In early May, New York house music veterans Nervous Records enjoyed two Beatport top 10 hits: A somber, heavily syncopated reworking of Kendrick Lamar's “Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe” by Liquid Rose and Trace ( UZ), and a rocking version of Diddy and Keyshia Cole's “Last Night” by Loofy.
In both cases, the older track was equipped with a fresh vocal and revamped for dance floors, clocking in at just under 130 beats per minute. “There's something special about being able to know all the lyrics and sing along to a brand new song — even though it's not a brand new song,” says Rida Naser, associate director of music programming for SiriusXM's BPM and The Pulse.
Many producers have taken note. Ghostbusterz tackled the Doobie Brothers' 'Long Train Running', while Armonica, Zamna Soundsystem and ROZYO took on a danceable version of Lana Del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness'. Both hit the Beatport Top 100. (Beatport, a popular website for DJs and electronic music fans, ranks songs by number of downloads.) Whitney Houston's late-decade reprise of the classic “It's Not” 90's by Mr. Belt & Wezol Right But It's OK” recently surpassed 65 million streams on Spotify.
“We've been doing a lot of this since 2018,” says Kevin McKay, DJ, producer and founder of Glasgow Underground. “A lot of artists avoided it because they felt it wasn't cool or that they would be looked down upon. Now almost all the labels are doing it.” For a time, Joe Wiseman, head of Insomniac Music Group, was “getting so many dance covers” that he considered issuing a moratorium on signing them.
Dance music has a long history of referencing the past, often through remixes and prominent samples. But while most aspiring rockers cut their teeth in a cover band, “in dance music, that part gets skipped,” says McKay, “and people go straight to writing originals.”
However, as anyone who has ever attended a wedding knows, many people have to be swayed to the dance floor – often to songs they already recognize. Many club patrons need the same enticement.
The dance arrangements “evoke a sense of nostalgia, recalling [listeners] of early hits and the memories attached to them,” says Wez Saunders, CEO of Defected Records. And these “remakes often serve as a gateway, drawing attention to the genre and leading listeners to discover new music.”
George Hess, a veteran dance radio promoter, believes the lack of shared experiences during the pandemic – when “new memories were hard to make since people basically weren't together enjoying each other's company” – further strengthened listeners' desire for familiarity.
At the time, mainstream pop saw a rise in “I know that one!” samples and in-your-face interference, which offer some possible support for Hess's theory. And two of the biggest singles to come out of the commercial dance world recently, ACRAZE's “Do It To It” and David Guetta and Bebe Rexha's “I'm Good (Blue),” borrowed heavily from old Cherish hits and Eiffel 65, respectively.
In a world where anyone with a computer can put together a dance track, it's also possible that producers are increasingly incentivized to make covers as a way to lasso listeners inundated with similar-sounding releases. In 2023, Luminate reported that more than 120,000 tracks appeared daily on streaming services. The flow of new tunes is more controlled on Beatport. Still, between 20,000 and 25,000 fresh tracks are released on the platform per week.
Nervous Records works with Louie Vega, “who always uses live musicians” to introduce different tones and textures to his tracks, says label co-founder Mike Weiss. “With fewer producers doing this, a lot of them are all using the same plugins,” and the covers offer a way to stand out.
McKay believes the cover trend may be more about channeling the knock-out top lines and bright hooks of the originals: “We're short on songwriting talent, so when you're on the track, you're taking that great song from the past and it just takes a lot away from the current content.” Glasgow Underground did well on the Beatport chart with covers of The SOS Band, Kylie Minogue, ABBA and more.
Additionally, the complex dynamics of the music business ensure that sampling or jamming a song is a painstaking process, potentially making covers a more attractive proposition. To clear a sample, a producer must obtain permission from the owner(s) of both the original composition and the recording. “Unrepresented independent artists can have a hard time even getting a response to their request,” explains Tim Kappel, entertainment attorney and founder of Wells Kappel. Their request can also be denied, he continues, or granted only if the artist agrees to pay high fees for the use of the material.
Instead, artists can usually cover songs in the US without the express approval of the original songwriters, under the somewhat vague condition that “their arrangement will not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work.” The original writers receive all songwriting rights from the resulting cover art. “For a dance artist who just wants to consistently release music, the obstacles to clearing samples and jams can outweigh the artist's desire to have releases in the underlying composition” and drive them to produce more covers, says Jodie Shihadeh, founder of Shihadeh. Law.
Although dance music covers have increased, they are not an automatic feature at home. In Wiseman's view, the most obvious source material is “never the best” — he's not looking for a remake of Britney Spear's “Toxic,” for example. “You want to have that feeling where someone says, 'I know I heard this song years ago, and I liked it then, but I don't remember it well,'” he continues.
And many label executives also stressed that covers are just one tool they use to attract audiences. “As a label that has been around for over 33 years, [covers] it can't be our sole focus,” says Andrew Salsano, vice president of Nervous Records.
Nervous Records is hoping another reimagined classic can light up dance floors this summer: On July 19, the label will release a new version of Cher's “Believe” from Super Flu. While the original sounds like an overheated race car engine, the Super Flu version builds slowly, replacing Cher's Auto-Tune flourishes with a talkative delivery, triumphantly trading in for something more insipid.
DJs are already testing the Super Flu single in their sets. “I was in a club when it was playing,” Weiss says. The dancers' response?
“Very emotional.”
