The TL;DR:
- Most covered songs: Lucretia by a length, then Alice and Marian.
- Most covered band line-up: Floodland, then FALAA and Reptile House jostling for second place.
- Busiest years for covers: 2021, 2019 and 2020
- Genre: 53% are covers in the style of the original material, then Electronic 15%, Metal 12%, Acoustic 9%
- Most likely to be covered by dodgy darklings: Alice, Body Electric, Dominion
- Most likely to be covered by techno bois: Dominion, Body Electric, Lucretia
- Most likely to be covered by angry metalheads: No Time To Cry, This Corrosion, Black Planet
- Most likely to be an acoustic/unplugged cover: When You Don't See Me, Something Fast, Marian
- Most diverse genres of covers: This Corrosion, Temple Of Love
- Least diverse genres of covers: Something Fast, Alice, Body Electric
- Most prolific cover artists: Brad Salyn, followed by nmacog and botchandango
- No covers: Watch and Phantom, also Driver, Wide Receiver, Better Reptile, I Will Call You
Methodology
Basically, I did a lot of detailed searching on each platform. I worked through the list of released and unreleased TSOM and Sisterhood tracks making queries for covers of each. I tried a variety of alternate names for the track and band where applicable. Where the platforms supported public playlists, and there are Sisters playlists, I perused all of those for applicable covers. "Lucretia, My Reflection" has the most variety of annoying incorrect spellings, although I didn't record that data. Bandcamp was most irritating platform because it doesn't support playlists.
Finally, I dug through old Heartland threads about covers and picked up some material that I missed, although often old links were dead. Despite all this I'm sure I missed some material and expect to be loudly informed about it.
On all platforms I disqualified the following material as a "cover" and excluded it from the data set:
- Live or studio bootlegs of the real band.
- Rips of released material.
- Techno remixes of original material.
- Vocal covers over original material (please don't ever do this on YouTube).
- Mashups of original material (sorry Project Kiss Kass).
- "Covers of the Sisters" own covers (e.g. Emma; more common than you'd think).
- Solo instrumental parts (sorry Wayne and all the YouTube bassists).
- Speed Kings and NME.
- Music from those goddam karaoke vendors.
- Covers of that Leonard Cohen song
- Abrimaal and imitators
Songs
Let's look at total covers.
Everyone and his dog has covered Lucretia (154), and this after I excluded countless "watch me play the Lucretia bassline" YouTube videos. Alice (95) and Marian (71) are clear second and third places, then Temple Of Love (59) and This Corrosion (58) are neck and neck. No Time To Cry (28) may be a surprise at number 6. First And Last And Always (27), Dominion (27), Black Planet (24) and Something Fast (23) round out the top 10.
Driven Like The Snow (17) and 1959 (14) make strong showings for songs that have never been performed in the live set, speaking to the enduring strength of the Floodland material. For one of the better songs on its album Possession (3) has surprisingly few covers. Is this one hard to play, or hard to sing? Same could be said about Ribbons (6). The Steinman collaborations (This Corrosion, Dominion/Mother Russia and More) account for 10.6% of the total covers.
Of the released material, I didn't find any covers of Watch and Phantom. I'm not surprised by the latter. But Watch deserves a cover or two - it lasted longer in the live set than Damage and the later iterations were better than the released single.
Including unreleased material: Driver, Wide Receiver, Better Reptile and I Will Call You are not represented in the data set (I didn't consider Body Politic and Burn It Down to be unique tracks). Wide Receiver is garbage, but Driver is a good song and I was surprised not to find any covers. For the two recent songs I guess we need Von to tell us the actual lyrics before anyone tries them. Maybe a cover that embraces the indistinct mumbling is the way to go?
