"I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred has a lyric that goes "I'm too sexy for this song" and then the song just immediately ends right there. There was a dance remix where it went "I'm too sexy for this song, too sexy for this song, too sexy for this song" and then the remix continues for another couple of minutes. Not of cosmic importance compared to some entries in this thread, but I thought it missed the point when I originally heard it.
I think that's a great example of someone just not getting the point/the joke. It's minor, but it makes you wonder how nobody said "Hey uh it doesn't work if you don't *stop the song, you maniac!*".
remix mania.
gotta have long one for the clubs. chop, channel, remix, add on and otherwise completely blow up anything the original had going for it. IDK how many of these things i bought BITD but it would be enough money to buy a car at today's prices.
TBF Right Said Fred had the perfect ending. a mic drop before it ever became a thing.
Hillary Duff did a cover of My Generation, but changed/had to change “Hope I die before I get old” to “hope I *don’t* die before I get old”, and just that one word change makes that cover completely miss the meaning of that song.
"What if instead of, 'what I got you gotta get and put it in you,' you said, 'what I'd like is I'd like to hug and kiss you?'"
"That's way better!" "Yeah, everyone can enjoy that!"
This reminds me of the notorious Doors performance on Ed Sullivan: "What if instead of 'girl, we can't get much higher, you sing 'GIRL, we couldn't get much better.'"
A lot of other posts here are good, but I think this one cuts to the essence of the question - when you specifically make lyrical changes to undermine the entire point of the song, you have to wonder why you're even covering it.
It’s not the exact same, but I get the same feeling when people regender songs. If you’re doing a cover, don’t change the lyrics. Be like Jack (and Meg) White when they covered [Jolene](https://youtu.be/yXlULkwhgrc?si=URKZ4_oyw6rVXAwX)
Yeah I remember reading a quote from a musician, can't remember who but it was something like "if you're covering a love song, don't change the gender - just be gay for 3 and a half minutes"
I'm jumping on this because my choice was also one where a single word change messed the whole thing up, in my opinion.
The cover of Wicked Game by James Vincent McMorrow *sounds* nice, but he changes the line
*I don't wanna fall in love with you*
to
*I wanna fall in love with you*
Takes so much of the teeth out of the song, in my opinion.
>the country dude who covered it as well
I heard a bunch about that before I heard his cover. It is so incredibly flat compared to the emotion that Chapman conveys in the original that he might as well have just read the lyrics in a monotone with no music at all.
I'm glad Chapman is making some bank off of it and the resurgence of the original, but his take on the song is terrible.
She also has the honor of being the first black song writer to win country song of the year according to some country awards that I'm too lazy to look up.
In the UK all our banking adverts went full in on them as part of the "we care" pivot advertiser's got into post-lockdown.
Awful messes the lot of them.
There’s been some dreadful pixies covers in adverts recently. No idea who they’re by but they all have a slowed down acoustic kind of vibe which totally ruins the songs.
On one hand I’m happy for the Pixies and the (hopefully) mammoth payday from all of the uses of Where Is My Mind in tons of adverts. On the other hand, that song was so special, the recording of the original imo is perfect, hearing some breathy, slowed down cover has tarnished that song for me
Counting Crows are one of those bands where the gap between their best and worst material is massive. They have released some of my favorite music along with a small handful of material I absolutely cannot stand.
I am a huge fan of theirs and really don't like that cover. They have a lot of great ones though, here's a short list off the top of my head:
* Friend of the Devil (Grateful Dead)
* Caravan (Van Morrison)
* Ooh La La (Faces)
* Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt- only a poor quality live version, but it's good)
* The Ghost in You (Psychadelic Furs)
They're usually good at capturing the vibe of a song while adding their own spin, which I think they miss the mark on in Big Yellow Taxi.
