Let us approach this rationally, maturely, as the pseudo-adults we claim to be. I do not want to wound your self-esteem, shatter your self-image, destroy your worldview. But people have been lying to you. I will not stand for it any longer. You need to know.

Darling, you and I, we will never be rock stars. I will never dole out the kind of sass giving Karen O. a run for her Yeah Yeah Yeahs money. Never will you write the next great American tune.

And that is why we have the beautiful blessing of such establishments as the Karaoke Kid, such phenomena as the High Noon's ritual Tuesday Gomeroke. We non-talented, non-musicians can take the stage — without any regard for potential artistic criticism — and belt out someone else's great American tune almost any time we damn well please.

So if our task, as the non-talented, non-musicians is not to add to the pool of quality sound bites — rather ensure already established classics remain as mainstay fixtures — what is the excuse for the talented, the musicians? Are they not supposed to add to the pool of quality sound bites?

Following the news of Springsteen's plans to release an album of Pete Seeger covers, the issue haunted me. Is he getting old? Tired? Uninspired? Can I continue to respect a musical legend who is essentially pulling a Mandy Moore Coverage? Can I respect a musician who compares on any level to Moore?

The more I thought about it, the more unstable my entire world became. You hear about mid-life, quarter-life crises. Forget those. Forget the fact that I have no professional plans beyond 10:00 a.m. Sunday, May 14. I was experiencing a severe musician appreciation breakdown.

A small, elitist part of me grew increasingly agitated at the acknowledgment of very capable musicians resorting to covering someone else's songs in lieu of writing their own. The crisis spiraled downward. What if everything is essentially just a cover? What if some are more covert than others? What if we have been listening to highly evolved versions of "Yesterday" — rumored to be the most covered song in history — since 1965? Will we ever really hear anything new?

And then I heard the most Caucasian man I have ever encountered singing, "Scooped in a coupe, Snoop we got news/ Your girl was trickin' while you was draped in your county blues/ I ain't been out a second/ And already gotta do some muthaf-ckin chin checkin." If Ben Folds' version of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" could not sooth my frazzled nerves and return stability to my universe, nothing could.

While the rendition restored a semblance of sanity, the inquiry lingered. Undoubtedly, developing a career from covers is in fact no solid, formidable career at all. We discuss the great rock, folk, jazz influences. But when do we discuss those great cover bands? If a career in covering is no good, why even dabble with a song or two?

As a non-talented, non-musician, I can only speculate. For me to 'cover' a writer's take on punk is called 'plagiarism' and frowned upon slightly more than singing another's song. So employing a "Ben Folds' 'Bitches Ain't Shit' version kicks Dr. Dre's ass" frame of mind, I contemplated some of the better covers performed around town and consulted a few contacts via that damn handy MySpace.

On the one hand, as the Treats' Don Isham pointed out, covering a tune essentially offers 'mad props' to the original artist. More importantly, he explained, "It's nice to have some additional variety on top of the original material, especially if a lot of the same folks come out show after show."

Elaborating on such a theme, Awesome Car Funmaker frontman Ryan Corcoran offered, "Covers do many positive things for a band who is faced with the daunting and difficult task of delivering material to ears of those who lack a frame of reference to music they simply are not familiar with in a live music setting. The most prominent reason to cover a song is to provide some familiarity in a set to entice more attention to the original music. A cover song breaks the set up allowing listeners' ears and minds to relax for a song. After a cover song is played, audiences' ears are fresher to listen to more original music."

How true. As I enjoyed the Funmaker stylistics a few weeks ago, a chatty, chatty fellow nearby started the night expressing his lacking enthusiasm for the band. After their rendition of Britney Spears' "Toxic," he suddenly became interested.

According to Corcoran, the cover "works for us because the best known version … is very much different by contrast from the rest of our original music. Many of our songs are classified as hard rock, and 'Toxic' is definitely not that. … I don't mind playing 'Toxic' because it's not 'sacred ground' to anyone that would be at our shows."

How a song not written and — given technology's manipulation of the human source — not sung by the Gen-Y pop princess does not serve as holy sound to four hard rock boys is simply far and away beyond my comprehension. But Corcoran's point of the contrast is well understood. Rather than serving as a mirror to the original, the focus becomes the ingenuity of transformation, the art of making the old tune new entertainment.

Courtney Collins, who recently released her solo album Violet Night half full of covers, expressed similar sentiments. "All the covers of 'I Want You To Want Me' that I've heard have stayed pretty true to the original version, which is bombastic and happy. But when you listen to the lyrics, it's really kind of a sad and desperate song. So I decided to do a melancholy, minimalist dirge with a somewhat cowgirl vibe," she explained. "I think if you're going to cover a song that great, you obviously can't top it, so you just try to make it really different and completely your own."

For the Treats' Andy Isham, that change is the sole purpose of attacking a cover. Similar to the game involving individuals adding a single line to develop a story, Andy offered, "Covering is akin to a turn of the game. If the story hasn't undergone a shift after a given sentence, then that sentence is entirely ornamental and disposable."

Now the question arises as to why there is generally such a negative view of performing covers. Not to promote everyone forgoing original material in lieu of overtly covering. But why can the successful metamorphosis of a tune not serve as one marker of ingenuity rather than that of indolence? The old, the tired, the uninspired do not cover songs. They pawn the original off as their own.

So the next time you and I are the Gomeroke rock stars, we must plot to make our rendition of "Dirt Off Your Shoulders" a classic choral tune, our version of "99 Red Balloons" dark, dramatic. We might yet get in Karen O.'s face with her own sass.

Christine Holm is a senior majoring in English and psychology. Questions? Comments? Want to talk music with her? Reach Christine at [email protected].