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Lucretia, My Reflection 154
Alice 95
Marian 71
Temple Of Love 59
This Corrosion 58
No Time To Cry 28
First And Last And Always 27
Dominion 27
Black Planet 24
Something Fast 23
When You Don't See Me 22
Body Electric 21
More 20
Heartland 18
Walk Away 18
Vision Thing 18
Some Kind Of Stranger 18
Nine While Nine 17
Driven Like The Snow 17
I Was Wrong 14
1959 14
Floorshow 13
Giving Ground 13
Burn 12
Never Land 11
We Are The Same, Susanne 11
Body And Soul 11
Amphetamine Logic 10
Fix 10
Poison Door 10
Valentine 8
Afterhours 6
Adrenochrome 6
Lights 6
Ribbons 6
Summer 5
Good Things 5
A Rock And A Hard Place 5
Anaconda 5
Train 5
Torch 5
Bury Me Deep 4
On The Wire 4
The Damage Done 4
Under The Gun 4
Possession 3
Rain From Heaven 3
Kiss The Carpet 3
Detonation Boulevard 3
I Have Slept With All The Girls In Berlin 3
Colours 3
Still 2
You Could Be The One 2
Arms 2
Flood II 2
Finland Red, Egypt White 2
Blood Money 2
Doctor Jeep 2
Crash And Burn 2
Romeo Down 1
But Genevieve 1
Will I Dream? 1
War On Drugs 1
Black Sail 1
Come Together 1
Show Me 1
Flood I 1
Mother Russia 1
Jihad 1
Driver 0
I Will Call You 0
Watch 0
Better Reptile 0
Wide Receiver 0
Phantom 0I assigned a genre to each cover after listening to it. This part of the analysis is obviously somewhat subjective so take it with a pinch of salt. "Straight" covers are those done in the style of the original material, otherwise I picked from broad genre buckets.
53% are Straight covers. These are all the cover bands and tribute acts, many of the fan-made amateur covers, and a variety of professional dodgy darklings. And techno fans of The Sisterhood.
Nearly 15% are from some "Electronic" genre (when the original track isn't). No I don't care about the difference between your acid house vs synth pop. "Chiptune"-style covers are in this bucket too.
"Metal" is next at 12%. I did initially break out a couple of sub-genres because I am more familiar with the landscape here. Eventually I just rolled them up into the Metal bucket.
"Acoustic" is fourth at 9%. I included unplugged guitar, piano, and random unpowered instruments like ukulele, violin etc in here.
"Alternative" (6%) is the last significant category and is basically defined by the "alternative" recommendations that Bandcamp sends me weekly. A lot of artists self-identify as some kind of "alternative" or "indie" too so this isn't completely subjective.
Industrial, A Capella, Punk, Country, Hip Hop, LoFi, Reggae, Soul and Jazz represent the long tail of genres with very few covers each.
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Straight 52.5%
Electronic 14.8%
Metal 11.6%
Acoustic 9.3%
Alternative 6.2%
Darkwave 2.6%
Industrial 1.0%
Punk 0.6%
Country 0.5%
Hip Hop 0.2%
Soul 0.1%
Unknown 0.1%
Jazz 0.1%
Reggae 0.1%
LoFi 0.1%
Grindcore 0.1%
Vocal 0.1%Let's dig deeper into the tracks with 20 or more covers.
Something Fast has the most Straight covers (74%). Basically everyone in a lockdown with a guitar and a laptop drum machine put a cover of this on YouTube.
Discounting that, Alice (64%), Body Electric (62%) and Dominion (52%) are most likely to be in the set list of a tribute band near you. I am surprised Marian (51%) is as low as fourth. No Time To Cry has the least Straight covers at 21%.
Dominion (26%), Body Electric (24%) and Lucretia (23%) are beloved of the Electronic music community. Something Fast has zero techno covers even though it's name has some amusing synergy with the genre.
Fully 42% of No Time To Cry covers are Metal. There is a cluster of metalheads who have redone the well-known Cradle Of Filth cover (not all of who seem to realise it's originally from the Sisters) making it arguably the most influential Sisters cover in any genre. This Corrosion (28%), Black Planet (25%) and More (25%) are other favourites in this genre. Dominion (4%) has the fewest metal covers.
People with a guitar and an emo reach for When You Don't See Me - 23% of it's covers are Acoustic. Something Fast (22%) and Marian (18%) are obvious acoustic covers, This Corrosion (17%) maybe less so at #5. Body Electric has no acoustic covers and that is something I'd like to hear.