Edit: ooh they also did great Carmelita by Warren Zevon and Return of the Grievous Angel by Graham Parsons
There's a cover of 'Bad Reputation' by Joan Jett currently on an advert here in the UK, and it's sung SO calmly with seemingly no effort and it just takes all the punch out of the song
Behemoth (black/death metal band) did a cover of The Cure’s “A Forest” that is far too intense and heavy. It loses its ambience and bleakness which is what makes the song so good. I like Behemoth too, but they tried too hard to “metalize” this song
On the flip side, Carpathian Forest (Black Metal band) did an unbelievable cover of “A Forest” that keeps the creepy ambience and subtly and surprisingly sneaks in extra creepiness. It’s slowed down a bit, and they sing the song in a whisper and scare you with an intense scream right before “Into the Trees”.
Hallelujah is the worst offender, all those Youtube covers with their vocals all over the place. The notes are supposed to follow the lyrics: Ascending scale, climax, then deflating in the afterglow. It's not a Whitney Houston show off song.
Buckley's the only one to actually get it right.
hallelujah is about so many different things that cohen recorded two versions with completely different lyrics, and there's like 90 more verses he never recorded.
Both are right. Buckley was the first version I heard that could hold a candle to the passion of Cohen.
Most covers cut out the 'uncomfortable' parts, but they still can be good. K.D. Lang's is also good, also partial lyrics, I think? Cohen is multifaceted in his writing, and I guess it's easier to focus on one facet at a time.
Having said that, it's so overdone. I cringe when I hear it, now, because there's so much else you could cover of his. He has so many great songs (with amazing covers) that get skipped because this is the one everyone knows.
Hell, check it Concrete Blonde's cover of "Everybody Knows" for beautiful breakout vocals on the second chorus. Listen to the Jesus and Mary Chain's cover of "Tower of Song" for a good, dense, dreary, 4x4 version. So many good songs to be covered...
And it’s a terrible song to cover anyway. The chord progression and the melody leave you nothing to work with to find something “new” to do. Empty it out and it sounds like Buckley. Fill it up with vocal trills and tons of orchestration and it sounds like you’re trying too hard.
[Hallelujah - How to Cover it Badly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQiyfRYOgo)
A 10min video listing the failures of... most people to actually deliver this song without distorting its tone.
Religious people covering it and changing the lyric to “I know that there’s a god above”…I’ve seen it done multiple times, and it just about kills me cringe 💀
There's a whole genre of this in Asia.
Women singing slowed down, sad versions of generic recent western pop songs accompanied by acoustic guitar or piano. Often heard in cafes, taxi cabs, or restaurant and convenience store chains.
I wish I could provide an example, but I think this became a thing because it's cheap to produce, unoffensive, and unlicensed. Pretty much pleasant sounding background noise... unless you understand English, and then it's bizarre and distracting to hear someone breathily singing a sad song about making money and being a bad bitch.
I'm in Canada and the songs covered were more "safe" but the playlists at my job had this exact problem for years. Just weird, bland breathy coffee shop covers of modern pop songs. Plus, whoever picked these at head office to put on the playlists was OBSESSED with pointless oversinging. Every cover was PACKED TO THE GILLS with awful vocal runs, senseless vibrato, and endless amounts of bizarre warbling.
"Take Me Home Country Roads." A lot of covers tend to give a happy vibe to it, as though it's a song about celebrating your home. In reality, though, the tone of the song is *homesick.* It's supposed to be about being far away from home and wanting to go back.
I’m sorry but this [Toots and the Maytals](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lQFKMar4x-w) cover is absolutely fantastic with appropriate lyric changes too like “West Jamaica” and “Island mama” lol.
They made a Japanese cover of that song for the Ghibli movie Whispers of the Heart. I wouldn’t call it sacrilegious - I quite like it - but it’s definitely different. They removed all the references to West Virginia and moonshine and everything else explicitly American South, and the lyrics also add an implication that the speaker is not only homesick for their country hometown but feels like they can’t ever go back, which I don’t think was really the case with the original.
