Welcome to Version 2.0! A music blog, where I explore the relationship between an original song and another artist's cover version.

My intention is to place each song in its cultural and historic setting and try to explore different aspects of artistic creation and interpretation. Every week I will post two chapters, one on the original and another on the version. The videos will be embedded, so you can listen to the songs as you read about them.

The cover version is very much a modern idea. In classical music everything is a "version" and before recording; music was very much (and still is) part of an oral tradition, songs not only being passed on but modified and changed in a wonderful game of troubadour Chinese whispers.

It's intellectual copyright that created this change. The ability to claim work as your own, but allow it to be used by another if a royalty is paid and the artist agrees ( although not all artists own their songs, often music companies do, and that is something I will look at in-depth later in the book).

I would also like to make this a more interactive book than my previous ones. So, I hope you make requests, dedications, and comments. Remember that there must be a version of the song for me to write about it.  Please note that I do a lot of research for these, so requests will take time, and I do have some concrete ideas I want to explore about music here, and they may occasionally take precedence over a request.