Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 01/17/2013 at 5:39 PM News

The Popdust Files: covers, ho hey, lumineers, mike posner

Are you like us, and constantly mix up Mike Posner and Mac Miller, because their faces are shaped similarly, they both release a lot of mixtapes and it seems like both of them are from Pittsburgh (even though one of them is actually from Detroit)? Well, here’s one way to tell them apart—Mac Miller’s covers are kind of cool and interesting, while Mike Posner’s are not.

Take the Poz’s recent run through the Lumineers’ top five hit “Ho Hey”—a lukewarm R&B rendition with some cheap sounding synths, a beat that sounds like someone’s vague recolleciton of “funky” and some Glee-style a capella backing vocals. It takes one of the most charming and shortest-but-sweetest pop songs of recent memory and thoroughly meh-ifies it.

But it didn’t have to be like this. If Mike Posner would take our suggestions on how to make his cover even slightly interesting, maybe he can avoid such blandness in the future. How about he…

• Sing the entire song in Spanish?
• Add a four-minute banjo solo to the intro?
• Have the song’s “Ho Hey” hook sung by dueling samples of Ludacris and Frank Black?
• Loop the “2, 3, 4″ count-off section from the original’s pre-chorus throughout the cover so it always sounds like the song is building up to something?
• Trade off lines with Mac Miller seriously they are the same person even though they don’t actually have that much in common?

Or he could’ve just, y’know, not removed the song’s original “Ho! Hey!” hook and made a more interesting beat and just sounded like he gave a damn. But the Spanish version with the long banjo intro sounds more fun.