“Mad Over You” might have a short run at the top due to remixes and covers

How do you kill a good song? How do you sabotage the lifespan of an amazing record in Nigeria? How do you ensure that the happiness derived from the enjoyment of a song is short-lived?

By covering it. You attack it, cover it, remix it, refix it, make different versions of it, and release it into the air. That’s how you do it.

That’s how ‘Mad Over You’ is being done.

We are at the start of a New Year, where the industry isn’t exactly bubbling with new music and the pursuit of all things artistic. There’s not a lot of new hits doing well in the space now as artistes are on the drawing board, plotting and recording for the new year, and poring over papers designed to provide them with a new direction for the year.

Truthfully, many of them are doing nothing. Just laying at home and waiting for something big to break out, and give them the bright idea of cloning it, and giving it back to us in over a million different ways,

Runtown’s ‘Mad Over You’, which was released in 2016, picked up in the last weeks of 2016, and now it is at its peak. Everywhere, it is celebrated for being the biggest song right now on the continent. Concerts are being booked for it, and shows are springing up all around because of the magic of the first first line: “Ghana girl say, she wan marry me oh…”

But something dark is threatening to cut short the happiness that we are currently enjoying from Runtown. All around social media, a new movement has crept up, with artistes all over the country remaking the song, and flooding everywhere.

A song is only hot for as long as it continues to provide enjoyment for listeners. It stays hot with repeated listens, and hangs at the top until listeners get tired of it via repeated listens. Once it gets to that saturation point, it simply obeys the Law of Marginal Utility, and starts it descent.

‘Mad Over You’s saturation is almost at its peak. No thanks to the number of artistes who are ruining it for us all. All over Nigeria, there are different versions of the song being released. It is being remixed, flipped, refixed, covered, deconstructed and reproduced by everyone, and anyone with a mic.

The intentions of this artistes are pure; they have something that they connect to, and as a tribute to such a great piece of art, they are personalizing it with their hot takes, and covers. But they are killing the longevity of the song. With each version that gets out, it pushes the song into people’s consciousness, and saturates it, thereby oversupplying a commodity, where the demand is moderate.

This needs to stop. It has gotten to the point where it has become too much, and the covers are deafening. Open your social media page, and three remixes of the song jump out, while a cover hangs on for dear life, begging you to listen.

It will only serve to reduce the life span of the single, and inadvertently push it down faster than if it had been allowed to properly market itself. Just check out how fast Adele’s 2015 hit song ‘Hello’ changed friendly ears to hostile reception, with each cover.