The institution of the "acoustic" (solo vocal and acoustic guitar) has been exalted by YouTube, because that's the easiest thing approaching a music video a fourteen-year-old can make, so let me say this.When you pick a non-acoustic song of which to play an acoustic cover, the point is to pick a song that has a nice melody or poignant lyrics--elements that might be obscured by production values or a more uptempo rendition. If you cover a rock or pop song that is musically repetitive and/or monotonous, that defeats the point, because in that case, what you're stripping away--energy, production, &c.--is the essence of the song, and you are left with a really boring three and a half minutes. A song whose lyrics sound like they were written by a junior high school kid, when stripped down by an acoustic cover to its essential elements, will be revealed as, well, a song whose lyrics sound like they were written by a junior high school kid.
That's why AC/DC never did an MTV Unplugged.
(Of course, I'm sure some hipster idiot has posted to YouTube an ironic cover of Pitbull's Krazy (Orchard).)
Also, you can't just sing the song and play a random sequence of I and V chords--unless that was what was in the original song.
This entry was inspired by my accidentally seeing a video clip of a girl badly cover I Belong to You (Virgin).
Do you think Lenny Kravitz and his drummer ever, as a practical joke, secretly switch places with one another?