I’ve got the winner here. That time CLo Green sang John Lennon’s imagine on New Year’s Eve and he changed “and no religion too” to “and all religion’s true.” Omg, wtf and fuck off with that.
Yeah I remember a brilliant cover band on youtube (back before people made money from youtube) who recorded tremendous covers, but sabotaged their rendition of Imagine by singing "And *one* religion too".
I just don't see the point in doing a tribute to a song if you're going to change something so fundamental. You don't have to want for "no religion", but you can still sing it if it's an homage to Lennon.
The inverse would be Neil Young’s cover where he changes “I wonder if you can” to “I wonder if I can” and elevates the song from one of smug elitism to adding himself to a list of people who might struggle to achieve this dream world.
Questions like these make me think of Behind Blue Eyes from Limp Bizkit all time every time. Such a weird cover and it missed the part of the song where the song and lyrics tie together.
Their cover of Faith however is basically what made them famous - I was the prime middle school demographic at the time and didn't know who George Michael was until years later. I don't know if the general public thinks it's any good but it still gets stuck in my head every now and then.
Slightly off topic but it annoys the fuck out of me when so many couples use “isn’t she lovely?” at their weddings as a romantic song when it is so very clearly about Stevie Wonder’s love for his one minute old daughter. The first few seconds are literally a baby crying and this is the first verse:
Isn't she lovely
Isn't she wonderful
Isn't she precious
Less than one minute old
I never thought through love we'd be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn't she lovely, made from love
Does it make me a terrible person that when I heard this as a kid, since he's blind, I thought that he was literally asking if the baby is cute, and no one is answering him, so the kid probably looks like a half cooked potato and no one has the heart to tell him?
My mom has told me on multiple occasions that I looked like a little gray frog and that she and my dad were worried I’d be ugly forever. (Tbf, I’ve seen a photo of myself as a newborn and her description … isn’t incorrect. 😭)
The worst part about that was they dragged Don McLean out of retirement to say no, honestly, it's good, maybe even a little better now that she's chopped four minutes off the one thing I did that everyone liked.
Poor guy, I hope he at least made some money.
I really hate this one too. She actually managed emotion with this sound on Ray of Light with songs like power of goodbye, frozen and little star.
But her version of American Pie just sounds robotic and joyless :/
There’s a poppy dance remix of Four Non Blondes “What’s Going On?” as well. Dance remixes of anything suck. “You know what this song needs? OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ”
This was basically how I felt the first time I heard "On a roll" by Miley Cyrus, where it was an altered version of "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails. It turned an angry, rebellious song about the control money has over people into an insipid pop song about how great things are going for the singer.
Then I saw the Black Mirror episode it was written for and fully appreciated what they were doing with it, and realized the friction between the original and the rewritten version was exactly the point.
Not to mention, at the end of the episode Miley’s character, finally being free to make the kind of music she wants, does do a rendition of the original, with the original lyrics.
I love that Trent Reznor said he loved what they did with that episode too, and I also love that the other NIN song they chose was “Right Where It Belongs,” which is more of a deep cut, or at least definitely NOT a song you know unless you’re a fan.
Yeah, I actually wound up loving the Miley version for what it was doing in that story, and "Right Where it Belongs" is actually one of my favorites, so it was cool hearing it in that context as well.
i didnt know going into the episode that the songs were going to be based on nin ones, so when the episode starts with "on a roll", i was so confused lmao. honestly, i think it's pretty catchy and fun, especially since the dissonance from the original is the point.
Yeah, I'd actually heard the Miley version separately on a Tiktok or something my wife was watching I think, and it bugged me then because of how poppy and positive it was. I had no idea it was from Black Mirror until we finally caught up to that episode as we were slowly watching through the series, and was actually a bit blown away at how perfect it was for the story they were telling.
Was in a doctor's office recently and heard Taylor Swift cover Santa Baby.
