There’s been a trend for a quite a while now on YouTube for transposing a particular song into a new genre. One prominent purveyor of this, um, genre of internet cover is Alex Melton. Melton is perhaps most famous for his pandemic-era cover of Third Eye Blind’s “Semi Charmed Life”…as if Blink 182 were the original artist. Melton has been at it for over a decade, most often in this similar style, a pop punk cover of a major hit from now or the recent past.
“Jump” was Van Halen‘s first number 1 hit. Infamously, it was their first single driven by a synthesizer, which proved divisive among fans. Though Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth had both played synthesizers on Van Halen tracks before, this song appeared, “Jump” does really feel like a change in kind compared to their previous material.
Is Alex Melton here to redeem “Jump” for all the Van Halen fans who rued their shift to synthesizers? Well, probably not. Melton has recorded an indie rock cover of “Jump,” rather than a ’70s hard rock cover of the track. But to Melton’s great credit, it really does sound like “Jump” could have been an “indie” rock song circa the mid aughts.
Melton has internalized a certain sound of commercial early 21st century rock, which we all labelled “indie” because we were tired of “alternative” and that seemed to denote the ’90s. There are no synth parts – this is indie rock, not indie pop – but instead the famous riff is handled subtly on one of the multiple guitars on the track. The song is slowed way down, which is a huge part of why it succeeds. But perhaps most important is Melton’s vocal, which captures that slight disaffected style that so many rock singers adopted – sounding like they could possibly be doing something else if they really wanted to. Melton adds a little bass solo and a very un-Van Halen guitar solo to really nail the sound.
Sure, these types of covers are gimmicks. But the best ones totally transport us to alternate universes where artists and bands really did adopt different genres. If the guys in Van Halen were born 30 or 40 years later, and Eddie hadn’t been so damn talented, maybe they end up making music like this. Check it out:
Absolutely loved this !!