Worst cover evarrr

[gazzyk1ns]

I had a quick search for a similar thread, and got a couple of results, but they're really old and one features Yearly inventing a word for some reason, so let's have a new one.

Def Leppard - Waterloo Sunset

...I really don't know exactly what to say about that. Firstly, why the hell would you try to cover such a perfect song, and secondly... how the fuck do you make The Kinks sound worse than Busted? I know it's only Def Leppard, but I didn't think they were that horrendous. I mean, presumably they're fans of the original, so why would they... oh I give up, as I began, I really don't know what to say about it.

Come on then - let's have other examples of completely ruined songs.

[buntyman]

Jamie Cullum's High and Dry is as bad as i've heard. http://www.sendspace.com/file/dn4wx4

[non capisco]

I really, really hated the Joss Stone cover of The White Stripes' 'Fell In Love With A Girl'. She turned a bezerk sounding song about the horror of unrequited love into something smug and tasteful. What's worse, my housemate at the time liked it, and under the influence of cans of shit gassy premium lager this nearly led to a fight.

[Cack Hen]

Waterloo Sunset is my favourite song ever, and that was truly horrible to listen to. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't sound so....well, pointless.

Also, capisco, I hate that Joss Stone cover as well. In fact I hate her generally but that cover did make me angry for a bit. It's just so radically shit in comparison to the original you have to wonder what on earth she was thinking.

Urgh, I've just had the displeasure of remembering when she duetted with James Brown on Jonathan Ross. What was he thinking?

[An Actual Propeller]

Urgh, I've just had the displeasure of remembering when she duetted with James Brown on Jonathan Ross. What was he thinking?

Looking at her, and knowing him, probably rape.

[gazzyk1ns]

Oh fucking hell, seriously. I've just been YouTubing around for Joss Stone after capisco there mentioned her, and I now have a proper hatred for her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABJVMooEBfM

I knew she was a proper Cokehead after seeing her bit at The Brits, but bloody hell.

Edit: proper proper proper proper proper proper

[El Unicornio, mang]

Oh fucking hell, seriously. I've just been YouTubing around for Joss Stone after capisco there mentioned her, and I now have a proper hatred for her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABJVMooEBfM

I knew she was a proper Cokehead after seeing her bit at The Brits, but bloody hell.

Edit: proper proper proper proper proper proper

What the fuck is that supposed to be? It's like they were reading sheet music of the song transcribed by a deranged 12 year old

[JesusAndYourBush]

This is appalling: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw8sNoodIDk

[Uncle TechTip]

[Lookalike Mark Chapman]

I'm saddened to say I've heard The Kaiser Chiefs singing (one of the greatest songs ever) 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine.' That was predictably abysmal.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Celine Dion and Anastasia covering AC/DC takes some beating.  It has everything, including a baffling gender reversal that still includes 'American Thighs'.  And Celine does the Angus/Chuck Berry duck-walk:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytsReHWoRI[/youtube]

Also inexcusable:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQJ5pGDGvZk[/youtube]

And this:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxnGutMzeE[/youtube]

And this:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pp38SR1lMU[/youtube]

And this:
http://www.geocities.com/elegantsofa/discography/s_ip.html

[Pie Pie Eater]

For some reason the Erlend Øye cover of "Always On My Mind" sends me into a blind rage, even though I couldn't care less about the original.

I'd also like to nominate everything by Nouvelle Vague. And every cover of a children's TV programe theme tune, especially by punk bands, with special merit going to One Day Elliot for their cover of the Henry's Cat song.

[The Mumbler]

Amongst many many others:

1) "Your Woman" by Tyler James [Yeah, put some soul into it, why don't you...?]
2) "Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before" by Mark Ronson [ditto]
3) "Let It Be" by Ferry Aid [an insult to The Beatles, the dead, and music-lovers]
4) "Fairytale of New York" by Ronan Keating [presumably this is a teetotallers reading]
5) "When A Man Loves A Woman" by Michael Bolton [the Justin Lee Collins of cover versions - ie everyone knows it's dreadful but it still doesn't prevent it from being dreadful]
6) "Getting Better" by Kaiser Chiefs [how to be arrogant and yet underachieve wildly at the same time]
7) "Talk" by Coldplay [how to do a cover of Kraftwerk's Computer Love but do new lyrics and somehow fool the world into thinking it's an original piece of music. Kraftwerk receive 15% of the royalties, which is an outrage.]
8) "Thinking of You" by Paul Weller [Sister Sledge performed by a frightful old tramp]
9) "I Only Want to Be With You" by Samantha Fox [made The Tourists' cover sound like Aretha Franklin]
10) "True Colors" by Phil Collins [Phil sings *really* quietly and thinks this gives the song gravitas.]

