Poke around a digital music service for a popular song and you'll likely find more than a few "tributes" to it—soundalike versions courtesy of faceless outfits with vague names. In the digital age, piggybacking on covers has been a popular way for artists to get attention; the success of early-adopter acts like Pomplamoose and Karmin was, in large part, predicated on the fact that these acts were switching up already popular tracks. (Pomplamoose's painfully twee, death-stare-filled version of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" established their bona fides as Real Musicians™ who simultaneously looked down on pop but embraced its ability to reach a wide swath of people; Karmin added a fleet-rhyming white chick to hip-hop hits like "Look at Me Now" and "6 Foot 7 Foot".) Meanwhile, the post-hardcore act I Prevail switched up Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" and scraped the bottom reaches of the Hot 100 as a result—their version of Swift's doomed come-on being one of the more legitimate versions of the track to appear on Spotify, where the singer herself is notoriously absent.
But to hear a song itself and then follow it up with its tribute version isn't really equivalent to the aforementioned types of covers—in these cases, the overall feeling is similar to the difference between an intricate line drawing and a version of it fed through a malfunctioning photocopier. As an example, let's take the title track from Fall Out Boy's American Beauty/American Psycho, a propulsive snarl that samples the title track from Mötley Crüe's debut Too Fast for Love. Produced by the French Ed Banger affiliate SebastiAn, it's dense and speedy, and its intricate production and assaultive sonics make it a perfect candidate for seeing just how these tribute versions have frayed edges.
Here's the original:
And the soundalike, by a shadowy outfit called "Music Mayhem":
Close listening reveals the differences between the two right off the bat; Patrick Stump's lusty wail of the song's opening line is a hurricane compared to the summer-breeze delivery of Music Mayhem’s anonymous frontman. Meanwhile, SebastiAn's production is reproduced in only its most superficial manner, with the churning guitar underneath the verses not quite absent, but effectively so; quickie covers like this, built to strike while searchers' fingers are still itchy, don't sound like the result of close listening, in large part because they aren't. The three songs from AB/AP that appear under Music Mayhem's banner (in both full and instrumental-only versions) were pre-release singles for the album, and their releases to digital-music marketplaces track closely with the originals' original releases.
It's the musical equivalent of search-engine optimization manipulation—Music Mayhem and its ilk are the pop-song equivalent to those websites that repurpose others outlets' clickbait on their own, banner-ad-riddled webspace. Perhaps because of that, and despite the name being adulatory, "tribute" versions of pop songs are looked at as more nefarious than your everyday covers, and indeed, they're actually against the bylaws of Apple's digital-media outlet, the iTunes Store. The fall 2013 edition of the iTunes Store's style guide straight-up prohibits the way these songs are normally titled—which is to say, built for maximum manipulation of its search engine:
Original Artist Name in Artist Field. For karaoke, tribute, and cover albums, the name of the original artist must not be displayed in any artist field on the track level or the album level. For example:
• The Billy Joel Tribute Band is not an acceptable artist name.
• Karaoke must not be used as the artist name unless it is part of the legal entity name, such as The Karaoke Kangaroos or All Star Karaoke.
9.2. Original Artist Name in Track Titles. Track titles for cover songs or tributes must not make reference to the original artist. Do not use phrases such as “Originally Performed By,” “In the Style of,” “Tribute to,” or “Cover of.” …
9.3. Original Artist Name in Album Titles. The album title must not begin with the original artist name. For example, “Kelly Clarkson: The Bluegrass Tribute” is not an acceptable album title. Instead, format the title as “The Bluegrass Tribute to Kelly Clarkson.” …
9.5. Deceptive or Misleading. Tribute and cover albums must not be deceptive or misleading. Do not use genres, popular song lyrics, or the original artist names as the album title, track title, or artist for karaoke. Content that is considered deceptive or misleading will be removed from the iTunes Store.
Tribute songs are a testament to the lousy way that music discovery exists in 2015. The search functions of the iTunes Store and Spotify and other digital-music services reward precise knowledge of what a listener might be searching for; there's little opportunity for the sort of serendipity that would occur through, say, flipping through LP covers, or scanning CD cases' spines. The serendipity is precisely targeted, instead, and so what you get is a bunch of versions of something you're already pegged to liking.
Spotify still allows tribute versions of songs in its catalog, and as a result, a search for a song title can result in listening to multiple versions of that selection in a row, only with certain details absent or altered. It's not all that dissimilar to the trickery that Vulfpeck, who earned $20,000 from their silent album Sleepify, engaged in last year; both times distracted listening rewards those people engaging in the quickie cash-in.
All of this serves as a window into just how much intricacy goes into making a pop song; one reason I picked "American Beauty/American Psycho" for this exercise is the power it has sonically. The Music Mayhem version of the track doesn't quite have the same feeling; it's relatively lifeless and wan, barely worthy of inclusion in a karaoke joint's database. It's a tribute to the song's ability to earn money for people piggybacking off it more than anything else.