?
Sure, calling something Penny Lane is OK in certain instances; my favorite doll, which was a present for my seventh birthday, was named Penny Lane.
A red haired doll I named Penny Lane. My mother should have known I would turn out exactly as I am.
After I had an internal fit about the plot points, I realized that there was going to be an EP of Beatles covers being downloaded by well-meaning nine year old girls to their little iPod shuffles. Covers of The Beatles, for God's sake, sandwiched between Justin Bieber, and Miley Cyrus. I mean, people cover The Beatles all the time; this one just really set my blood to boiling.
As my outrage started to flare up, I decided to see if I could find any previews or clips from this predestined disaster (you know, for those of us that can tell good music from... well, anyway). The furthest I was willing to take the search was found at the end of the preview for the film.
"Help"? How on earth can they cover "Help"?
In this instance, imitation is not the best form of flattery. It cannot be, simply because The Beatles do not need to be flattered; they need for their catalog to be left the hell alone. Of course, this is coming from someone who boycotted the LOVE mixes for the first two years of their release (but later found her way to the promised lands). And, big surprise, newsflash of the day, I didn't care for "Across The Universe", either.
I may have been wrong about LOVE, but I'm not wrong about this. George Martin remixing the catalog to the satisfaction of Paul, Yoko, Olivia, and Ringo is far different from the cheaper end of the music industry taking iconic songs, and cheapening them for the notion of a few bucks. And, let's be honest, it's the record industry, not the band. The band is merely fulfilling their contract, and no one can blame them for that; we can, however, blame the narrow-mindedness of a continuously stagnating industry fighting tooth and nail to grab onto something that's left them behind, and that they lost sight of far too long ago.
It's reasons like this that Michael Jackson is swapping pineapples with Hitler.