[buttgammon]

That would be the worst album ever! It would sell millions of copies in branches of Tesco.

[Darrell]

They'll Need A Crane by The Wrens.

One of the best singles of the eighties reduced to unlistenable point-missing old toss.

[Klem]

This makes me cry

[youtube=425,350]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HldhnHQ7AqY[/youtube]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HldhnHQ7AqY

[George Oscar Bluth II]

That Def Leppard version of Waterloo Sunset really is compelling. It's so bad, and so exactly how you imagine Def Leppard doing Waterloo Sunset to be, that I couldn't stop listening.

Anyway, when I opened this thread one song came immediately to mind, and two people have already mentioned it, but Joss Stone's Fell In Love With a Boy is a true abomination. It loses everything that made the original so good, leaving mid tempo faux soul wankery for Radio 2 listeners in it's wake.

[The Mumbler]

Disc 2:
1. "Help" by Tina Turner [who had clearly just been listening to Mahalia Jackson's version of Freddie & The Dreamers' "You Were Made For Me"]
2. "Blame it on the Boogie" by Big Fun [nope, lads. The finger of suspicion points elsewhere.]
3. "Solsbury Hill" by Erasure [gives new meaning to the adjective 'ill-conceived']
4. "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" by Duran Duran [one of the greatest comedy records ever made, but I think they were deadly serious. You may be wondering why I haven't nominated their cover of Public Enemy's "911 is a Joke". Only because I've never heard it.]
5. "Silent Night" by Bros [growling Yuletide toss live and direct from the most echoey toilet on earth]
6. "Spirit in the Sky" by Doctor & the Medics [rag week wackiness from people who may work in middle-management now. God, I hope that's true.]
7. "Spirit in the Sky" by Gareth Gates featuring the Kumars at No. 42 [Comic Relief is dead. No flowers please.]
[8. "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenb...oh, can't we just pretend it's a cover? No?]
8. "American Pie" by Madonna [inhuman bloodless fare from the semi-conscious former pop star]
9. "Can't Help Falling in Love" by UB40 [well on the way to covering everything in a chronically-bland reggae style. Hopefully their reading of "Mouldy Old Dough" isn't far away.]
10. "I Wanna Be Your Lover" by Gillian & Gayle Blakeney [the tin-voiced Neighbours twins of the early 90s cover the Prince classic with all the panache and sensitivity of tin-voiced Neighbours twins of the early 90s]

[CaledonianGonzo]

*Tentatively raises hand*

I actually don't think that Def Leppard cover's that bad.  Pointless, perfunctory and not fit to breathe the same air as the original, true, but there's enough love for the Kinks there to make it not quite the aural travesty I was expecting.  Perhaps its because I have a soft spot for ver Lep, or because it stays relatively faithful to the original arrangement, but its no worse than any old rock cover of it you'd hear in the back room of a pub.  I was expecting worse, at any rate.

But then I don't mind this version, either:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZv5-alFJuE[/youtube]

[Cack Hen]

Urgh. People should just not be allowed near that song. Even Elliott Smiths version of it was bad.

[micanio]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp1AIYmn-rY[/youtube]

This, this is terrible. I hate them so much for doing this.....

This one can also suck my balls

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA_c1o5Y95o[/youtube]

As can this one

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV_jbchxNeU[/youtube]

[mister_enmity]

The cunts should be crucified for this.

[youtube=425,350]http://youtube.com/watch?v=fTRy19vJrJg[/youtube]

[Phil_A]

This guy is the uberlord of bad cover versions. There seems to be nothing he can't mangle beyond recognition. Here's a choice selection from his 400+ videos:

The Drugs Don't Work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPDDe2jYXXg

Starman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB3A-8SGYHQ

Strawberry Fields Forever
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghj-MwKfiIs

[chocky909]

He looks slightly 'you know' doesn't he? He probably is and should be applauded for his fine efforts.

[sproggy]

I feel like doing a waspy when I have the unfortunate experience of hearing Gwen Stefani's version of Talk Talk's 'It's my Life'.  Fortunately it's a rare and accidental occurance.

But still truly horrible.

[lactating man nips]

Every version of Heres where the Story Ends that isn't by the Sundays is shit.

