I warned about it last week…
…and in the continued absence of a release for Maroon 5’s “Payphone”, which people are apparently desperate to buy for some reason, it’s even worse than I thought. Precision Tunes’ version of the song is #9 in the UK charts this week. #9!
Something really needs to be done to fix this before we get our first number one from an opportunist cover (that never quite happened in the import days, right?).
It’s not quite the same thing but Opportunist Cover Versions have had two previous chart heydays (as you probably already know but I love this stuff):
- The 1950s, where there were a) multiple recorded versions of hot sheet music hits around simultaneously and b) British recordings of US hits. Both of these declined with rock’n’roll but there were still a couple of occasions where two versions of a song got to number one (“Singin’ The Blues” and “Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White”)
- To a lesser extent the 1990s, where the gap between a dance hit being hot in the holiday clubs and licensed in the UK was often long enough for opportunistic producers to sneak in. The only one I can think of which actually got to Number One was Spacedust’s “Gym & Tonic”, a version of a Bangalter track whose original got held up in sample clearance hell.
Didn’t really know about the first era; the second era was what I had in mind but I didn’t know that about “Gym & Tonic”. Thanks!
