Worst Cover Songs: Maim That Tune : "Beat It" by "Fall Out Boy"

Just a few come to mind:

Lenny Kravitz's cover of "American Woman" (original: The Guess Who)

Limp Bizkit's cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" (original: The Who)

Sheryl Crowe's cover of "The First Cut is the Deepest" (original: Cat Stevens)

Madonna's cover of "American Pie"

 

How about Sheryl Crow's cover of "Sweet Child o' Mine".

 

True...

 

..some good (or bad?) ones mentioned so far.. I consider myself a bit of a closet-Madonna fan, but that cover of American Pie was brutal..

The Jessica Simpson cover of "Take My Breath Away" was horrid..


Pretty much ANY cover that Lenny Kravitz does...


The Pearl Jam cover of "Last Kiss"..

Definitely anything Sheryl Crow gave birth to.. ICK.

 

Have you heard Tori Amos's all-covers album Strange Little Girls? Brutal. The Beatles' "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" and Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" get especially bad treatment. Slayer's "Raining Blood," the incredible finale to one of the best metal albums ever, Reign In Blood, is reduced to a dreadful ambient chant. Excruciating listening. And then there's the Eminem cover. Here's the "in a nutshell" from the Amazon album spiel: "Tori Amos's idea for Strange Little Girls was to present covers of men's songs from a female perspective." You know what you're going to be getting into on this record, but it hardly prepares you for the special pain of her thuddingly obvious baby girl voice delivery of the Eminem song about killing his woman and getting away with his daughter, "97' Bonnie & Clyde." It's an album only a nearly deaf women's studies major could love, which is how I heard it: I dated a nearly deaf women's studies major who tortured me with this album in the car.

 

I dated a nearly deaf women's studies major who tortured me with this album in the car.

Sounds like the plot of a Farrelly brothers movie.

Good selections so far.

I think Paul Anka's cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is pretty horrible. BUT it's a tongue in cheek cheesefest, so it's not like he's trying to do a good cover and failed miserably. Same goes for William Shatner's stuff.

Unkle Cracker's cover of "Drift Away" is pretty horrible. There's no attempt to even develop any originality, and his voice can't even touch the original guy's.

Britney Spears covering the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction." Nuff said.

Dave Matthews Band's cover of "All Along The Watchtower." Absolutely abysmal cover, and just another attempt to turn a song into a 9 minute jam. And guys, just because you play it in every concert doesn't make it yours.

Duran Duran covering Public Enemy's "911 Is A Joke." Duran Duran. Public Enemy.

Tiffany's cover of the Beatles "I Saw Him Standing There." This take has record-company exec all over it.

 

Any cover of "Imagine". Every awards ceremony or major event always has to have someone sing that song. They always butcher it.

 

TaTu doing "How Soon Is Now", the Smiths classic...

E_S

 

Ouch. That's got to hurt.

And to this I'll add (even though we've already marked him off as not serious, but still, it is a terrible cover) "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by William Shatner.

 

Dang. Most of the ones have been taken already!

Madonna's cover of American Pie was approaching sacrelige for me. Not cool at all.

 

Limp Bizkit's cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" is especially bad. The Original is so much better.

 

What about John Williams's cover of the Star Wars themes for eps 1-3?

 

Avril Lavigne's cover of Chop Suey.

 

You mean SoaD's Chop Suey?

I haven't heard the song, but let me think about this for a second:

Whiny, "tuff" sk8er gurrrrl singing a cover by a whiny, rat-just-got-pinched-sounding, everything by the establishment is necessarily evil hackjob?

I smell a hit.

 

I agree with all of those. All dreadfully horrible.
I'd also have to say all the songs I remember hearing from that Led Zeppelin tribut CD a while back were awful also.

Some bands and artists shouldn't be covered.

 

Scissor Sistors cover of "Comfortably Numb"

 

I heard this on the radio the other day. When it finished I was like:
"Well, that was crap. What was the song?"
"Comfortably Numb"
"..."

I didn't even recognise it.

 

Great White did some pretty good Zeppelin "covers"... though they probably shouldn't be considered covers since the band just copied the originals note-for-note.

 

Maryln Mansons " Tainted Love" is an abomination in every sense of the word. This wording can also be used to descibe his version of " Personal Jesus."

They were soul breakingly bad.

 

...and the MASH theme song.

 

2poor:

Very true, with one exception. I think Eva Cassidy's cover is terrific, but she could more or less sing whatever she wanted. I'd listen to Wham! if she sang it.

In answer to the original question, Bob Dylan's cover of End of the Innocence is awful. I mean, I love the guy. But he's in his sixties with his already broken voice blown out singing about taking some fresh young thing's virginity. It's pretty creepy. His duet with George Harrison on Here Comes the Sun also takes on what I can only assume are unintentionally surreal qualities.

Speaking of, any Cheryl Crow, Norah Jones, Ryan Adams, David Grey, et al, cover of the Dylan catalogue. Eddie Vedder's Masters of War is startlingly bad. Eric Clapton also does an uncharacteristically terrible version of Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, a song Dylan once said had to be sung like you just don't give a damn (something Clapton just can't do). And Like a Rolling Stone, Tangled Up in Blue, Blowin' in the Wind, Positively Fourth Street and Don't Think Twice have been covered badly so many times, particularly live, they ought to be retired.

Elsehwere, Jeff Buckley's gruesome slaughter of Leonard Cohen's haunting Hallelujah has ruined it completely for me. Joan Baez did the same with Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. And Tori Amos deserves special mention for ruining John Lennon's Instant Karma and Johnny Cash's own otherwise superb cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water and the Rolling Stones' Wild Horses.

Also, just as a general rule, I don't think anybody should cover the Boss. Ever. And if somebody just has to cover the Boss, for God's sake not Born to Run or The River. Nobody else can sing those songs.

 

POD covered U2's Bullet the Blue Sky.

Let me just repeat that:

POD covered U2's Bullet the Blue Sky.

I was thinking of bullets, that's for sure.

 

To be honest, I didn't mind them that much. I really liked Personal Jesus, but maybe that's because I never listened to the original...

 

Elsehwere, Jeff Buckley's gruesome slaughter of Leonard Cohen's haunting Hallelujah has ruined it completely for me.

Personally, I love Jeff Buckley's version. It is Rufus Wainright's version for Shrek that I can't stand.

 

From Wikipedia`s article on Stairway to Heaven

Singer Dolly Parton recorded a country-bluegrass version on her 2002 album Halos & Horns.

I admittidly haven`t heard it but...I can`t imagine a country version being good.

I definitely agree with everyone`s comments on the Madonna version of American Pie and Britanny Spear`s Satisfaction.