[Geraint]

Placebo doing Where Is My Mind? was pretty appalling

and most 'ironic' pop covers, Arctic Monkeys doing Love Machine, Coldplay doing bitter live covers of anything that outsells them etc

[buttgammon]

and most 'ironic' pop covers, Arctic Monkeys doing Love Machine, Coldplay doing bitter live covers of anything that outsells them etc

I agree wholeheartedly with that. I think the word 'ironic' is now often applied to try and validate bad taste, much like how I saw some people who were probably students (sorry to go all Paul Calf) the other day browsing children's TV DVDs. One of them said something like "I love Balamory." The others looked a bit embarrassed by this, so the person defended herself by saying "In an ironic way, of course." Then they all seemed to understand it. Of course, I would just say she likes an embarrassing children's TV show.

[chand]

Placebo doing Where Is My Mind? was pretty appalling

See also Placebo doing 'Bigmouth Strikes Again', pretty much straight except sounding slightly shitter, and replacing the word 'walkman' with 'discman'. And 'hearing aid' with, er, 'Mega Drive'.

And The Vines turning 'Ms Jackson' into a dirge. They couldn't think of a way of making the verses work in their cover so they just ignored them. Not as bad as The Automatic's unbelievably piss-awful rendering of 'Gold Digger' though. Actually, neither of them were quite as bad as Alanis Morissette's version of 'My Humps', which managed to be one of the most watched YouTube vids in history but I absolutely couldn't stand, it was just there to massage the 'yeah, Black Eyed Peas are shiiiiiit, not like that REAL music I listen to' part of the audience's ego. Everyone was going 'heh, it really shows up how stupid the lyrics are', as if BEP have absolutely no sense of the absurd. I don't care about BEP, but it's fairly clear they weren't trying to be Bob Dylan or The Smiths when they were writing the lyrics to 'My Humps'; they weren't sat there studiously with straight faces thinking they were writing a song with an important message which might just change the way society thinks about 'humps'. It was just an intentionally silly song, and even though it's not very good, it was 1000 times more fun than what Alanis did with it, turning it into an atrocious plodding piece of shit which everyone would have hated if it didn't have the lyrics to 'My Humps' in it. Like, if she'd written that tune from scratch with her own formulaic list-song words to it, the world would have gone 'Deary me, that really is a bit of a slog to get through, do that old one where you shout about your ex-boyfriend and say fuck'.

[Famous Mortimer]

See also Placebo doing 'Bigmouth Strikes Again', pretty much straight except sounding slightly shitter, and replacing the word 'walkman' with 'discman'. And 'hearing aid' with, er, 'Mega Drive'.

And The Vines turning 'Ms Jackson' into a dirge. They couldn't think of a way of making the verses work in their cover so they just ignored them. Not as bad as The Automatic's unbelievably piss-awful rendering of 'Gold Digger' though. Actually, neither of them were quite as bad as Alanis Morissette's version of 'My Humps', which managed to be one of the most watched YouTube vids in history but I absolutely couldn't stand, it was just there to massage the 'yeah, Black Eyed Peas are shiiiiiit, not like that REAL music I listen to' part of the audience's ego. Everyone was going 'heh, it really shows up how stupid the lyrics are', as if BEP have absolutely no sense of the absurd. I don't care about BEP, but it's fairly clear they weren't trying to be Bob Dylan or The Smiths when they were writing the lyrics to 'My Humps'; they weren't sat there studiously with straight faces thinking they were writing a song with an important message which might just change the way society thinks about 'humps'. It was just an intentionally silly song, and even though it's not very good, it was 1000 times more fun than what Alanis did with it, turning it into an atrocious plodding piece of shit which everyone would have hated if it didn't have the lyrics to 'My Humps' in it. Like, if she'd written that tune from scratch with her own formulaic list-song words to it, the world would have gone 'Deary me, that really is a bit of a slog to get through, do that old one where you shout about your ex-boyfriend and say fuck'.

I didn't mind Placebo doing that, and they at least updated it - I don't think the word "walkman" would have still been in the song if Morrissey had made the song five years later.

And "My Humps" isn't intentionally silly in the slightest, as the rest of Fergie's (and the BEPs') career has proved. It's a horrible piece of mindless shit and it thoroughly deserved the treatment it got. The whole point of Alanis Morrisette's cover of it...was that it did have those words in it, so saying it would have sucked had it not had those lyrics is entirely meaningless.