Ahhh, finally something to make me go back to that other thread to click the link for Yoko Ono singing (if you call it that) Wagon Wheel. I had to find something to put this in perspective.
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Top 40...anyone playing it?
- Thread starter 51PRI
- Start date
Ahhh, finally something to make me go back to that other thread to click the link for Yoko Ono singing (if you call it that) Wagon Wheel. I had to find something to put this in perspective.
This thread is 10% analysis of the cover band scene and 90% old dudes complaining that things ain’t how they used to be.
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Top 40 still exists? Today it's rap / hip-hop, the realm of DJs. Any musicality one might hear was created in Protools. The name of the "artist" associated with a song is irrelevant, the composition is exclusively the work of the producer. Concerts are no longer musical productions, they're squads of production company employees gyrating while the "artist" lipsyncs and actors stand in the background "playing" instruments incapable of creating anything being heard. Country is the only genre still relatively genuine. (much of today's new country is yesterday's rock)
Took a break from the stage in the early 2010s, worked as a nightclub DJ - playing primarily remixes of current releases/ house/ some mainstream hip-hop. Packed the dance floor. (Bartender, struggling to take a customer's order: Turn it down! The music's too loud! Yours truly: Whump-Whump-Whump I can't hear you! The music's too loud!) Nearby live music rooms struggled, with the exception of when a disco/funk or Motown band played.
Took a break from the stage in the early 2010s, worked as a nightclub DJ - playing primarily remixes of current releases/ house/ some mainstream hip-hop. Packed the dance floor. (Bartender, struggling to take a customer's order: Turn it down! The music's too loud! Yours truly: Whump-Whump-Whump I can't hear you! The music's too loud!) Nearby live music rooms struggled, with the exception of when a disco/funk or Motown band played.
Next time you are setting up, play the bass line from Bad Guy by Billie Eilish. Just do it - and I guarantee someone's head will pop up and you'll get a smile from them as they recognize it. The bigger problem is that 'current top 40' - if that even really exists anymore in the musical gigantic stew pot of genres/sources/etc that exists today - is not generally being listened to by the people that are going to a venue to hear music. What IS coming on-line though, is the 2000's-2010's music. Pink, Maroon 5, early Taylor Swift, etc... There is a bunch of good stuff there to pick from. I'm convinced there is a market for it. I'm convinced that people will listen, enjoy, sing, and dance to it. I'm also convinced that 99.9% of musicians in my area to too old and set in their ways to recognize this. They don't see it, because they don't want to see it.
It exists and there’s plenty of gigs available for those who are interested in working. I would love to but I’m tied up with tribute acts atm.
I had an idea for putting together a cover band that only plays pop hits from 2000-now, but none of my musician friends were into the idea, of course. They're all over 50 and want to keep playing the same stuff they know. I think you'd have to pull from a younger pool of musicians to make it work,
My previous band. We didn't do too bad with Beatles. That's the BL's mom walking in front
Doing the Beatles is easy if you grew up listening to the Beatles - on the AM radio. Paul was the greatest influence on my developing bass skills, and often use his riffs as fills. Side project, same day, same venue, every week. Fun to do. Featherweight Hofner easy on the shoulders. Vox grille frame disguising a Sunn. Great relief from the heavy, loud hard rock my primary band played.
100% agree. Popularity of music is extremely transient right now, so I think the strategy is to see what songs that are 3 to 5 years old appear to be holding up, and add that stuff into your set lists gradually.
I’d propose, across a band’s book:
- 30% cover band standards from the 70s through the 90s. The tunes we’ve all played in a zillion bands.
- 50% cleverly chosen tunes from the 00s and 10s.
- 20% tunes from the last 5 years, but rarely anything being played on the top charts right now because you just don’t know if that song will be around in 9 months.
If this band has good musicians, a good PA, and a nice stage setup with lighting it will pull.
Bonus - if this band runs all IEMs with a modern electronic drum kit it will sound fantastic in any size venue.
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Tugging this thread. I looked the Spotify “Top Hits of 2020” playlist. That’s four years ago, so any of those songs we still hear now and then have some stickiness and are probably worth considering.
