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| You know the state of YouTube covers are bad when there is a channel called "Cover Nation" |
Covers on YouTube are super lame most of the time because the hordes of Ed Sheeran and Lorde songs that people play drown out a lot of other artist's content. They're really all the same, it's a bunch of indie posh kiddos with a guitar who sing songs way more seriously than they were originally written to be. They do it in this kind of airy like groove where they close their eyes, and stick their mouth out, slightly swaying to the guitar strum, only to smash the song full of vibrato because I guess that's how to make a song original and yours? Also there's this lame thing that they do where they make a song down tempo like it's some cool and original thing they're doing. This is all until they do the YouTube cover artist signature move of course; head down to looking into the camera with sad puppy eyes. Also I don't know what it is but they all have the same voice in my opinion, they just all sound the same...Here's an existential question for you, if everyone is indie, then is anyone indie?
Anyway, among these clone-like artists lies a man who has become a personal hero of mine. But wait! He's not just one man, he's a One Man Band...(Reborn). OMBreborn is a YouTube Channel where the creator does very produced music video covers of classic rock artists like Billy Joel, David Bowie, The Beach Boys, etc, and honestly I just don't have words for how much I love his videos, You just have to see it for yourself:
Isn't that just the most rad thing you've seen in such a long time? His videos bring me so much happiness. Not to mention that he's extremely talented as well. On a first viewing the question of whether or not he actually knows how to play all the of the instruments in the track is begged. A lot of music videos do a good job of faking the playing. However, he knows how to play everything just based off of his form and how he holds each instrument in the video--he is a One Man Band you know. It would be interesting to know whether or not he produces all of the music and videos, as well as what his creative process for each video is considering that every part of the songs he covers are entirely redone. It's interesting because the covers themselves are self aware in their roots to the original song but also retain a unique sound as well--it's interesting. I also really enjoy the format of his videos as well. Other YouTube cover artists drag on to the point where you just want to listen to the original song where OMBreborn does a medley of covers for each video. How he orders it is cool too because he usually has one or two b-sides or less popular singles and then grand slams it home with the big single that the artist has. It makes the content short, sweet, and makes it anticipatory because you're waiting to hear him play the big song.
Here let's compare:
This...
To this:
I'm not going to go into it because it's not about who's better, it's about the music. But if it were a contest let's just say the cream rises to the top...
The aspect about his videos that needs to be noted is that a lot of time and creative energy are clearly put into them and he has a criminally low amount of views and subscribers. His channel has been around for a couple years now and he consistently adds quality content. This shows that he does this for the enjoyment and for the music that he loves. The well produced recordings, his cool unique singing voice, and edits for the video make his covers digestible, sonically pleasing, and an overall awesome experience to watch. I hope that one day I too can be this driven, passionate, and awesome about something.
To the most rad dude alive,
One Man Band (Reborn) rock, rock on,
Emanuel
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