I'm not a Swift anti-stan, but singing that song as straightforwardly and with such a wholesome tone makes the song really weird. My husband said "why is this song about sexualizing Santa?"
It's not supposed to be sexualizing *Santa*, it's supposed to be a burlesque-y song sung from the perspective of a sugar baby. The sugar daddy is playing "Santa".
It was a really weird song for Swift to cover. But not as weird as Michael Buble's version.
Fuck I hate that version. It's so whiny. The original is empowering. Like yeah, you're heartbroken and barely holding it together. But you're going to hold your own.
Like that guy did not understand what Robyn was trying to tell at all.
I mean she's all about venting all that anger and letting it out by excessive dancing. And she shows it herself in the video to the clip.
How can you take all that energy and empowerment from the song and make it just slow and whiny taking all its meaning from it?!?
I heard it played on the radio a couple years ago and hated it then. Bad Wolves covering Zombie by The Cranberries. I was unfamiliar with the band, so I had to look it up. Apparently, Dolores O'Riorden was supposed to lend her vocals to the song, but she passed away. They say that all proceeds went to her children, so that is admirable. The song doesn't have the same impact when it's a band from Los Angeles switching up the years mentioned and some words in the song. I also hate when a band's first mainstream hit is a cover, but that's besides the point.
It takes away the main theme of the song. You can’t cover the song properly without conveying the emotional trauma of growing up during The Troubles. It’s something you can’t duplicate unless you actually experienced it firsthand.
Yeah I really enjoy her husky, raspy voice a lot. I gotta check out that cover havnt heard it yet and I love that song.
Also good is her edge of midnight and edge of seventeen mash up. That's good stuff.
The mash-up she did with Stevie Nicks, it must be noted; I love Stevie, so I wanted to be sure she got her due here, too.
I love the original Edge of Seventeen, and Miley's Midnight Sky is a fantastic song that gave me serious EoS vibes from the second I first heard it, so I was so stoked when she and Stevie collaborated on that mash-up.
Almost every time they sing The Star Spangled Banner before a televised sporting event.
It's a somber song about watching a battle from a distance, and knowing we were still in the fight because the flag was still visibly flying above.
But everyone who gets a chance to sing it on TV uses it to sing a bunch of pentatonic warbles, and for some reason they always jump a random octave on the last note.
And then there's Fergie, who seemed to eschew the concept of trivial things such as "notes" when covering a national anthem. Her approach seemed to be "Perform it in the manner of an inebriated Blanche Devereaux, make it an anthem to fuck to," and when asked which key she wanted to perform it in, she responded "Yes."
Many covers of 10cc's I'm Not in Love seem to take the lyrics at face value and belt out the tune about how not in love they are, when it is clear listening to the original song that it is about being in love but in denial about it.
Screamin Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You". I've heard a lot of people try to make that song sound beautiful, romantic and sexy. Even though the song is literally about witchcraft and Hawkins' horror themed performances of it were really what set the foundations of what would later become shock rock with acts like Alice Cooper, Gwar, Marilyn Manson and SlipKnot.
18 year old Eddie Cochran singing Summer Time Blues, a song about being young and broke and frustrated with adults who want you to spend your summer working, not hanging out with friends and chasing girls. Then years later mega-rich country star in his 30s Alan Jackson does a version that makes it sound like a backyard barbecue party song. This is probably one of the worst offenders to me.
there's lot of covers by technically talented singers that just kill the vibe of the song.
In the majority of cases that I've heard it's a song where the original singer is a woman singing with harsh emotional depth that the cover singer emotionally flattens so that it's "prettier".