Five songs from that list that could go into any cover band’s book right now:
- Blinding Lights (The Weeknd - for badass credit, medley this with A-Ha’s “Take on Me”)
- Don’t Start Now (Dua Lipa)
- Circles (Post Malone)
- 3 Nights (Dominic Fike)
- Adore You (Harry Styles)
If you’re playing in areas where the clientele is in their 20s, you can keep these in your rotation for years.
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To do today's top 40, you would need an AI generated band and a crappy vocalist going through some sort of voice synth. Sounds like fun.
No. Not since the 70's.
The audience comes with memories and wants to go back, not forward.
The top 40 was always aimed at teenies/twenties and we arn't there anymore, neither are our audiences.
The audience comes with memories and wants to go back, not forward.
The top 40 was always aimed at teenies/twenties and we arn't there anymore, neither are our audiences.
Back in the 90's I took a 5 year hiatus to undertake medical training and after a few more years ended up playing again more than I did when I was doing it for a living. Aside from recent musicals (theater gigs), the tune list on GB & casuals gigs has not changed very much since the late 80's. Nobody seems to want the newer stuff and the requests are about the same as they have been for decades. There are exceptions here and there (Bruno Mars comes to mind here) but things are pretty much as they always have been. I never would have guessed that back in my 20's.
I'm not specifically calling you out here because you're neither the first or only poster to say it, but this has been repeated throughout the thread and I'm just not sure it's accurate.
I'll happily admit that I'm about two decades past an appropriate age to be bothering about keeping in touch with the charts, but out of interest I scanned this week's Top 40 just now; without doing a massive amount of digging and only listening to the first 30 seconds of a tune I reckon 27 tracks on there are either pop-country, big drama ballads, or nu-disco that are easily approachable by a band without either a rapper or backing tracks. At absolute worst you'd need a keyboard player and perhaps some kind of synth/octave sound for bass if you wanted those subs.
Not all of those 27 are going to work as a band arrangement or in live music venues, and yes if I'm being honest playing a lot of them would bore me to tears, but it's not like there's no material to work with out there!
The SBL team had a good video breaking down bass parts on the Spotify top 10 list:
I love doing covers that are recognizable but in a different form. We funk everything up.
I love doing covers that are recognizable but in a different form. We funk everything up.
It’s not, the get off my lawn is strong in this thread.
I just looked at the Spotify Top 50, here are 5 songs that would work great for a cover band right now:
Hozier - Too Sweet
Shaboozey - A Bar Song
Illusion - Dua Lipa
Close to You - Gracie Abrams
Red Wine Supernova - Chappell Roan
Now, to be clear - I don’t recommend adding currently charting songs to a book in most cases because as I described above many do not stay in rotation for long and are quickly forgotten. You want to see a little stickiness before you learn a tune.
Nor do I personally “like” any of these songs. Maybe I like the Hozier one. The job of a cover band, though, is not to play songs you like. It’s to play songs your clientele likes. I made this list to illustrate that if your clientele is people under 30 these are the songs they know and none of these are hip hop/DJ tracks, any of them could sound great by a talented cover band.
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I've been saying for awhile now that cover bands are close to being a dead concept. Not enough people connect with the newer stuff since it's so ephemeral, and the old stuff is aging out, as are the musicians. Pair that with the closing of venues, and it's eventually toast. We had a good run, I guess.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
'Top 40' in what genre? What chart reference, and what year? I think the folks who come closest to keeping tabs on whatever the most current, popular hits are would be wedding bands - and are properly prepared with multiple vocalists to faithfully do them. That takes $$ to get the right talent hired. I guess they come closest to keeping fresh 'Top 40' set lists ready to go, but I don't see those same bands performing traditional 'cover band top 40' gigs, so it doesn't seem to be that the demand is there for live renditions of popular songs in bars.... bar owners are more apt to just turn on Sirius XM or something. I have a bunch of friends who make a living around here just playing in corporate/wedding bands, since we're a huge wedding destination. But they aren't gigging anywhere else for the most part.
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I tried to listen to this the other day to see what all the fuss was about. I consider myself open minded, and good music is good music. But this is objectively bad and exceptionally formulaic.
But then I'm not the target audience, so.
