I Prevail's Taylor Swift Cover Has Gone Platinum

It’s been almost five years since I Prevail’s cover of Taylor Swift’s Blank Space helped the Michigan metalcore outfit make a name for themselves. First released in December 2014, and then again on the re-release of Pop Goes Punk Vol. 6 the following year, their cover of the pop song has now been certified as Platinum.

While that means something slightly different in the streaming age than it used to, it still signifies sales of over one million units -- with every 150 audio and/or video streams counting as one unit. While Blank Space is, by far, the band’s most successful song, their own material has fared well commercially, too.

Their second album Trauma, which was released back in March this year, hit the number 14 spot on the U.S. album charts and number 6 in Australia. While the band have always acknowledged that their cover did indeed help them out, they’ve also always insisted there’s a lot more to them than that.

In 2017, frontman Brian Burkheiser addressed the role that song had played in the band’s success when he posted a lengthy statement (now deleted) on Facebook, part of which addressed Blank Space and what the song had done for the band – pasted below, spelling mistakes and all”

“Never once said the cover didn't help launch us into success.
But so many fucking bands have had covers blow up and then fallen off.
If we had covered 20 songs, I could understand being labeled a “cover band” but we have 1 cover and 20 orginal songs.
Obviously a lot of people like our orginal music. Sure, plenty have found us through the cover, but if they didn't like the music we write we wouldn't be on an almost completely sold out headliner and have a top 5 selling rock album this year.
Keep in mind, our 1st year of touring(when blank space was at it's peak) we were drawing maybe 200 kids a show… 2 years later that number has skyrocketed. I would say thats due to our most recent album, not a cover we released almost 3 years ago.”

Which is fair enough, really. Congratulations, guys. If, somehow, you’ve been living under a rock for the last half-decade, you can listen to the cover below and try to help them make it multi-platinum.

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