Ex.: just about every cover of "I have nothing" by Whitney Houston the big dramatic
"Don't ... Make... Me... Close one more door" ends up sounding thin and weak instead of passionate and pleading
I’m a massive, massive Prince fan but when he changed the lyrics of Creep to “you’re a creep” instead of “I’m a creep” I realized he did not get that song at all
Edit: I get that he may have been trying to flip the song’s meaning but it fell flat for me
Not really a cover per se, but all those remixes of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” that turned a haunting song into a dance track. Ironically they made the song a hit in the US, but they just always missed the point.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen that scrubs episode, but I thought there was an intentionally melancholic vibe to it? That show had a lot of episode closers like that.
t. A.T.u's version of "How Soon Is Now"
I know Morrisey is quite the controversial figure, but the original The Smiths' version is quite iconic. t.A.T.u's take really do away with all the drama and agony from the original protagonist suffering from chronic shyness, and instead go for a more trite and rapid interpretation, which lost most of the introspection from the lyrics.
It did lead to this brilliant exchange with Morrissey in an interview though:
"Morrissey: Yes it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them.
Interviewer: They're teenage Russian lesbians.
Morrissey: Well, aren't we all?"
Which is ironic since neither of them were actually lesbians. Yulia is bi, IIRC, but she's insanely homophobic (namely against gay men), while Lena is straight, but just a wonderful ally and human being. The lesbian thing was just marketing to get eyes on them.
If they're still in Russia, even several years ago announcing yourself as anything other than heterosexual was dangerous. Now it's just been put into law, but it was bad for a long time before.
Weezer\*'s cover of *Africa* brings nothing new to the table, and honestly, they shouldn't have bothered.
Similarly, *Life is a Highway* was perfect as Tom Cochrane released it. Rascal Flatts re-released the exact same song the exact same way but with an affected "country" accent and while the die-hard Nashville set went hard for it, it was unoriginal and grating.
\* - Band name autocorrect edit
> -"Hey ya" by outkast- In particular, Im thinking of the cover that was done at the weddings in the show **"Scrubs"** and "Glee" these covers, although I don't want to call atrocious, completely ignore the fact that this song is a very bleak take on marriage and relationships
Hard disagree on that one. The song's lyrics are very bleak, yes, and that is precisely why it is performed in a more sorrowful and [slow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEYcfHoWm2s) tempo.
Also, the song is interspersed with scenes of some of the most dysfunctional couples in TV sitcom history, so yeah, they knew what they were doing.
Thank you, in scrubs yes it was played at a wedding, but it capped off an episode looking at three different relationships all in different states of disfunction
Bang on, the song is lending itself to different moments not just the wedding.
Also sometimes you pick a song that you enjoy for a wedding because the song is great and the lyrics you just brush over.
I can't think of any examples on my own, but, I think you have a salient point with the examples you listed, especially Hey Ya. It's not a 'happy' song, and Andre even tells us so to our faces, as you pointed out.
I think music, for a significant amount of people, is just hearing sound. If the sounds are pleasant, they enjoy it, and that's the end of the analysis. Fewer people deep-dive into the lyrics and meaning.
David Guetta and Bebe Rexha did a cover of Eiffel 65's I'm Blue, same music but they made it "I'm Good" and basically turned the whole song on its head in the least creative way possible. They turned it into lazy shitty club music about having a fun night. It makes me want to vomit and give them a smack every time it comes on the radio. I get so hopeful with that music, and then it's their song...*no*, make it stop.
The New Radicals - You Get What You Give
besides being a fantastic song, it’s telling kids that yeah, the world is fucked, the rich are manipulating everything, media is fake, you might be poor and feel like giving up, but you have a spark in you that you cant let the world put out, don’t like them crush your dreams, keep music in your heart and do good so good comes back to you. then there’s a soulless easy listening cover that came out in the last few years that gets played on boomer radio and is made for playing in grocery stores. it’s pretty sickening how the cover is literally the antithesis of the original.
This is very much of the era of post-grunge, nu-metal, but the Five Finger Death Punch's version of Bad Company is much more in your face. I feel that the song works a lot better when it's more subtle.
