Dar Williams covered Comfortably Numb. I don’t want to talk about it.
The original song Every Time You Go Away by Hall and Oates was melancholy and soulful. Paul Young turned it into a zippy, godawful pop song.
Bowie’s John, I’m Only Dancing, released in 1972, is an amazing song, with all the hard rocking, gender-bending beauty of the best early Bowie music.
He remade it in 1974, changing everything but the chorus and making it into a disco track.
Not your best idea, Dave.
Phil’s brutalization of the Mindbender’s “Groovy Kind of Love” fits the bill. Sucked the life right out of it.
Ah, yes, I forget about that one. Yeah, he did pretty much the exact same thing to that song, too. Just took all the color and life out of and turned it into shades of beige.
I would argue that Pearl Jam’s “Last Kiss” misses the point of music and joy and a reason to live.
The entire Sgt. Pepper sound track from that abortion of a movie.
When I saw the thread title I thought the impetus would be the terrible Zombie cover that is currently getting played constantly. The original version by the Cranberries is unique, and full of tension and urgency, and iconic. Not to mention is a protest song written by an Irish band about an IRA bombing.
Then in 2018 some ultra bland American radio-metal band called Bad Wolves does the most generic, boring cover imaginable. At least they are giving the proceeds from the song to Dolores O’Riordan’s children… but to me it sounds like the most lame cover I’ve ever heard. I’m reading now that Dolores was actually planning to sing the song with the band before her death, bizarre.
My only complaint about the Weezer/Toto cover, is that they didn’t do anything to make it their own. Aside from a little more distortion form the guitars in the chorus, it sounds like an almost identical recording. Shrug.
I’m not aware of it ever being on the radio or even included on an album, but Miley Cyrus covered “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” You can find it on youtube. Those words; Miley and Cyrus and Smells Like Teen Spirit all in one sentence just…I don’t know…something has gone wrong.
I’ve always thought Miley looks like she smells, so there’s that. She has strong pipes but she needs to lose the twang.
”Piece of My Heart” by Faith Hill. Strips not just the soul of the song, but Janis Joplin’s soul as well, buries it in a shallow grave in the forest, burns the forest down and then builds a crappy suburban strip mall on top of it.
You just beat me to it. How can a cover of probably the most passionately emotional song ever recorded be devoid of all passion and emotion?
(ETA: What a terrible video, too.)
Can we add his “You Can’t Hurry Love”?
And the fact they changed the lyrics to include “Drones” and “2018” to make it, like, modern maaaaaaan just ruins it further
But it’s awesome in its own right.
Personally I find that Janis Joplin frequently overdid the soul side of her song far too much, and Piece of my Heart was one such example,
so here is the original,
here is one that completely lost the original spirit in the cover - obviously a Christian witnessing song that has been subsumed into pretty boy culture and the Boyzone version - to thrill little star obsessed teenage girls
[quote=“casdave, post:56, topic:825543”]
Personally I find that Janis Joplin frequently overdid the soul side of her song far too much, and Piece of my Heart was one such example,
so here is the original,
[/QUOTE] I had no idea that Big Brother & the Holding Company was *not* the original. Ignorance fought.I’m sure we can agree that Faith Hill’s version sucks, though. 
However big a hit it was, Whitney Houston’s cover of “I will Always Love You” completely misses the bittersweet breakup song that Dolly Parton originally wrote and sang.
Oh wow. Thankyou for posting that second link. I never even knew that song could actually be good.
My favorite Who song is “Behind Blue Eyes”. It lives by its tension in the lyrics and the dynamics in the arrangement and recording. You know, it starts slowly, acoustic, but brooding and in the end explodes when Moon’s drums and Townshend’s mighty riffing set in. It’s always cathartic for me to hear this song. Then bloody Limp Bizkit did this:
They left out the exploding, orgasmic part and decided to add instead some of their own puerile lyrics to the acoustic part, which they played utterly bad.What a travesty.