eddie vedder singing “history never repeats”.
note to eddie: NEVER sing a split enz tune again. better yet. don’t sing period!
alian antfarms smooth criminal and marilyn mansons tainted love are both pretty bloody shocking, i like the living end cover of tainted love, though. new order also have a really chool cover of anarchy in the UK, and the sex pistols did rock around the clock…brilliant
Damn, beat me to it. It pisses me off to no end that this band scores a hit with a song THEY DIDN’T EVEN WRITE. :mad:
That crappy 80s reggae version of “Lean on Me.”
You forgot the Broadway cast recording. I bought a CD-single from it and played it once. You couldn’t get me to listen to that piece of shit again if you held a gun to my head.
I agree, I like the original version, but I don’t really like the Lenny Kravitz one, or, for that matter, Lenny Kravitz. But the Butthole Surfers did a “cover” (if you can call it that) of American Woman on their Rembrandt Pussyhorse album that I think is pretty bitchin. ANy Limp Bizkit cover is pretty goddamned horrible, actually, I can’t really recall any recent covers that are good. So there.
Pearl Jam’s version of “Last Kiss.” I lost so much respect for them when that was released. I don’t care if it wasn’t supposed to get airplay or not, a band like Pearl Jam should not ever touch 50’s teen death songs. Fortunately I heard this song after I got my copy of Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs so I could amuse myself with the Stephen King lyrics instead.
Well, I personally maintain that there should be some law out there that makes any band covering Tainted Love in danger of the death penalty. I mean, for crying out loud, I think even my grandma has done a cover of that. Please stop the madness. We all know that the definitive cover of this track was done by Coil, so let’s just let it go, okay?
The one cover that really annoys me, though, is the Orgy cover of Blue Monday. Not only did it make the band famous (another annoying band that got famous ONLY because of a bad cover), but they really didn’t change the song very much at all! They just substituted synth lines for guitar lines, and added distortion! Bastards. That song bugs the hell outta me.
Colin
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s
“Gold Dust Woman” by Hole.
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, the cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” by Joey Ramones/The Ramones.
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate hate the cover the Eurythmics
“Sweet Dreams” by Marilyn Manson.
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate the cover of REO Speedwagon’s “Time for Me to Fly” by Dolly Parton.
I heard that Dolly Parton is doing a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” which I will probably hate.
I actually like the Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal” much better than Michael Jackson, Sheryl Crow’s “Sweet Child of Mine” much better than Guns and Roses and Tom Jones’ “Kiss” much better than Prince.
I like Smashing Pumpkin’s Landslide, as much I like Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide, I also like the “Walk This Way” by RunDMC/Aerosmith.
I like these covers and I usually hate covers.
Jeez you guys, half the songs mentioned here are ones I actually like quite a bit, and the other half aren’t nearly as offensive as a whole bunch of others I can think of.
For example, what about “We Will Rock You” by Warrant? At least I think they were the ones who covered that song for some WWF movie, it was some no-talent hair band. Sheer blasphemy.
I have a sampler CD from a small music label with their bands doing cover songs. One of them, “Sunshine of Your Love” by Hexenhaus, made me want to rethink my position on censorship laws.
Some all-girl band totally butchered Van Halen’s “I’m the One” on the Airheads soundtrack.
There’s more, but right now I need to take a Thorazine after reliving the sheer horror of these tunes…
Jimmy Buffett’s cover of Brown Eyed Girl just annoys me. I can’t yell whether it is my general dislike of Jimmy Buffett, or if it’s my near hero-worship of Van Morrison. It’s probably a healthy portion of both.
Very rarely do I hear a cover song that I like. I was very displeased with Metallica’s “Turn the Page” even more so with Puff Daddy ruining “Kashmir” and “Every Breath you Take”…at least I think it was Puff Daddy or whatever he’s calling himself this week.
I’m not sure who did it, but the cover of Taxman used in a recent H&R Block ad. I had a hard time not vomiting during the Fred Durst Wish You Were Here, and then i heard the added verse.
BLECCH
You lost respect for them for releasing a song that was already climbing the charts based solely on radio airplay due to popular demand, and then donating their cut of the profits to charity?
I must respectfully disagree–the a capella version by folk-chick collective Voices on the Verge was excellent. (It isn’t on their album, though.)
As for the OP, Madonna’s “American Pie” takes the cake. It was an invaluable look into the music industry–I heard it more than once referred to as “Madonna’s latest hit!”, despite the fact that no one liked it. Our local paper did a story to this effect–they tried to find someone in town who liked the song, and couldn’t.
May I also submit “Johnny B. Goode”, by anyone. Yes, I know it’s an easy cover to crank out, since everyone knows it. But you’re not going to do anything new to it, nor should you. Please, leave it to Chuck Berry (and, in a pinch, Michael J. Fox).
Dr. J
Boyz 2 Men version of Yesterday.
Well, anybody’s version of Yesterday other than the original Beatles. That song is a classic and should be left alone!
A summary of my reactions:
I can’t believe nobody mentioned Britney Spears’ cover of “Satisfaction”. Every band has covered that song and hers may very well be the worst version.
Nobody has ever covered a Beatles song and topped the original, but of all Beatles covers, William Shatner’s “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” is the most unbearable that I have ever heard.
Limp Bizkit’s cover of “Faith” was better than the original, but that was just because the original sucks. Related note: Any band that releases a cover as a lead-off single loses any credibility in my book.
And I like the Pumpkins’ version of “Landslide”.
When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge is a great song.
The same song performed by Michael Bolton makes me want to hit him in the head with bricks several million times.
In the mid-90s, smebody – can’t recall the anme and can’t bring myself to look it up – did a truly execrable cover of Patti Smith’s Because the Night.
Can’t believe this thread has gotten so long without someone ID’ing the cover artists capybara and Dr. Rieux referred to. Frente and Club Nouveau butchered “Blue Monday” and “Lean on Me,” respectively. (The stupid and useless stuff I remember, I know.)
My vote for worst cover song goes to Tin Tin Out’s assault on “Here’s Where the Story Ends” by The Sundays. Bizarrely, the British music industry suits decided to award it with the Ivor Novello songwriting award…meaning that Sundays Harriet Wheeler and David Gavurin, probably the shyest people in pop music, managed to win a prize for a song they had written ten years before, and performed a hundred times better themselves. They declined the award, of course.
My vote for second worst cover song goes to Tin Tin Out’s assult on “There She Goes” by The La’s. I sense a pattern here.