Watch an episode of The Traitors and – as well as marvelling at the ineptitude of some of its contestants (oh Ross, mate!), and the huge amount of white wine guzzled per episode – the thing most likely to jump out at you is the show’s music. Mainly because the music is absolutely terrible, but what’s interesting is the unusual way that it’s terrible. While the show does have a fondness for landfill chart hits (London Grammar is a particular fave), it also serves up what the music journalist Dorian Lynskey calls “Traitor pop … absurdly melodramatic cover versions of songs that are already plenty dramatic.”
The template of these cover versions is pretty standard: take a familiar pop or rock staple, slow down its BPM by about 40%, transpose it to a minor key, get an unremarkable vocalist to sing the chorus in a bluesy, mournful way, occasionally throw in some sudden orchestral swells to shake things up a bit, and you’re pretty much there.
But what’s remarkable about Traitor Pop is the sheer range of songs getting covered. Mr Sandman, All Along the Watchtower, Chopin’s Funeral March, an absolutely baffling, industrial-tinged cover of Eagle Eye Cherry’s Save Tonight … it doesn’t matter the genre, if your song has been a hit in the past couple of centuries or so, it’s fair game for an unwanted update. Confusingly these covers share space with original songs – Massive Attack’s Teardrop, say, or Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire, briefly tricking you into thinking that they too might be covers, before you realise that, wait, no, these songs are actually not hideous.
The Traitors is not alone in its fondness for a bad cover. Love Island (above) has long knitted breathy, cooed reimaginings of pop staples into its most dramatic moments. And adverts have been assailing our ears with bad covers for decades – think a neutered version of Where Is My Mind on holiday adverts. Such is the demand for these revamps, that a cottage industry of cover artists has emerged to churn them out at an alarming rate: “cinematic” US duo Damned Anthem, or German outfit 2WEI, who as well as appearing on numerous episodes of The Traitors (they’re the ones responsible for that preposterously dramatic choral version of Britney Spears’ Toxic), are go-tos for a number of massive movie trailers, from Wonder Woman to Tomb Raider.
Movie trailers are where this Cover Song Industrial Complex is really thriving. Watch any blockbuster trailer in recent times, and it’s likely to have an apocalyptic-sounding orchestral version of a pop song soundtracking it: Nirvana’s Something in the Way turned into even more of a mournful dirge in The Batman trailer, say or Say My Name by Destiny’s Child slowed down to a crawl and given a slasher update in the Candyman teaser. Things have reached a truly absurd high water mark in recent months, with not one, but two tracks from Radiohead’s Kid A (hardly the most obvious choice) getting the doomy cover treatment: The National Anthem on the trailer for Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, and Everything in its Right Place on the first teaser for Netflix’s huge 3 Body Problem adaptation. (A cash prize for anyone who can successfully score their big new dramatic movie trailer to Treefingers, the Kid A song everyone skips.)
Where these bombastic movie trailers want the songs to feel powerful and intense, The Traitors uses them in the service of the show’s massive campness. It’s why you’ll have a patently absurd slo-mo cover of Gangsta’s Paradise juxtaposed against Diane giving a withering look, or Claudia Winkleman attempting to light a sconce with a comically oversized torch. They probably wouldn’t admit it publicly, but deep down I suspect that whoever programmes the show’s music knows that these songs are really quite silly. Perhaps then The Traitors is providing a valuable public service, by highlighting the inherent ridiculousness of these covers – and maybe in the process bringing down the Cover Song Industrial Complex for good. Here’s hoping.
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