In the age of social media it has become a familiar story: artists post cover songs online and, if they are lucky, one of their videos goes viral. These artists then leverage their success to release original music, quit their day job, and start touring. No Resolve have taken a different route.
Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 2010, No Resolve started out releasing original music. They continued to release new music until November 2020, when they released a cover of Adele’s Set Fire To The Rain. The song was picked up by the Octane channel on Sirius FM, then went viral on the internet. This is No Resolve’s second Adele cover, Easy On Me.
The Easy On Me video was picked up by Cover Nation for its curated YouTube channel. The video has 6.2M views on Cover Nation and 2.1M views on No Resvolve’s own YouTube channel. A common theme to the comments on the Cover Nation posts is encapsulated by Paige Davis, “Adele’s version is beautiful, but this. THIS, I can truly feel. Found on TikTok and now I’m here. Great job, ya’ll!” Explaining the band’s embrace of cover songs, frontman Oscar Pegorraro says that the music industry has changed.
Speaking in April 2022, Pegorraro added that whereas power used to lie with record companies it now lies with viral creators. He said that since the band started releasing cover songs, No Resolve have 1M million listeners a month on Spotify, they frequently chart on Billboard, and every song they release tops the iTunes charts. Here is the cover of Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain which prompted No Resolve’s reinvention & which remains the most popular video on their YouTube channel (9.2M views).
Alley Sheay comments, “This is the epitome of, ‘if you’re going to do a cover… kill it!’ Equally as powerful as the original, and totally unique from it”. No Resolve’s many fans would agree wholeheartedly.
The cover of Adele’s Set Fire To The Rain was followed by covers of Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Leonard Cohen, Kate Bush, Lewis Capaldi, Garth Brooks, The Kid LAROI/Justin Bieber and more. Not that No Resolve has given up on original music entirely. In October 2022 they posted the video for their song Come Back Stronger. Truth be told, in terms of popularity on YouTube, No Resolve’s original music tends to be overshadowed by their cover songs. Nonetheless, when it comes to No Resolve, YouTube and TikTok don’t tell the full story.
Besides spending ten years performing original songs before getting bitten by the cover-song bug, another thing that makes No Resolve different from many acts that find success on social media is that their social media hits are accompanied by radio station plays, streams on Spotify, and positions in the high reaches of the Billboard and iTunes charts. Meanwhile, frontman Oscar Pegorraro has kept his day job as a UPS driver.
Another point that ought to be made is that No Resolve had a more than respectful career as a band that played original songs. They may not have made the big league, but they nurtured an audience and they earned good reviews. Their first EP, A New Beginning (2012) was well received but was eclipsed by their 2013 single Get Me Out, which was picked up by the Detroit Red Wings as a song for playoff games. The band released their debut LP, Unity, in 2017. The singles from the album were played by both terrestrial and internet radio stations, resulting in an impressive number of Spotify streams.
As Oscar Pegorraro says, “We’ve already gone the traditional music route of putting out a full-length album and two EPs of original material, but now we’re going viral on every streaming platform out there.” If you would like to see more from No Resolve, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow them on Facebook. You can also visit their official website for more information.