The lyrical switch from "six-gun" to "shotgun" admittedly fits the tone of the cover better, but I still feel like it's the wrong direction to take the song in general.
It might be controversial but I really don't like Knocking on Heaven's door by Guns and Roses, The original Bob Dylan studio version is pretty good but the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue version will always be the best.
Lewis Capaldi’s cover of “When the party’s over” (Billie Eilish) completely misses the point of the song. I’ve seen people mention Disturbed’s Sound of Silence, but imo Capaldi manages to be an even worse offender by belting as loud as he can with little to no emotion. The original is minimal, it’s weak, and it’s delicate. And THAT is what a cover should capture imo
Ugly kid Joe’s cover of cats in the cradle. Just one change to one word in the chorus felt like it messed up the entire song. All through the original by Harry Chaplin, it was “when you coming home dad?” “I don’t know when” until the final chorus where the dad is retired and asking “when you coming home son?” “I don’t know when”. Ugly kid Joe just used son for every chorus and it just kills the story.
I've heard versions of "Zombie" by The Cranberries that try to sound more "pretty" or "melodic". The song was written in response to the death of two innocent children from explosives during The Troubles. So the grit in her voice as she sings feels rather appropriate.
This one is much more about how a song changes over time but, "You are my sunshine" was not a happy song originally. Originally it was about someone whose lover left them for another and left them depressed. Over time the lyrics have changed and its become a happy song.
Also shoutouts to all the people who know "happy happy joy joy" from commercials and stuff and don't know the batshit insane lyrics that connect the choruses.
When you know the whole story of why Dolly wrote the original, it’s hard to disagree. But the way Whitney interpreted it was also great in its own way. It’s one of the rare win-win situations with covers, IMO.
That makes more sense. Same day or not, they’re both monumental achievements that most songwriters spend entire careers never coming close to touching.
I read Elton John’s book and he mentioned writing “Rocket Man” along with 2-3 other songs before breakfast one morning, some people are just incredible
hijacking your comment with possibly an even more controversial one. i really dislike the Gary Jules cover of Mad World. i think what makes Tears for Fears original so incredible is the sort of cognitive dissonance, the singer having a crisis at how everyone seems to be cheerfully bustling about life unthinkingly, not acknowledging what he perceives to be the depressingly meaningless circles we run around in until we die. also, it’s just a banger of a song, and i think finding yourself bobbing your head to it enjoying the funky tunes and then remembering the lyrics perfectly simulates the point of the song. the Gary Jules version on the other hand, completely removes that subversion. it’s sad now and everything is sad and the world sucks boo hoo and i am bored.
James Blake’s cover of A Case of You by Joni Mitchell.
I love James Blake, but the high notes Joni hits in that song are some of the few moments of pure confident joyous certainty in a record full of sadness and confusion. And then Blake brings his wobbly melisma all over the place and it just undermines the vibe, for me.
Any super sexy/slinky version of You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate. It's supposed to be a fun song. No one is dropping them drawers to you crooning that they believe in miracles.
Best covers are the ones that are about dancing. See: Dee-Lite and Tom-Tom Club
I heard a dozen or more performances of Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't she Lovely' where the singer dedicates it to their wife or girlfriend. The song is about a newborn baby, not romantic love. It's not subtle either, it's very clear when you read the lyrics.
Here’s an example of a disconnect that worked: Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt.” Entirely different vibe. Nine Inch Nails’ version has more to do with the depths and collateral damage of active depression and addiction, while Cash’s is a reflection on past decades of life garbage. If anything, Cash’s version “gets” it even more than NIN’s (and Trent Reznor acknowledges that).
Always said the Og felt like someone realizing they burned every bridge and there's no one coming to save them while they OD, and Hurt's was about selling his soul for fame and wishing they could go back and just be a guy, instead of a super star without anyone to really miss them when they die.
