Blog post #5: Choosing which songs your band will play

Most rock musicians start off playing in cover bands. A cover band is one which performs versions of famous artists’ songs. Some of you reading this blog post may alternatively wish to form an ‘originals’ band and play your own compositions from the get-go. However, I will concentrate on how to go about choosing cover songs for a band here.

Choose easier songs

Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes always goes down great with audiences in bars. So does Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Audiences sing along to both these songs. On a scale of difficulty from 1 to 100, Seven Nation is a 4 and Bohemian Rhapsody is a 96 (in my estimation at least). An amateur band could perfect a version of Seven Nation within 20 minutes at a rehearsal. Bohemian Rhapsody would take many, many more hours to perfect. So, choose to play Seven Nation Army. Unless, that is, you happen to be in a band with great technical musicians who love a challenge, have a lot of spare time on their hands and who can also sing four-part harmonies in tune.

The same thing goes for Wild Thing by The Troggs and Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. Wild Thing is a 2 and Stairway is a 70. So, choose Wild Thing. Your audience will love a polished, grooving version of Wild Thing over a sloppy, hesitant and mistake-ridden version of Stairway any day. They won’t appreciate the daring involved in attempting a difficult song. Most of them won’t even understand that Stairway is a difficult song. They will only know that your version was somehow a bit naff and that all of a sudden they felt an urge to finish their drink, say good night to their friends and go home to bed.

Of course, I am not suggesting here that ALL amateur rock bands on Planet Earth should play Seven Nation Army and Wild Thing. My point is that beginner bands would be wise to choose songs which are easier to accomplish given that audiences don’t care about song complexity. They love simple and difficult songs equally. They may even tilt in favour of preferring simple-to-play songs come to think of it. Every time a band stomps out a good rhythm and plays a recognizable melody or memorable riff, regardless of the difficulty level of the song, an audience in a bar will be very appreciative. It’s as simple as that.

By choosing easier-to-play songs, you’ll dramatically reduce the amount of rehearsal time it will take to prepare your band to gig. You’ll also improve the band’s performance at the gig. The band will be less stressed about playing easier songs. They’ll be unburdened by the fear of a potential cock up and this will free them up to spray some confident rock and roll attitude in the direction of the audience. The audience will soak this up. Furthermore, your band won’t use up all their processing capacity recalling complicated structures and constantly thinking... “What comes next? What comes next? What comes next?” The band will have attention spare to concentrate on other things such as keeping time, grooving, locking in with fellow band mates and incorporating subtlety and dynamics in their playing.

If you are just starting out playing in bands, beware of shooting too high, too soon, and falling on your bum. Not all rock songs were created equal. Some are massively more difficult than others.

To help you to judge song difficulty, something which is not so easy when you are starting out, I’ve come up with a list of classic songs that rock cover bands play organised according to difficulty. As with the examples above, I have given them each an approximate difficulty level out of 100. A song with a difficulty level of 20, for example, would take a band around four times the amount of preparation (individual practice time at home and rehearsal time with the band) as a song with a difficulty level of five. I have taken into account the complexity of the song structure AND the level of technical skill required by the players. For example, some songs may have a relatively simple structure, but a tricky guitar solo that most guitarists covering the song would feel compelled to attempt. These songs are rated higher than similar songs without a tricky guitar solo.

ALL of the songs in the following list are great songs in my opinion, no matter the difficulty level.

Song difficulty list

Difficulty level out of 100. Song (Band)


1. Gloria (Them with Van Morrison); Free Falling (Tom Petty); Horse with No Name (America)

2. Wild Thing (The Troggs); Louie Louie (The Kingsmen); Hit the Road Jack (Ray Charles); What’s Up (Four Non-Blondes).

3. Stand By Me (Ben E King); Twelve-bar blues such as Sweet Home Chicago (The Blues Brothers); House of the Rising Sun (The Animals); Creep (Radiohead); Can’t Always Get What You Want and Sympathy for the Devil (both The Rolling Stones); Folsom Prison Blues (Johnny Cash); Mustang Sally (The Commitments). Anything by the Ramones or the Sex Pistols.

4. Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes); Come Together (The Beatles); You Really Got Me (The Kinks); Zombie (The Cranberries)

5. I Follow Rivers (Triggerfinger); Let It Be (The Beatles); Where is My Mind (The Pixies)

6. Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix); Sweet Home Alabama (Lynard Skynard); Rocking in the Free World (Neil Young); Brown Sugar and Honky Tonk Woman (both The Rolling Stones); People are Strange (The Doors)

7. Suzie Q and Proud Mary (both CCR); Get Back (The Beatles); Paint it Black (The Rolling Stones); Should I Stay or Should I Go? (The Clash); My Babe (Little Walter); Gimme Some Loving (The Spencer Davis Group)

9. Wonderwall (Oasis)

10. Brown-eyed Girl (Van Morrison); I Shot the Sheriff (Bob Marley/Eric Clapton); Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones)

12. Don’t Look Back in Anger (Oasis); Cissy Strut (The Meters)

15. Sharp-dressed Man (ZZ Top); Thrill is Gone (B.B. King); Roadhouse Blues (The Doors)

20s. Black Magic Woman (Fleetwood Mac/Santana); Crazy Little Thing Called Love (Queen); Superstition (Stevie Wonder)

30s. Sunshine of Your Love (Cream with Eric Clapton); Shot in the Dark and Highway to Hell (both AC/DC); Wild World (Cat Stevens); Johnny B Goode (Chuck Berry); American Pie (Don McLean); Ruby (The Kaiser Chiefs); Smells like Teen Spirit and Heart-Shaped Box (Nirvana); Seek and Destroy and Nothing Else Matters (Metallica)

40s. Crossroads (Cream with Eric Clapton); Mary had a Little Lamb (SRV); Killing in the Name of (Rage against the machine); Under the Bridge and Californication (The Red Hot Chili Peppers)

50s. Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple); While my Guitar Gently Weeps (The Beatles with Eric Clapton); Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix)

60s. Back in Black (AC/DC); Red House (Jimi Hendrix)

70s. Sweet Child o’ Mine (Guns and Roses); Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin); Hotel California (The Eagles); All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix); Voodoo Chile (Jimi Hendrix/SRV)

80s. Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits);

90s. Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen); Anything by the band Yes.

Consider the singer’s style and range

Another major consideration when choosing songs for your band will be your singer’s vocal style. It’s no good forcing a female singer with a delicate voice, like Bossa Nova legend Astrud Gilberto for example, to sing Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy. Likewise, it’s no good pressuring the lead singer of the death metal band Cannibal Corpse to growl Tip Toe Through the Tulips or The Teddy Bear’s Picnic, as amusing as this may turn out to be.


Your singer’s vocal range should also be a consideration. Vocal range is the distance between the lowest note and the highest note a singer can comfortably sing. I told a story in a previous blog post about Mr X of the band O’Beast. Mr X desperately wanted O’Beast to cover Michael Jackson’s Beat it. He never stopped going on about it. He wanted to perform the flashy guitar solo on this song, as originally played by the great Eddie Van Halen. He wanted to play it so much that he completely overlooked the fact that O’Beast’s singer, Ted, had a voice pitched a solid one octave below that of Michael Jackson. Ted was a big man with a low baritone voice. Perhaps it was even a bass voice. Jacko was tiny man and with high tenor voice. Beat it was an impossibility for Ted without the aid of helium gas. Alternatively, Ted could have sang Beat it one octave lower than the original, which would have been pretty funny to be honest.


If your singer’s vocal range is somewhat similar to a particular artist’s, then you can consider covering one of their songs. You can change the key of the song (transpose) to better suit your singer’s range if necessary. I will cover transposing songs in a subsequent blog post on the topic of arranging songs.

