I don’t listen to new music. I live in the iPod ghetto of old hits.
But today, I was at a store and they had the radio on. A song comes on that sounds familiar, but I knew I had never heard it before.
It was a dance version of Alice Cooper’s Poison. Not one of Alice’s biggestg hits, but a personal favorite of mine.
I almost got twitchie listening to it. It was so unexceptional and was basically a talentless singer going through the motions to a generic dance beat.
It was one of the worst remakes I have ever experienced in any medium.
Fortunately, right after that song, my musical palette was cleansed with U2’s Vertigo, a song I had only heard because it was played a lot on the Ipod commercial. (Fortunately, tivo is keeping more and more new music away).
What was the most painful musical remake you have ever experienced?
It’s a tossup between Madonna’s version of American Pie, Madonna’s dance-mix of Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina, and Madonna’s samplepalooza of Abba’s Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (A Man After Midnight).
Some pos LA metal band whos name I don’t even remember covered “Blue Monday” by New Order taking a haunting and somewhat sinister song and turning it into a loud, obnoxious and meaningless peace of crap. I had to listen to the original like 5 times before I fully recovered.
I have to say this may be the worst cover I’ve heard in recent memory. Absolutely passionless. Not that I even really like the original all that much, but the remake was utter crap.
Another that comes to mind is Phil Collins’s take on “True Colors.” Totally sucking all the soul and character out of that tune.
A controversial one that I think is actually a very good cover, but qualifies as “jarring” is the Scissor Sisters remake of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”
Someone did a disco version of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” and turned it into a celebration of finally making it, where the original was a cynical look at the hypocracy of the music industry.
I’ll Second Madonna’s “American Pie” and raise you Ugly Kid Joe “Cat’s in the Cradle”
Both talentless, tasteless remakes.
Oddly enough, I’d always been rather fond of Phil Steineman’s work and so, was fond of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” which at some point was reworked by someone into a dance song. It was wrong on so many levels it wasn’t funny.
For a second I missed the dance part. I can’t see any reason to cover Poison. There’s some dance re-mix of Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, which I imagine to be about the same.