Yea, verily I have witnessed all of these songs and the Suffering and Torment of Poison hath surpassed them all, my vote remaineth unchanged. 
As much as I like Johnny Cash, I have to say his cover of U2’s One sucks ass.
I can not stand American Women by Lenny Kravitz. I really like the origional Guess Who version, but the vocals were horrible, and the guitar was nowhere near as heavy as I thought it should be. I wish they would have went with Soundgarden as they wanted to.
BTW I am a Fan of Lenny, but hate his cover of that song.
Well, the OP brought up sampling… although this isn’t precisely the subject of the thread, it’s been driving me crazy for some time now.
A few years ago, Janet Jackson released some negligeable song, with the chorus stolen from Joni Mitchell’s iBig Yellow Taxi*. The thing is, she only sang the first hald of the chorus. I repeat: she fucking only sang the fucking first half of the fucking chorus, leaving me hanging in a state of unrequited melody.
It drove me absolutely crazy. It made me want to grab her by the shoulders, shake her violently and shout:
"*Pave paradise, put up a parking lot!!
AAA-OOOO, LA LA LA LA, BITCH!!"
Grrr.
Dude, come on! The Sergeant Pepper movie soundtrack has got to be the ultimate bad cover album of all time. Some more examples:
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer by Steve Martin
Long and Winding Road by Peter Frampton
And a correction from my last post: Earth Wind and Fire did Got To Get You Into My Life. It was Billy Preston who did Get Back (thanks to this site I just found).
Don’t be silly Halber. The cover of stripped is liquid, burning sex on a speed boat. I actually looked at my friend and said “I may just have an orgasm in a second here”. The cover of Pet Semetary with sweet li’l Flake and his ribs singing was ok for a few minutes…and then the almighty Till comes out with that scary version of his voice, fifty nine octaves below middle C, and I just started laughing. I mean, I love him. I LOVE HIM WITH ALL OF MY HEART. I want to bear his next six kids, but yikes, pal. YIKES.
Hmmmm, how do I phrase this question…when you saw the show…was the song Rammstein performed…without INCIDENT?, just like normal? Or was there…an accident? because that was both my favorite part and also my least favorite part, as I was laughing and also ready to jump on stage and sacrifice myself.
Great show. It really was their best ever. Anytime a man says “Yes, you can strap a flamethrower onto my face”, you know you’re in for a good night.
jarbaby
I LOVE their cover of Stripped! <deep growl>
Speaking of Depeche Mode - Smashing Pumpkins’ cover of Enjoy the Silence gives new meaning to the word YECH.
Maeglin already mentioned the Battle of Evermore travesty that I hope I will never have to listen to. It pains me to think that Cameron Crowe could forgive his wife for that one…
This reminds me of an album that was released a few years ago called Stairway to Heaven, Highway to Hell. What happened was several hair bands did covers by groups who had a band member die by drugs or alcohol. The line-up included:
Gorky Park doing “My Gerantion” by The Who
Skid Row covering “Holidays in the Sun” by The Sex Pistols
The Scorpions doing “I Can’t Explain” by The Who
Motley Crue covering “Teaser” by Tommy Bolin
Ozzy Osbourne’s rendition of “Purple Haze” by Hendrix
Bon Jovi murdering Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town”
Cinderella covering **Janis Joplin[/]'s “Move Over”
And live versions of “Rock and Roll,” “Hound Dog,” and “Long Tall Sally” done by members of the above bands.
…and that was supposed to be Smashing Pumpkins’ cover of Never let me down again. I cringe to think of them covering Enjoy the Silence…
I heard a God-awful cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” last night.
Another vote: the Foo Fighters’ cover of Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street.” (yeah, I probably screwed up the spelling of his name.)
I may have just recalled the ultimate bad cover. After his version of “Tiptoe Through the Tuilips” Tiny Tim did a cover of the 40s love song of “As Time Goes By.”
Howyadoin,
I was traveling one day and ran across some podunk station who thought it would be cool to play a recording of James Taylor covering The Doors “Light My Fire”. To paraphrase Hunter Thompson, I would rather be locked in a rolling boxcar full of rats then ever listen to this tragedy again.
I remember reading that Taylor “rode the horse” pretty hard before he dried out. The particular steaming hunk of vinyl I refer to must surely have originated in that period, because no sober individual could have said, “Gee, I’m gonna put this where people can find it!” The ending was the best part, where Taylor kept banging out the same chord while howling “LIGHT MY FIRE!”. Eventually, he wore down to the point where he was just yelping “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”
I only wish…
Where do I go to get that four minutes of my life back?
-Rav
Fiona Whatever’s cover of the Beatles’ Across the Universe.
Somebody’s cover of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal.
Ye gods - I’d rather listen to cats mate.
Snicks
British pubescent boyband A1 did a cover of a-ha’s “Take On Me”.
Now, one of the things that people noticed about the original song (besides the video, I mean, that’s a given) was the way the singer would jump up to the falsetto. A1 sing like they’ve got helium tanks in their throats. If they were to try to sing falsetto (which thankfully they do not) they would probably shatter glass, not to mention violate international air traffic agreements.
The Cardigans covering Iron Man and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. They will ROAST for that.
That, IMO, is a very good cover. By the way, it’s Alien Ant Farm. That song and “Movies” are the only good ones on their CD, though.
I second “Satisfaction” by Britney Spears. Ew.
Everclear’s version of “Brown Eyed Girl”. Ickybad.
Yeah…the same thing happened at the show here too…i was like,“OMG Fate has finally caugh up with Till and he has turned into a well toasted German sausage”, but then i realized it was all an act, and there was much rejoycing.
I am shocked and disappointed that no one has yet mentioned William Shatner’s covers of “Tambourine Man” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”…totally awful and yet hilariously entertaining. In Tambourine Man, Shatner sounds like a paranoid delusional John Wayne on acid trying to read Shakespeare. In Lucy, he sounds kind of like a cross between Charlton Heston and Mr. Peterman from Seinfeld, still on acid. And the choruses in both songs are really bizarre, too.
It takes some kind of perverse genius to invent such sounds.
There’s been a rash of bad covers recently. The latest fad among pop-punk-ska bands is to cover old 80s tunes. However, all they do is speed them up and add horns. Every now and then one works, but the majority do not.
Less Than Jake is notorious for this. I used to have about 20 mp3s of them covering 80s tunes but after I listened to them I whittled that down to, I think, 2. There’s also Goldfinger’s cover of “99 Red Balloons” which sounds even more flat and unenthusiastic than Nena, and she was singing it phonetically. I often get flamed for this opinion, but Nirvana’s uninspired note-for-note trudgethrough of “The Man Who Sold the World” is a contender.
However, a bad cover doesn’t just make a mess of the song. It doesn’t just ask the question, “Why did you bother with this?” It assaults the song, demands an apology from the coverer. In recent memory, the number one contender for this spot is The Wallflowers and their violation of “Heroes” by David Bowie.
I wish you could have seen me, like some sort of hysterical Florence Nightingale. PUT HIM OUT PUT HIM OUT! MY GOD! And then he pops up, fine and I wanted to beat him senseless.
Which I’m sure he would have loved.
No question though, that is how Till Lindemann will meet his end. I almost guarantee it.
jarbaby