If there’s one thing society has been hell-bent on doing since time immemorial, it’s copying their heroes. When one man or woman does something amazing, everyone who adores them likes to tell themselves “I can do that too.”

The same goes for music, with karaoke and cover art and all other kinds of imitation being hugely popular today. Apparently MTV thinks so as well, if <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/2890505/%e2%80%8bwe-are-all-stars-how-cover-culture-has-saturated-our-lives/" target="_blank">their recent article</a> has anything to say about the phenomenon.

According to MTV, lip-synching, karaoke, and cover art is all immensely popular with the public right now, though I personally haven’t seen much of it. I do listen to a fair number of music covers, but not out of some misguided notion that I need to hear my favorite artist copied. For the most part I like the lyrics of the original song, but prefer the voice or musical touch of the covering artist more.

As for karaoke and lip-synch, I’ve never been too keen on either, but neither did I think it was that popular for music lovers. I can’t even think of a well-known karaoke bar, and even driving around large cities with countless different establishments, karaoke bars are few and far between, not to mention rarely crowded. For lip-synching, I personally can’t see the appeal in it, though, as MTV’s article said, there are a number of apps and shows that revolve entirely around it.

But even if these forms of musical imitation are crowding the industry and the art, I don’t see them as a necessarily bad addition. I personally enjoy music covers, and while I find no enjoyment in karaoke myself, I think it’s fantastic that groups of friends can get together and enjoy themselves with a carefree night of fun.

The question remains though: why are people so obsessed with copying others? Is it because they idolize a certain artist so much, they want to try and be them? Personally I don’t think that’s the case for most. If anything, it’s because imitation is a sort of pseudo-success, an accomplishment that proves something about you without having to necessarily put a ton of effort into it. It always feels good to accomplish something, but most accomplishments take a lot of time and effort. With covers, karaoke, and lip-synch, you can accomplish something without having to do it all from scratch.

With these imitation forms, you can prove that you can sing, or play an instrument really well, that you can ‘be an idol too’ without having to go through all of the hassle of actually being one. Does that mean it’s useless? That it’s all pointless exercises that amount to nothing? In a fiscal and productive sense, maybe. You might not gain anything physical from your musical imitations, but if they make you feel good about yourself, or just make you happy, isn’t it still worth your time? Copying your idols may not produce anything you can make a decent dime with, but so long as it satisfies society’s desire to imitate their heroes while doing no real harm to the music industry, I see no reason to condemn those imitations that people love so much.