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Straight covers
-------------------
Something Fast 73.9%
Alice 64.2%
Body Electric 61.9%
Dominion 51.9%
Marian 50.7%
Lucretia, My Reflection 50.6%
More 50.0%
First And Last And Always 44.4%
When You Don't See Me 40.9%
Temple Of Love 39.0%
Black Planet 37.5%
This Corrosion 24.1%
No Time To Cry 21.4%
Electronic covers
-------------------
Dominion 25.9%
Body Electric 23.8%
Lucretia, My Reflection 22.7%
No Time To Cry 21.4%
Black Planet 20.8%
Alice 20.0%
Temple Of Love 15.3%
First And Last And Always 14.8%
Marian 12.7%
More 10.0%
When You Don't See Me 9.1%
This Corrosion 5.2%
Something Fast 0.0%
Metal covers
-------------------
No Time To Cry 42.9%
This Corrosion 29.3%
Black Planet 25.0%
More 25.0%
Temple Of Love 16.9%
First And Last And Always 14.8%
Lucretia, My Reflection 10.4%
Marian 8.5%
Body Electric 4.8%
When You Don't See Me 4.5%
Something Fast 4.3%
Alice 4.2%
Dominion 3.7%
Acoustic covers
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When You Don't See Me 22.7%
Something Fast 21.7%
Marian 18.3%
This Corrosion 17.2%
More 15.0%
Temple Of Love 11.9%
Dominion 11.1%
First And Last And Always 11.1%
No Time To Cry 10.7%
Alice 6.3%
Lucretia, My Reflection 5.8%
Black Planet 4.2%
Body Electric 0.0%I hacked up a "diversity index" for each song by using the sum of squares of the proportions of each genre per song, inverted because big numbers are better.
Once again taking the songs with more than 20 total covers, This Corrosion stands out with the most diverse group of covers. Something about it's combination of cocky beats, relentless groove and over-the-top angst clearly appeals to a wide range of artists.
Temple Of Love is in a clear second place, also attracting the attention of a wide variety of musical styles. Black Planet, First And Last And Always and When You Don't See Me round out the "diversity" top 5.
Something Fast props up the bottom of the list because all it's covers are either straight or acoustic (i.e. straight without drums). Alice and Body Electric are a predictably second and third least diverse.
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Diversity
---------------------
This Corrosion 2.307116
Temple Of Love 2.105800
Black Planet 1.986254
When You Don't See Me 1.975658
First And Last And Always 1.953651
No Time To Cry 1.862532
Marian 1.768930
Lucretia, My Reflection 1.751584
More 1.702513
Dominion 1.684214
Body Electric 1.488651
Alice 1.475219
Something Fast 1.295903Sorting total covers by era, the Floodland "line-up" (312) is well out ahead as the most covered, mostly due to the volume of Lucretia (note that I included The Sisterhood tracks in this line-up bucket which may not be entirely fair). FALAA (263) and Reptile House (261) are pretty even behind that. Despite being an actual live line-up the Vision Thing songs (110) are a lot less popular with covering artists. One could make a case for splitting the post-VT live line-ups by lead guitarist or something but I couldn't be arsed.
All line-ups have roughly the same proportion of straight covers. Floodland unsurprisingly has the highest proportion of Electronic covers (18%). Vision Thing has both the most Acoustic (16%) and Metal (13%) covers, which might speak to its reach outside the traditional Sisters fan-base.