Introducing new songs

20 to 24 songs will be sufficient to play two 45-minute sets. This is the usual amount of time a bar or venue would expect a band to play at a gig. It takes a lot of work and dedication to build up your repertoire to 90 minutes, but nevertheless, as soon as you have done so, one member of your band will immediately start suggesting next songs. It makes no sense to carry on learning more songs at this stage. Instead, make the existing set list tighter. Continue to fine tune. And then play some gigs with this initial set list.


After a few gigs, perhaps you can consider learning new replacement songs. I would suggest that you do so slowly. Drip-feed new songs into your set list. Perhaps you could introduce one new song every two months.


One of your jobs as band leader will be to fight off attempts to introduce more songs than the band can comfortably incorporate in a given period of time. Inevitably, one of your fellow band members will flood the band’s Whatsapp group chat with song suggestions, which you and the rest of the band will then have to spend time dutifully listening to and reacting to. If you do not defend against these attacks on band time and resources, bad things may happen. In an upcoming blog post, I will write about Colin Europe and Fabiola Tantrums and the effect that their constant pushing for new songs had on their respective bands (i.e., disgruntled band members, disastrous gigs and lost bookings).

Band member resistance to songs

Invariably, one or two band members will not be happy with some songs chosen for the band’s set list. They may even deploy the underhanded tactic of not practising the songs they don’t want to play. Excuses will be along the lines of… “Oh, I didn’t know we were still going to play this song” or “I only had time to practice the other songs last week”. Their overall aim will be to push back the rehearsal of their disliked songs until these songs are either forgotten or the advocates of the songs admit defeat and voluntarily withdraw them from the set list.

Fussy, rhythmically-challenged musicians

I’ve noticed that band members with poor rhythm are always the most fussy when it comes to song choice. If a song ticks all the right boxes (i.e., good for the singer, not too complex, suits the style of the band, most of band members like it), the fussy player may still object to the song. My theory is that this type of player was initially attracted to music because of the cool ethos of certain performers and the depth of meaning in their lyrics, not the rhythm or groove. In their teens, they probably preferred sitting on a beanbag in their bedroom with headphones and contemplating the deep poetic meaning held within the words of a song, rather than turning their speakers up full blast and pogo-ing up and down on their bed playing air guitar like a mad man. Their initial love of music was intellectual rather than visceral. They were not touched by the raw, shamanistic rhythms of the great rock songs. They never really ‘got’ this aspect of music. I’ve noticed that David Bowie, Bob Dylan and Richard Thompson are particularly admired by these non-rhythmical musicians. The simple messages yet great grooves of Rock Around the Clock or Louie Louie are not going to get their juices flowing. On the other hand, lovers of rhythm can find enjoyment playing most songs. Their is a magic and depth to rhythm in good rock music which the poets remain unaware of.

Jazz allergy

Another subset of musicians may be averse to playing anything sounding even remotely jazzy. They are deathly allergic to jazz. Even a relatively simple D9 chord may trigger a strong objection, a histamine rash or a threat to quit the band. They would much prefer that the D9 was a simpler D7 or, even better, a plain old unembroidered D. Many Jazzophobes are older gentlemen who came of age during the punk and new wave scenes in the 1970’s. This is when pop music was stripped down to its essentials. The punk aesthetic was a no-frills aesthetic. The excesses of jazz music are totally unnecessary in the eyes of the Jazzophobe. One Jazzophobe once told me, “I can’t see the point of trumpets”.


So, you may need to keep in mind the preferences of certain players when choosing songs for the set list. You may have to drop some otherwise perfect song choices in order to maintain band harmony.

Summary

When choosing band songs: choose easier-to-play songs; consider the singer’s style and range; introduce new songs at a snail’s pace; make some allowances for fussy and rhythmically-deficient players’ likes and dislikes.

(Some musician and band names in this article have been changed to protect identities.)


Mark Baxter (c) 2024