I actually read this article a while back and after I stumbled across it tonight, I decided to share.
Cover songs have always been about the essential task of salvaging originality from the act of imitation, but Wan Covers seek their originality by conceding authority to the originals, as if surrender somehow substitutes for impudence, and a self-conscious servility were somehow enough. It doesn’t, and it’s not.
What’s harder to tolerate, however, are covers that amount to a kind of special pleading — cringing, abject covers that are the collective song of the first generation of musicians who probably won’t be able to outdo their elders and so don’t want to try.