Cover versions we don’t need.

Massive Attack’s version of “Light My Fire.” I feel bad for posting it, because they were usually excellent (especially in the 90’s), and this isn’t representative of their output overall. This cover makes very little sense, and diminishes the otherwise great album Protection. To make matters even more confounding, they used it as an album closer.

 

Motley Crue has already appeared in this thread, but not for this “classic,” “Jailhouse Rock.” Of course, musical quality and clear thinking were often in short supply in the Motley Crue universe around this time. Like the Massive Attack example, this was used as an album closer! Song intro NSFW.

 

Mötley Crüe doing “Like A Virgin”. I’m dead serious, that’s a thing.

 

I love this version of the song, and hate the original. To me it shows how important arrangements can be. I find the saxophone and sythesizer or whatever they are in the original intolerably cloying, but replace them with some nice meaty electric guitar and you've got a kick-ass song.

 

Virtually anything by Bonnie Raitt. And you can probably eliminate 'virtually'.

Her 'version' of Right Down The Line is particularly appaling.

 

Completely agree. Just dreadful.

 

The Chipmunks ~ Refugee

Or pretty much any cover by the Chipmunks

 

I listen to a lot of audiobooks because of my long commute, and it doesn't bother me at all if they are read by a woman even if the ostensible narrator is a man, or vice versa.

 

This cover of Major Lazer’s “Lean On” by Collin McGloughlin in the Volvo commercial is horrible - it sounds like a Muppet Show outtake.

 

They are both hideous. I so wish he would take a class and learn the word "door' is not pronounced Doe-whar."

 

Worst cover of the British Invasion era. 'What'd I Say' by Gerry and the Pacemakers. With Freddie Marsden on lead vocals. It might have been tolerable with Gerry on lead.

 

Another bad one. Freddie and the Dreamers give us a version of 'Crying.' Who thought this was a good idea?

 

Agreed. I actually find it unlistenable.

 

Oh, dear Lord, have mercy ... this is beyond awful.

 

Bohemian Rhapsody covered by a German band. The singing is quite good, but the literal translation of the lyrics doesn't work in German, at least to my ears. I don't think German sounds good in rock music (sorry, no offense to the Germans here). Except for the brutal music that Rammstein do; and Lindemann has the right voice for it.

 

I think the word you meant to use is "gender," not "person." Either way, the answer is no when in comes to the folk music tradition. In folk, singers took on the role of whichever gender the song required.

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of The Pentangle's "Rain And Snow," sung by Jacqui McShee from the husband's point of view. There is also Bob Dylan's "North Country Blues," where he sings from the perspective of a miner's daughter. There's also Kate Wolf's version of female songwriter Muriel Hogan's "Agent Orange," which is a first-person account of a Vietnam vet who is now a dad, and warns his son about the dangers of war by the song's end.

Baez was within this tradition when she covered "Dixie," and to my ears it worked.

 

The one that always bugged me was Ever Fallen in Love by Fine Young Cannibals. Take a fabulous guitar driven Buzzcocks new wave song and blandify it: suck out all the energy and make the meldoy line dull.

 

I'm Telling You Now, I'm Crying.

 

The Zombies were an excellent band, they could not play blues music. This is the most flaccid British blues attempt I've ever heard, from the pubescent, spastic vocal to the "straight harp" harmonica solo (Dylan-style) instead of "cross harp" (blues bends). Cringeworthy.

 

Aretha Franklin - Eleanor Rigby

Of course she was great. But her interpretation loses all of the emotion of the original and turns it into a generic gospel.


UB40 - The Way You Do The Things You Do

I just hate UB40. They're like the Kenny G of reggae.

 

The Moody Blues - 'Time Is On My Side.'

Tucked away on a 1965 B-side, but still... who thought this was a good idea?

 

The Yardbirds - 'My Gal Sloopy'

One of their worst efforts. Even the rave-up can't save it.

 

The Kinks - 'Dancing in the Street'

Appalling!

 

I can't bear to push "play", just tell me - does he giggle in it?

 

No, but his attempts at singing the refrain are embarrassingly awful. Freddie Garrity didn't have Roy Orbison's range - not even close.