Expecto A Poem: Upper School of Witchcraft and Poetry

So, lately, I've been listening to a lot of The Baseballs. For those who don't know, The Baseballs are a group of three German men with 70s haircuts who make rock covers of popular American songs. In just two albums, they've covered everything from Rihanna, to Katy Perry, to Plain White Tees, and all the way back to Ke$ha. Whether their take on the songs is an improvement is up to the listener (I personally think their version of Hot 'n' Cold is a thousand times better than the original), it's odd to see how different the same lyrics can sound when performed in another style.

This got me thinking about different interpretations of songs. What about a song gives it a certain feel, a certain ethos (thanks, Creative Spirit!)?

Obviously, the instrumentation plays a big part in it. My god, look what orchestration did for Rebecca Black. Even without vocals, they've turned "Friday" from an unintentionally-hilarious Auto-Tuned mess to an inspirational, swelling ballad.
I'd say that the rhythm of the song can also play a big part in it as well. For example, Justin Bieber slowed down 800% produces an amazing, ambient masterpiece.
The imagery accompanying a song can also influence how you view it, but there are obvious exceptions: even Lord of the Rings won't stop Yakety Sax from making things hilarious.

To illustrate just how far you can take a song, I'm going to show the greatest cover of any song ever. It's so amazing I'm not even going to link it; I'm gonna EMBED this bad boy:

That is, in fact, Alanis Morissette turning The Black-Eyed Peas' song "My Humps" into a soulful, emotional ballad that just speaks of lost love and ruined lives. You can just feel the sheer pain in Morissette's voice as she belts out the truth about what she gon' do with all that junk.

I guess one thing you can take away from all this is that you can't really say you dislike a song, you can only dislike that performance. Some people may hate Super Bass, but hey, throw some adorable British girls and you've got yourself ten million listeners.