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Floodland 312
FALAA 263
Reptile House 261
Vision Thing 110
Post-VT Live Only 36
Damage/Watch 4
Floodland
-------------------
Straight 47.4%
Electronic 18.3%
Metal 11.9%
Acoustic 8.0%
Alternative 7.7%
Darkwave 2.2%
Country 1.6%
Hip Hop 0.6%
Industrial 0.6%
Soul 0.3%
Unknown 0.3%
Jazz 0.3%
Punk 0.3%
Vocal 0.3%
FALAA
-------------------
Straight 51.0%
Electronic 14.8%
Metal 14.8%
Acoustic 10.6%
Alternative 5.7%
Darkwave 1.9%
Industrial 0.8%
Grindcore 0.4%
Reptile House
-------------------
Straight 55.9%
Electronic 14.9%
Metal 8.8%
Acoustic 7.7%
Alternative 5.4%
Darkwave 3.8%
Industrial 1.5%
Punk 1.1%
Reggae 0.4%
LoFi 0.4%
Vision Thing
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CoverType
Straight 56.4%
Acoustic 16.4%
Metal 12.7%
Electronic 5.5%
Alternative 3.6%
Darkwave 2.7%
Punk 1.8%The median Sisters covers per artist is 1. Most people are happy doing one Sisters cover and then moving on with their lives. The mean is 1.2 but that is propped up by some outliers at the top.
81 artists covered 2 or more songs. Brad Salyn (20) is the most prolific. nmacog (15) and botchandango (10) are the others in double digits. Look these guys up on Soundcloud and YouTube. This data doesn't represent the tribute bands very well because of the limited vids of them that exist on YouTube.
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count 818.000000
mean 1.206601
std 1.065817
min 1.000000
25% 1.000000
50% 1.000000
75% 1.000000
max 20.000000
Brad Salyn 20
Nmacog 15
Botchandango 10
madsmith 9
Zombie Thirteen 7
Blumenhofen 6
Temple of Mercy 5
Tobias Forsner/leftydrake 4
The Sisters Of Murphy 4
Paranoid Android 42021 was the biggest year by far for Sisters covers (140), followed by 2019 (101) and 2020 (92). In general, the number of Sisters covers each year has grown almost every year that I have data for, with a noticeable spike in 2000 when that unspeakable tribute album came out.
Some of this is recency bias: more recent covers are easier to find and more likely to still be available on the platforms. But the pandemic effects of the last few years and the increasing ease of making, recording and publishing music online certainly have a role too.
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1991 1
1992 1
1993 2
1995 2
1996 2
1997 2
1998 1
2000 18
2001 4
2002 1
2003 1
2004 1
2005 2
2006 2
2007 14
2008 15
2009 12
2010 23
2011 37
2012 66
2013 69
2014 62
2015 80
2016 75
2017 77
2018 65
2019 101
2020 92
2021 140
2022 19Spotify has the least covers (71). These are mostly established professional artists with record company deals. Bandcamp (80) has only slightly more. I suppose these artists are also professional but less established and/or successful.
SoundCloud (395) has lots of covers. Most are solidly in the realm of amateur (disclosure: my own included), or at least "musician isn't my only job" artists. YouTube (619) has the most covers. This is basically the full gamut from pros who are also on Spotify, to less established bands, to talented amateurs, to your uncle Bob and his dog covering Something Fast.
There was less overlap that I expected. 84% of covers were on one platform only and 13% were on two platforms. I found only 3 total covers on all four platforms - shout out to the marketing teams for Cradle Of Filth, The Court Of Sybaris and Sleepmask.
Rehashing the diversity index (heh) suggests the Bandcamp hosts the least diversity of covers, which is disappointing. For whatever reason, the covers there are largely straight derivatives of the original material. Spotify is little better. I expected SoundCloud to top the diversity stakes but that honour is held by YouTube, even after applying my strict filtering criteria.
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spotify 71
bandcamp 80
soundcloud 395
youtube 619
nr platforms
1 84.397163
2 13.373860
3 1.823708
4 0.303951
diversity
spotify 7.289250168062473
bandcamp 7.0556640625
soundcloud 9.468760266762985
youtube 12.0369396673852Other than concluding that I spent way too much time on this, I will leave further interpretation up to the reader. It would be interesting to compare Sisters covers to those from other bands, and to include other platforms (last.fm seems to have some TSOM covers on it too) but it sure ain't gonna be me who collects that data.
I will follow this up with a post listing some of my favourite covers discovered during this exercise. PM me if you want to get hold of the data set and the Jupyter notebook (I used Google Colab and Pandas).
