Billboard-Core: 5 Screamo Covers Of Current Pop Hits (featuring Gotye, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Adele, The Wanted)

by Aaron Zorgel

April 9, 2012

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Today, literally thousands of metalcore bands with flat-ironed hair and career-banishing neck tattoos vie for the attention of a primarily teen-aged audience via social media. Many of these bands rise to the top by putting together metal, hardcore, and screamo-influenced pop covers. If you like your Katy Perry with a side of breakdowns, guitar chugging, and pig-squeal death metal vocals, this column is for you.

In the late 1990s, pop-punk bands like Me First & The Gimme Gimmes and New Found Glory proved that aggressive covers of pop songs resonate with a wide audience. This practice has evolved to the point where Fearless Records’ infamous Punk Goes Pop compilations, which feature metalcore bands covering top 40 pop songs, routinely chart on the Billboard 200. If you like your Katy Perry with a side of breakdowns, guitar chugging, and pig-squeal death metal vocals, these compilations (and this column!) are for you.

Today, literally thousands of metalcore bands with flat-ironed hair and career-banishing neck tattoos vie for the attention of a primarily teen-aged audience via relentless social media promotion. Many of these bands rise to the top of the pile by putting together these metal, hardcore, and screamo-influenced pop covers. So what do these bands get out of covering Britney Spears songs?

Pop covers receive a high number of searches and views on Youtube. If a song is currently in high rotation on pop radio, you can search “[Song Title] screamo cover” on Youtube, and you’ll usually find at least one or two videos for every song, with tens of thousands of views each. Pop songs are written to entice a teenage market, and these interpretations are just br00tal (read: aggressive) enough to transform teenage guilty pleasures into an end product that is listenable for an audience boasting more facial piercings than years of age.

Pop Hunter took to Youtube to find some aggro-interpretations of today’s chart toppers. The results are hilarious, bizarre, and disturbing, in that order.

Forever In Promise feat. Caroline – “Somebody That I Used To Know” (by Gotye feat. Kimbra)

The dissonant orchestral leads on this cover make for a bizarre interpretation of Gotye’s formerly sparse acoustic ditty. Forever In Promise give “Somebody That I Used To Know” a real apocalyptic haunted-house vibe. If Gotye felt weird about those Walk Off The Earth bozos capitalizing off of their gimmicky single-guitar cover of this song, I wonder how he feels about this sonic horror show.

A Seamless Getaway – “Glad You Came” (by The Wanted)

A Seamless Getaway’s version isn’t perfect, but “Glad You Came” works surprisingly well as a melodic post-hardcore song. I must admit, I like the spacious harmonized guitar leads on this one. The screamy breakdown bridge seems unnecessary and tossed-in, but I guess that’s a prerequisite of Billboard-core.

Voyager – “Part Of Me” (by Katy Perry)

Unless you’re super familiar with the “Part Of Me” lyrics, the intro of this song will be baffling. This punishing version of Katy Perry’s breakup anthem is like a million jackhammers pummeling away at a foundation made of candy. It’s loud as fuck, and it makes a mess.

Forever The Light – “We Found Love” (by Rihanna)

Forever The Light probably didn’t find love per se, they more likely found a copy of Protools on Pirate Bay. I don’t want to be too hard on these kids, but this is pretty atrocious. There are so many bad choices to choose from on this Rihanna cover, but the strained clean vocals are the main deal-breaker for me here. While a lot of today’s radio pop divas aren’t heralded for their perfect voices, listening to these kids screech, squeal, yelp, whine, and autotune their way through these songs is making me yearn for the totally acceptable vocal stylings of Katy Perry and Rihanna.

SycAmour – “Set Fire To The Rain” (by Adele)

SycAmour have the worst band name to best cover ratio on lock. Their massive treatment of Adele’s “Set Fire To The Rain” adds an epic quality to an already powerful song.

When these covers are executed with decent production quality, and a shadow of creativity, maybe they aren’t complete bullshit. We can at least appreciate the novelty and the cultural what-the-fuck-ness that these versions represent. Next time you’re at a top 40 dance club, start a mosh-pit and see what happens.

Tags: Music, A Seamless Getaway, Adele, Forever In Promise, Forever The Light, gotye, Katy Perry, Rihanna, The Wanted

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