The best cover songs are not just a copy but represent a web
of relations, and processes, that alter the context and reception of the
original text and form the basis for the new one. I seek to elaborate
“covering” as a method of translation, as well as a utopian practice,
which challenges an ethos of the “realistic” that would tell us change
is not just unwise but perhaps impossible. Working within queer,
psychoanalytic and utopian theory, I use multiple examples pulled from
several cover songs to explicate utopian kernels within different types
and forms of covering. Considering the horizon, through both José
Esteban Muñoz’ notion of the “not-yet queer” and Jacques Lacan’s notions
of ”lack” and “sublimation,” I explore how the cover, existing within
the gap between Utopia and the utopian, becomes an act of potentiality.
Within this potential, we see the interrelation between the covering
artist and the original artist, one that impacts both the new work and
the legacy of the old one. I suggest that covering, while inaugurated in
the cover song, also can be seen in other acts of collaboration and
mixed authorship. Ultimately, I aim to show how covering, as a utopian
method, is also a practice of uncovering. What is uncovered here is how
authorship, even when it views itself as original, is always
co-authorship. This allows a creative potentiality to be shown, which
can help us recover an ability to see the world otherwise.