I am not denying that all that takes work M Ted. I am just saying that it takes MORE work to do something that hasn't already been done before. Equally I am not saying that using material & arrangement that is very heavily influenced by somebody else makes a bad performance, in my first post I tried very hard to say that even if I was listing examples, it didn't stop me enjoying performances by any of those artists.

But... there is plenty of material out there that hasn't already been done 30 times already, and there are plenty of ways to approach even a well known song that don't make you think 'hey, that sounds just like so & so's version'. Admittedly I haven't sat down with the two versions of any of the tracks that I mentioned and compared them line by line because (even I am not that pedantic and) I've thought these things in live performance not recorded, for the most part.

Are you honestly saying that the seeking out of new material & working out of fresh arrangements doesn't matter at all though? If nobody did it, things would get pretty stale pretty quickly.