There’s a big difference between a bad cover and a pointless cover. Most of the ones described here are truly bad.
The canonical example of the pointless cover would be the entire ouvre of The A Teens, youngsters who perform note-for-note versions of Abba songs. As has been pointed out multiple times in The Onion’s “Least Essential Albums” articles, there isn’t anything about their albums full of Abba covers that’s really bad; it’s just that they have absolutely no reason to exist. (Why wouldn’t one just listen to Abba?)
As for bad covers, I’ll second most of those listed and add Counting Crows doing “Big Yellow Taxi”.
This is absolutely my stance as well. A cover that adds nothing to the original, but mimics it like your average wedding/bar band. No one should want to immediately reach for the original version when they’re hearing a karaoke cover. To me that’s a failure, because if you’re like me, you’re just going to put on the original version instead and forget all about the cover.
The other thing, is when you’re mining a band’s back catalog and only picking out their biggest hit, I mean, come on. Especially when you’re picking out the hit song from a one-hit wonder. Or a song that you might consider an artist’s “signature song” – that’s just trouble.
I nominate Korn’s butchering of “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd.
Instead of taking the predictable route and Korning “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2,” they figured it would be a better idea to mash all three parts together into a Korned-up mess.
These are non-consecutive songs from a concept album. Crammed together and growled/screamed at the listener devoid of context, they don’t make a lick of sense.
I agree. However, if the only point to something is to make the baby Jesus cry, well then I’d rather have one which is pointless in its lack of originality or inability to improve upon the original.
In the former category, I’d have to nominate many of the covers on Johnny Cash’s In Black . I know, I know, critical acclaim, blah blah blah, Grammy award, yadda yadda. But my mom was playing it in the car the other day when I was riding with her, and I was frantically searching the interior of her car for a sharp object with which to pierce my eardrums.
Ooh, if you want to talk about a band’s pointless reinterpretation of its own songs, I’ll throw in the Police’s updated version of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” that appeared on a greatest hits album in lieu of the original.
At the time, Elvis’s cover of “Blue Suede Shoes” was roundly criticized for being a straight copy of Perkin’s version. In retrospect, Presley’s version is always listed as number 2 behind Perkins both in terms of record sales and musical worth. Presley’s version, in fact, took most of the snarl out of Perkin’s rockabilly release, perhaps as part of RCA’s philosphy to sell Elvis to the masses. To many people (me included), Presley’s best (musically) recordings were those from the Sun sessions.
Perkin’s (who wrote the song) recorded his version on 26 December 1955 and it was released on 1 January 1956. Presley recorded his version on 30-31 January 1956. It’s hard to imagine Presley recording and releasing it as a tribute or acknowledgement to his former stablemate at Sun. BTW, that same recording session for Elvis also saw him cut versions of “Tutti Frutti”, “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” (both Little Richard songs) and “Shake, Rattle & Roll”.
You have to remember too that RCA was releasing these as singles (though “Blue Suede Shoes” was originally released on an EP). SO WAS IT JUST MONEY?
U2’s recent cover of Kraftwerk’s “Neon Lights” qualifies. I don’t think it’s possible to completely ruin such a great song, but it’s certainly a magnificent effort. U2 add all their suck-ass “trademarks” like overuse of the delay pedal and reverb and Bono’s pompous vocals (plus, he can’t shut up during the instrumental part, so he just goes “da, da, da-da dum” or something). They fail to realize that the beauty of the original is in its magnificent simplicity, and instead smear rococo swirls of manure around it. Ugh.
Covers of other people’s song is more the rule than the exception in the fifties and sixties. Which aint bad when you consider the number of songs that were hits that were covers such as Andy Williams’ Moon River, or Mama Cass’s Dream a little Dream of Me, or practically everything the Byrds did!(Turn, Turn, Turn, Mr. Tambourine Man, etc.)
In Pearl Jam’s defense, “Last Kiss” was a joke. It was recorded live at a soundcheck and never meant to be a commercial release. Pearl Jam does a special fan club single every year – sometimes studio outtakes, often something live. One year it was Eddie Vedder singing a duet of “My Way” with an Elvis impersonater onstage in Vegas. These single usually get played once or twice on a few big city rock stations where the DJ is a Pearl Jam fan club member, but attracts no other attention.
“Last Kiss” was an exception. People started calling up the radio stations that played it and asking to hear it again. Pearl Jam’s label supplied a few stations with copies, but mostly left it up to DJs to share with each other. (Strange but true. Here’s the first cite I could turn up with Google.) With no special promotion from the label, the song started climbing the charts on the strength of radio airplay alone. Overwhelming popular demand eventually led to its release to the public as a single. Pearl Jam donated their cut to charity, which turned out to be a pretty generous chunk of change as “Last Kiss” was their highest charting song ever.
So it’s really only the strange tastes of the American public that made “Last Kiss” a hit rather than an obscure track that only the most devoted Pearl Jam fans would ever hear or even hear about.
Michael Bolton’s remake of “Georgia on My Mind” (Ray Charles)
Herb Alpert’s “Happening” (Supremes)**
Tiffany “I Saw Him Standing There” (Beatles)**
Mariah Carey “I’ll Be There” (Jackson 5) - Both went to #1)**
Covers that were improved or done differently:
Booker T. & The MG’s “Groovin” (Little Rascals)
Wilson Pickett “Hey Jude” (Beatles)
James Taylor “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” (Marvin Gaye" (& Jr. Walkers version)
Otis Redding “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (Rolling Stones)
Otis Redding “Try A Little Tenderness” (originally recorded in 1920’s)
Marvin Gaye “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (Gladys Knight)**
There’s a cover of Under Pressure out there now. I don’t remember who it is, but it keeps popping up on XM. I don’t really care for it, because it mostly sounds just like Queen.
As I said and you point out, many songs and many artists wouldn’t have gotten the attention they deserved if it wasn’t for covers. Some just happen to be better (or as pointed out throughout this thread - worse) than others.
Though I will say, Baez gained little commercially by promoting Dylan, the Byrd’s were in it for themselves as Dylan was already established. Same with Peter, Paul & Mary who took “Blowin” in the Wind" to establish themselves.
That cover was good until Vanessa Carlton’s voive was dubbed in for background vocals. Pointless, yes. But good. Same as their cover of “Friend of the Devil” by the Dead.
Anyone hear Poison’s cover of Dr Hook’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone?”
