I felt I had to start this thread after attending a party populated mostly by people anywhere from ten to fourteen years younger than I am. (I was invited.) One of the kids I know is heavily into the punk/goth scene and, as a matter of routine, is a Laibach fan. So he keeps trying to put his music on, much to the dismay of his roommates. Finally, when no one else is close enough to the CD player to stop him, he throws a disc in and hits play.
I stare in unbelieving horror at the speakers as a startlingly familiar guitar riff booms out, thinking “This sounds like, but it cannot be…” only to have my worst fears confirmed as that beyond gravelly-voiced lead singer croons:
Laibach had a kind of cult hit back in the 80s when they covered Life is Life, Wagnerian style, complete with goosestep strutting, kettle drums, herald trumpets, and choirs.
Other Covers From Hell:
William Shatner - Tambourine Man (ACTING!)
Slayer - in a godda davida
Stevie Lawrence and Edie Gormet - Black Hole Sun
Pat Boone’s album of metal covers
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Rock and Roll All Night (anybody for a funeral?)
Madonna butchered Peggy Lee’s “Fever” (which is a wonderful song) and Don McLean’s “American Pie” (which I didn’t care for to begin with, but she made it even worse).
The craze of doing punk covers of older songs (rock, pop, TV show themes) was cool when Less Than Jake was doing it, but it is terribly overdone by too many soundalike mall-punk acts now.
Jessica Simpson’s cover of Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” is completely pointless, because she didn’t add anything new or interesting to her version. (I’m not sure she could if she tried, though.) The whole point of covering a song is to put a bit of a unique and personal touch on it–unless you’re in a tribute band, and I never got into those either.
But dammit, I LIKE William Shatner’s “spoken word” covers! I eagerly await his next album, with collaborations with Ben Folds and Henry Rollins!
For one thing, that tune always annoyed the friggin hell out of me…whiney, downtempo, and inexplicably adorned with that flatulent-sounding synth riff.
No Doubt, so far as I can tell, has made a faithful replicate of the original (barring Gwen Stefani’s distinctive voice), which is, hence, equally rotten.
Already noted, but worth more detail… I have, right here next to me, a copy of Pat Boone’s metal album, entitled “In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy”. It is awe-inspiring.
The track list (metal standards all):
You’ve Got Another Thing Coming
Smoke on the Water
It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n Roll)
Panama
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Love Hurts
Enter Sandman
Holy Diver
Paradise City
The Wind Cries Mary
Crazy Train
Stairway to Heaven
My personal favorite is a toss-up between Enter Sandman and It’s a Long Way to the Top. Note that these are not just minor makeovers of the songs – they are re-scored to fit the Pat Boone style, which makes them sound like mutant inbred distant cousins of the original songs, with the same lyrics, delivered in that inimical Pat Boone white-shoes-singsong style.
Plus, the cover art shows him bare-chested in a leather vest with an earring.
Yep, this feeling is definitely awe. Or perhaps primal horror. I’m not sure which.
Pat Boone is a true rebel. After all, that album, in combination with his appearing in leather and fake tattoos on an awards show got him fired from the 700 Club!
As to truly bad covers:
Britney Spears’ cover of I Love Rock & Roll, originally by, um “Pat Benatar” :rolleyes:
You all seem to have forgotten Michael Bolton (would that I could, too)…the man who shit all over Percy Sledge’s classic When A Man Loves A Woman and proceeded to wipe his ass with Georgia On My Mind (nobody will ever match Ray Charles’ version), which only served to confirm Bolton’s status as a seething, festering pile of Evil.
I once had a tape of ‘The Treorchy Male Voice Choir Sings Queen’s Greatest Hits’. And that’s exactly what it was. A choir of Welsh men singing ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and so on. Pointless doesn’t even come close to describing this.
That god-awful, faux-reggae Club Nouveau cover of “Lean on Me” from the 80s.
And who was the buttmunch who recently had the nerve to murder Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer”?
