OPM is dead. OPM is not dead.
Whatever your opinion may be, you’d agree with me that the “Original” in OPM has long gone… at the very least, for mainstream Philippine music. You know, the songs you hear on the radio, as TV show themes, or as movie soundtracks.
The current popular Philippine music landscape is mostly littered with covers — pop covers, bossa nova covers, acoustic covers, show band covers, of OPM ballads, of recent Top 40 pop hits. Therefore, it’s actually a misnomer to call this music OPM, unless the O stands for “Oh, hell no, not another cover!”
So as an appeal to the local music industry, here are some few suggestions that you can impose on musicians and producers to curtail the industry’s love affair with cover songs:
- You cannot cover a local song less than 15 years from the time the original song was released; 10 years, for foreign songs.
- An album must have AT MOST, and never exceed, 1 cover song.
- A cover song that is part of an album may NOT be released as a single.
- The debut album of an artist or group must NOT contain any cover songs. Therefore, the debut single of an artist or group must NOT be a cover song.
- An artist or group (this includes the writer, composer, and producer) may NOT cover their own song. Duet or group arrangements count. (Hello balladeers and singer-songwriters!)
- A cover song must receive the approval from the original interpreter, producer, and composer before it can be released.
- A cover song must be checked for quality and originality (i.e., if it can stand on its own as a significantly different interpretation of the original) by a panel of music experts to be deemed ready for release.
That’s it. The next problem though is plagiarism — producers will look for ways to make cover songs that are not technically cover songs. It’s out of the scope of this essay.
Good luck, Philippine music industry! Sana mabuhay ang OPM!
