Evaluating Works

My last post, I shared some categories I thought the products of our creativity can fall into. This post I want to look at the confusing issue of how we evaluate works and know if they are "good works," "bad works," or somewhere in-between. I will state plainly that we can evaluate works much more objectively than we were taught. It is not as relative as you think. And you can look at something for itself without agreeing with its idea/message. And, a work is more than the feelings of an audience.
To verify what I just stated, let us condense a work to two basic areas. The first area I label as Content. Content is the idea, the message or emotion the work conveys.
The other area I label as the Expression of the Content. How a work's maker combines all the work's elements through its composition, its emphasis, the strengths and weakness of its expression.
The fastest way to understand how a Content is Expressed, is to examine remakes, specifically we can look at how various sings/musicians cover a song.
A good example is Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love (1961)[i]. I looked on Wikipedia for some performers that remade this song. As you look at the singers or groups that sang their song’s version, we will find good covers and bad covers and some that are somewhere in-between. (The list is not exhaustive and in no order, feel free to skip through or play hopscotch in it. Also add anyone on social media that covered this song.)

Can’t Help Falling in Love was remade by UB40, Bob Dylan, Luka Bloom, Corey Hart, Hi-Standard, Brenda Lee, Andy Williams, A*Teen, Richard Marx, Pearl Jam, Marty Robbins, Erasure, Bruce Springsteen, Tuck & Patti, Bon Jovi, The McCoys, U2, Keely Smith, Perry Como, Patti Page, Doris Day, The Lettermen, We Five, Neil Diamond, Bobby Solo, Aphrodite’s Child, Al Martino, Raul Seixas, The Vasco Era, Joe Loss and his Orchestra, Baccara, The Stylistics, Shirley Bassey, The Triffids, Stephan Eicher, Ornel Hinds, Fancy, George Maharis, David Thomas and the Two Pale Boys, Stray Cats, Slim Whitman, The Esquires, Eddy Arnold, Michael Bublé, The Eels, Rick Astley, Clay Aiken, Anne Murray, Barry Manilow, Dead Moon, Andrea Bocelli, F4, CSJH The Grace, Kenny Rogers, Julio Iglesias, Lick the Tins, Dave Mathews, The Jordonaires, The Residents, Engelbert Humperdinck, Urbanize, Val Doonican, Katharine Mc Phee, Vytautas Juozapaitis, The Skank Agents, Flyod Cramer, Liela Avila, James Galway, Blackmore’s Night, Mägo de Oz, Ingrid Michaelson, Harry Connick Jr., Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger, The Pretenders, Tim Urban, William Control, and Céline Dion.
[i] Written by George David Weiss, Hugo E. Peretti, Luigi Crentore for the 1961 film Blue Hawaii staring Elvis Presley.