Specifically the Black Crowes version. It’s always been a pretty decent cover of the song, but now every time I hear it on the radio there’s a new version where someone has mixed in a really bad sounding horn arrangement. It’s just not scored well and the timbre of the horns really doesn’t match to the song. Why would someone take a song from 16 years ago that nobody really cares about and make it worse?
The version with the horns (the “horny version”?) has been around about as long as the original Black Crowes version. I remember hearing the song on the local classic rock station when it first came out and they’d play the album version, but when it was played by the top 40 station, it had the horn section. I could never figure out why they did that- did adding the horns somehow make it more “pop” than “rock”?
Whatever the reason, I always found the horny version very jarring, to the point that when I listened to the album, I would unconsciously cringe when the point in the song came by that had the horns, but then be relieved when I didn’t hear them.
I think it was done without the band’s involvement.
That has to be a “single version” that they made specifically for radio airplay and/or for the cassette / CD single. Sometimes it’s for radio only. The band did not necessarily need to be involved. The industry term for adding strings or horns or other adornment to a song after the fact is “sweetening.”
There are thousands of these, and I’ve collected hundreds of them.