Just heard Jessica Simpson doing unnatural things to Berlin’s Take My Breath Away.Please if you can’t do something good to it,leave it alone.And surely there should be a moral time limit on how long before some teenybop band covers a song?Can’t you think of any decent songs of your own that don’t sound like complete mindless slush?
Grrr :mad:
Oh, sure, but if the composer still owns the rights, those royalty checks will ease the pain.
I remember shuddering uncontrollably when I heard Sheryl Crow’s cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” I even like Sheryl Crow, to a point, but don’t do that!!! I’ve also been told (though I mercifully have never heard it) that Britney Spears covered “I Love Rock N’ Roll.” She wouldn’t know rock n’ roll if it slapped her upside the silicone.
On the other hand, any cover by Me First & The Gimme Gimmes is okay by me.
As a bard in the SCA told me, if people only ever performed their own stuff, it would get really old, really fast. We have to have some clinkers in order to get the occasional Eva Cassidy.
Amazon had sound samples, and like a man driving by a grisly car wreck, I had to check it out. I’ll take the car wreck any day of the week, thank you very much.
A-freakin-men. We are part of a (legal) downloading thing, and it drives me crazy when you look for a tune, can’t remember the composer
and it’s some horrible remake of the beautiful original you were looking for.
Blegh.
Remember the atrocity Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman made of Something Stupid? Ugh. My ears ache even thinking of it.
(I’m gonna piss away any “indie cred” I’ve ever accrued here, but…)
Mandy Moore’s album “Coverage” is actually really good. The songs (hopefully) will expose newer generations to some of the best singer/songwriters they might not have otherwise heard of. (Much like Nanci Griffith’s folk windows of “Other Voices” 1 + 2) There seems to be a difference in doing these songs for money (Jessica Simpson, perhaps?) and for those doing it for the love of these songs. (IIRC, Mandy Moore recorded this CD autonomously and *then * presented it to her label so she’d have full control over it.)
Here are some of the songs she does:
Senses Working Overtime -**XTC **
The Whole Of The Moon-The Waterboys
I Feel The Earth Move-Carole King
Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters-Elton John
Drop The Pilot-Joan Armatrading
Moonshadow-Cat Stevens
Anticipation-Carly Simon
Help Me-Joni Mitchell
yesbut…
Johnny Cash
I can’t believe the beauty in his last albums. “Hurt” makes me bawl like an infant every single freakin’ time I hear it. I refuse to watch the video, 'cause I’ll just lose it. (Never seen it, but heard about it.)
And I never liked a single one of his original works.
I have to grudgingly admit to liking the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” that the Scissors Sisters did. It sounds like the BeeGees mixed with dance music.
[ducks the hurled objects]
Korn’s cover of “Word Up” is too cool, and even having loved Tears for Fears, I still liked Disturbed’s version of “Shout”.
Anyone heard Britney’s cover of “My Perogative”? I had the misfortune of hearing it twice yesterday.
OK, the original isn’t exactly “Blowin in the Wind”, but still. Absolute shiat.
She should be banned from covering any song. Jessica SImpson should just be banned from singing in general.
I love Britney’s “My Prerogative”, even though I hate the original. I’m indifferent to her “I love Rock 'n Roll”. I’m surprised no one’s brought up her “Satisfaction”, which I also think is okay.
I also don’t have a problem with Jessica’s “Take My Breath Away”. I don’t really like it, but I think it’s an awful song to begin with, so I don’t really see it as a step down.
So I’m the only one not making any sense of the OP? This isn’t the Beatles we’re talking about her… hell, it’s not even the Bee Gees. It’s Berlin and Take My Breath Away. The cover may suck but it’s not like the original was any better.
Is that “Word Up” as in Cameo?
What killed me was Faith Hill’s twangy, ear-clawing version of Piece of My Heart.
Oh, the humanity.
Eh, Jess can butcher Take My Breath Away if she wants. I hate that damn song and can’t imagine she could make me hate it much worse than I already do.
Now if she puts her sweetly manicured fingers on The Metro, she’s dead.
There are so many truly awful covers (Kenny G doing Louis Armstrong anyone?) that the good ones are truly gems.
Here’s my list of appreciated covers of songs that I love.
I am a big Beatles fan and not a Fiona Apple fan, but her “Across the Universe” blows the shit out of the original, underproduced track.
Johnny Cash was born to sing “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (it’s about the electric chair) and his cover is far better than the original.
And Mingo Saldivar’s “Rueda de Fuego” is an incredible Tejano cover of “Ring of Fire.”
The Bad Plus cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is better than Tori Amos’s but of course not as good as the original.
The Ben Gibbard/Ben Barnett (from Death Cab for Cutie) cover of Bjork’s “Joga” is surprisingly good.
The Tricky interpretation of Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” (called “Black Steel”) is great. So is The Gourd’s interpretation of “Gin and Juice” by Snoop Dogg. As is the Snoop Dogg cover of Slick Rick’s “Lodi Dodi.”
But of course, the best cover is Eilert Pilarm doing “Jailhouse Rock.” It’s less of a song and more of a life-changing experience.
That it is. 
They’ve been playing the song on the local hard rock station now and then, and I guess Korn’s been playing it on tour as well. It’s actually a pretty faithful cover, just more rock guitars and stuff.
I’ll have to check that out. That’s one of my favorite 80s tunes.
She did, and mentioned to a reporter that she did it because she “loves Pat Benatar.” The reporter pointed out that “I Love Rock N’Roll” was by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, not Pat Benatar. Her Royal Vapidness responded “Well how am I supposed to know? That was before I was born!” :rolleyes:
I also don’t have a problem with Jessica Simpson’s “Take My Breath Away” because it’s a vapid song (so good for her personality) that fits her voice, IMO. Also, Berlin has absolutely no abiding love for the song and they seem to credit it with their ultimate breakup, because the song got huge and segmented their fan base and caused resentment within the band because of who wrote it, etc. (See their VH1 “Bands Reunited” appearance for more on that. Terri Nunn said, IIRC, that she’d be happy to never, ever have to sing the song again.)
There are good covers of good songs, (Melissa Etheridge doing “Maggie May” or Cassandra Wilson doing “Time After Time”) great covers of great songs (Gary Jules doing “Mad World” or Duran Duran doing “Perfect Day”) and covers which improve vapid songs (there’s an all-male, acoustic version of Britney’s “Hit Me Baby” that’s been floating around, I’m told that it’s by Travis but that’s not necessarily accurate) but some songs should just be left alone, and some artists – Britney! – should never, ever, ever have the gall to think that they can bring something new to a song that was a hit before their time.