Limozeen’s so-called cover of “We Don’t Really Even Care About You” takes disaffected, lo-fi ‘90s indie rock and belts it out in the style of an ‘80s hair metal band—as if Poison were to cover Pavement.
at Aesthetics for Birds
Back in the summer of 2014, I wrote an outline for a paper that would have been titled “The heart of a lion and the wings of a bat: How to philosophically reflect on cover songs.” The central philosophical example of that paper would have been a 2007 split single featuring Limozeen and sloshy. I didn’t actually write that paper.
My recent book on the philosophy of cover songs begins with a Twitter thread about They Might Be Giant’s cover of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” Through many drafts, that was paired with the example of R.E.M.’s “Superman”— another cover that many people do not know is a cover. In the end, I decided that one example was enough of a hook. “Superman” is not discussed in the book.
Both of these omissions are corrected in a post I wrote at Aesthetics for Birds. It was nice to have the chance to think through both examples.