Nothing intentionally bad, no home brews, and no parodies, please.
I will start with Olivia Pascal’s massacre of “Glad All Over”. It looks like they shut off her mic half the time, they should have shut it off the other half, and the saxophone strumming is simply amazing!
(56) Ɠlad All Ov℮r - Olivia Pascal | Full HD | - YouTube
Whatcha got?
Well, first…
All the mics were off. Lipsyncing was how most of those shows were done in the 60’s and 70’s.
There’s clearly some bad edits there. The beginning is just a 5 second loop of the band dancing over and over during the intro.
And it’s pretty clear (to me, anyway) that the video at the end is a repeat of the middle and not what the band actually did at the end of the song.
It’s certainly not a great remake of the song but if you don’t watch the video, it’s not horrid.
You want trainwreck
I remember the Hollies Sing Dylan album as one of the worst albums ever, but since I’ve never listened to any songs off it a second time I’ll leave it here with an asterisk.
Bono covering Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Just read the comments, I have nothing to add.
As I tell my students, the only reason for a cover is to do a version a) better, and b) different.
So I’d call exact copies of a song pointless, and BAD.
I’m looking at you, Tesla, redoing “Signs”… note-for-note. And Weezer, un-blessing the rains down in Africa. I mean, there are so many GOOD covers of Toto’s Africa… (some starting with a cool fingersnap storm), WHY do an exact copy?
I kind of like it.
I know I’m in a club of one on these (and that includes the original artists), but:
Johnny Cash - Hurt
and
Gary Jules - Mad World
It pains me that the bowdlerized-aged-wino / lithium-stoned-depressive versions of these songs are seemingly now the default versions. I dislike both of them because they leave out something great from the originals and replace it with nothing I care for.
William Shatner doing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Disturbed “The Sound of Silence”
Placebo - Running Up That Hill
Meg Myers - Running Up That Hill
I love Bowie beyond reason, but a lot of his covers have been pretty dire, though the all-covers Pin-Ups record is pretty passable. Main offenders from other records are Weill’s “Alabama Song,” John Lennon’s “Mother” and “Working Class Hero” and The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.”
I think this was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but somehow when Richard Cheese does it, it’s funny, but when Pat Boone does it, it’s just plain sad:
Madonna covering American Pie.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood murdering Born to Run.
Mary J. Blige performing One with Bono. I could have sworn I’d seen her do it solo but I couldn’t find a video. This one illustrates my point though.
I remember, years ago on Rock Star: INXS, a bad cover of Queen’s “We Are the Champions” being quashed. Eventual winner J.D. Fortune had earned praise from the judges earlier in the competition for offering up a radical reinterpretation of a song, and he decided to go to that well again with Queen. The short clip we heard was kind of jittery and weird. He was trying to turn it into trip hop, I think. Fortunately, it appeared that the show’s house band convinced him that his little experiment was misguided and a straightforward rendering would be just fine.
I’ve never claimed to win a thread before, but this one may be it.
As I have noted on these boards before, the Springsteen original of Born To Run is preposterous bloated bollocks. However, turn it into a fantasy in a Liverpool dole office and, suddenly, it makes perfect sense. One of the great cover versions of all time.
j
And in winning the thread, the rest of us get to lose our lunch. 
Interesting take. Remember that much maligned song Friday? Rebecca Black was a musical genius compared to Frankie Wets His Pants, or whatever they were called. The Sprinsteen song, on the other hand, is one of the greatest rock songs of all time. YMMV.
Shaun Cassidy ”Once Bitten, Twice Shy”
Sounds like a bad Elvis impersonator doing karaoke while drunk in a cheap hotel lounge, opening for Murph & the Magic Tones.
