Is that a reference to the famously banned video? If so, bravo!
j
Gabbie Hanna’s cover of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” on Youtube had to turn off the like and dislike buttons:
Sample comment: “My favorite part is when the guitar is so loud it blocks out gabbies voice”
53 years later I still think Jose Feliciano’s Light My Fire is a travesty.
Verizon’s Go Your Own Way.
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, Guns ‘n Roses. 
Steve Miller’s cover of Jet Airliner might be the version most people know, but IMO it’s a piss-poor imitation of Paul Pena’s original.
I love the original Mission Impossible theme, and I thought the movie version did a pretty good job updating it EXCEPT for this exact part a minute in which completely ruins the song and has no reason to be even in it. Thankfully I think past the first movie they just play the first minute of that song.
Disagree. I particularly like the live recording that was a duet with Myles Kennedy.
I’m not a fan of the way it takes the 5/4 rhythm of the original and dancifies it by moving it to 4/4 after the intro. That off-kilter rhythmic tension of the original makes the song for me and set the mood in a way the dance beat version does not. It’s just a boring remake. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with changing the meter of a song, but this just kills the best part of the song’s structure for me. And, yeah, that break sucks.
For me, the winner is Madanna’s “American Pie,” already mentioned. Honestly, I don’t care much for the original – just not my cup of tea, but I recognize it as the iconic song it is – but her remake just sucks all the soul out of it. She just sounds bored singing it – no passion, no feeling. Nothing. And I generally like Madonna’s music.
I somewhat feel the same about Phil Collins’s “True Colors.” I respect the guy, I think he’s one of the greatest rock drummers, and I dig “In the Air Tonight” and “Take Me Home,” but he turns “True Colors” monochromatic with his adult contemporary take on it. “You Can’t Hurry Love” makes me feel much the same way – like Phil Collins singing karaoke or something.
Shatner’s an odd cat. I don’t know what to make of any of his “covers”/spoken word interpretations. I can’t really rate them as “bad.” They just are. That said, his take on “Common People” is actually really good and I could listen to it as often as the Pulp original.
I liked the “Born to Run” cover mentioned upthread. I had never heard it before, but it’s a decent take and gives it a different spin in a good way. It doesn’t have the bombast and romantic swells of the original (which I love), but they do the song justice and make it their own, both important for a good cover.
Agree with Weezer’s “Africa” as well. What the hell was the point of that other than the Weird Al cameo in the video?
I grew up on the original “Hurt” by NIN, and while I do like Cash’s take on it, I prefer to hear the original. There’s just a creepy coldness to it and more interesting sounds than the Cash version, and Reznor’s voice somehow sounds more naked and plaintive to me, the contrast between whispering and wavering verses, to the full voice refrain – it just sounds more psychologically frazzled to me. And, Christ, when those distorted guitar chords come out of nowhere at the end and fade into feedback and static. Wow. But Cash’s version does what I believe a good cover should do: it takes the source material, reworks it into the covering artist’s style and voice, and puts their own personal emotional take on it. And I think Cash does an excellent job of that. It’s also an interesting recontextualization of the song, taking it from a young artist – I’m not sure when Reznor wrote “Hurt” but presumably late teens early-to-mid 20s, I’m guessing, and hearing it sung by someone with a whole lifetime of experience behind him, almost literally on death’s bed, and listening to them with those thoughts in mind.
Robbie Robertson’s self titled first solo album is one of my favorite albums of all time. Rod Stewart’s cover of Broken Arrow from that album drains all the life out of it.
I’m not sure if this is considered a parody or not…
I had no idea that wasn’t a Steve Miller original. Paul Pena’s original is a revelation, thanks!!
I’ve heard Rod Stewart’s Broken Arrow many times and always thought it was lame. I never knew it was just a pale imitation! Robbie Robertson’s original really is on a different level.
And speaking of The Band, what do people think of the Joan Baez cover of The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down? I like it but supposedly Levon Helm stopped performing it because he so disliked Joan Baez’s version.
She changed some of the lyrics, and not for the better. I always got the feeling she did it out of laziness, not on purpose.
[quote=“LoneRhino, post:33, topic:951415”]
I’m not sure if this is considered a parody or not…
Thread winner. My cringe meter is all broke now.
I like the beat. I can see the skeleton of a good song. The singer could stand to not be so loose at the beginning.
But just don’t think the song works as rap, and Bono has no flow.
(Some might say he was going for spoken word poem. But he did the words on beat. And it doesn’t work as spoken word, either.)
Despite 8 million covers of “Hallelujah” floating around, Cohen is tricky. I remember there were two tribute albums in the 90s/00s: I’m Your Fan was all “alternative” acts (Nick Cave, Pixies, R.E.M., Robert Forster, Lloyd Cole, Ian McCulloch) and most of those tracks are terrific. Then there was Tower of Song, which was mostly MOR mainstream artists (Billy Joel, Trisha Yearwood, Jann Arden), and most of that was terrible mush. Don Henley murdered “Everybody Knows” on that disc; I’m not the biggest Concrete Blonde fan, but their version crushes his like a grape.
Jennifer Warnes’ Famous Blue Raincoat is a record that some say kept the Cohen flame burning during a long layoff in the 80s, and it’s hit or miss. Her version of “Joan of Arc” on which Cohen joins her is magnificent, but “First We Take Manhattan” is soulless and a slog.
That’s the same reason I could never get into Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.” (Though I suspect it was less laziness than forgetfulness in his case.)
+1. Disturbed’s SoS is a perfect example of a terrific (the positive kind) cover. Nothing beats the original, but still.
Good Lord. I have to go listen to the Ian Hunter original now to wash this song out of my ears.