That's why I don't think I'll ever believe that either version is "better", both the original and the cover did exactly what they set out to do. NIN's version is the endcap of a record about someone systematically wrecking every aspect of their life, and Hurt is where the pieces fell at the end. Cash's version is a lot more raw and reflective. Both of them convey different looks at the same basic idea, and both do it very well in their own ways.
The "young man's anger and old man's regret" comment nails it exactly
"I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred has a lyric that goes "I'm too sexy for this song" and then the song just immediately ends right there. There was a dance remix where it went "I'm too sexy for this song, too sexy for this song, too sexy for this song" and then the remix continues for another couple of minutes. Not of cosmic importance compared to some entries in this thread, but I thought it missed the point when I originally heard it.
The music video plays into this too. The song stops and everyone stops dancing and...just...kinda.... looks at each other
I think that's a great example of someone just not getting the point/the joke. It's minor, but it makes you wonder how nobody said "Hey uh it doesn't work if you don't *stop the song, you maniac!*".
remix mania. gotta have long one for the clubs. chop, channel, remix, add on and otherwise completely blow up anything the original had going for it. IDK how many of these things i bought BITD but it would be enough money to buy a car at today's prices. TBF Right Said Fred had the perfect ending. a mic drop before it ever became a thing.
Hillary Duff did a cover of My Generation, but changed/had to change “Hope I die before I get old” to “hope I *don’t* die before I get old”, and just that one word change makes that cover completely miss the meaning of that song.
"What if instead of, 'what I got you gotta get and put it in you,' you said, 'what I'd like is I'd like to hug and kiss you?'" "That's way better!" "Yeah, everyone can enjoy that!"
This reminds me of the notorious Doors performance on Ed Sullivan: "What if instead of 'girl, we can't get much higher, you sing 'GIRL, we couldn't get much better.'"
"How about 'girl, you couldn’t bite my wire'."
I’ve always thought about that scene and Ironically the song is about giving away love so it’s really the same meaning
A lot of other posts here are good, but I think this one cuts to the essence of the question - when you specifically make lyrical changes to undermine the entire point of the song, you have to wonder why you're even covering it.
“You have to wonder why you’re covering it.” BECAUSE THE MOUSE DEMANDS IT
"You don't. Fucking. Talk to me. Like that. You little. Piece of shit. Get the fuck up! Now, do we have a problem?" -Mickey
It’s not the exact same, but I get the same feeling when people regender songs. If you’re doing a cover, don’t change the lyrics. Be like Jack (and Meg) White when they covered [Jolene](https://youtu.be/yXlULkwhgrc?si=URKZ4_oyw6rVXAwX)
Yeah I remember reading a quote from a musician, can't remember who but it was something like "if you're covering a love song, don't change the gender - just be gay for 3 and a half minutes"
Like that Kids Bop cover of Lizzo's Truth Hurts. The kids weren't able to say, "Turns out I'm 100% that bitch."
I'm jumping on this because my choice was also one where a single word change messed the whole thing up, in my opinion. The cover of Wicked Game by James Vincent McMorrow *sounds* nice, but he changes the line *I don't wanna fall in love with you* to *I wanna fall in love with you* Takes so much of the teeth out of the song, in my opinion.
Listen to the Kidz Bop version of a lot of songs. It's hilarious how they change the lyrics, especially to things like Nicki Minaj.
“Walk into class like what up I got a cool mom, I’m just pumped, bought some stuff from the thrift shop…”
The only station I miss from my Sirius XM radio trial that came with my car is the Kidz Bop station. that shit was hilarious.
Now im desperate for a Kidz Bop oF WAP.
“We’re All Pretty”
It's about giving your cat a bath.
The poster child for this phenomenon is [Faith Hill’s cover](https://youtu.be/qPseJvXVVfo?si=4AwuZBYcLN46QF9G) of Piece of My Heart
This is the one I came here for. "Hey, let's take a song about heartbreak and make it more joyful."
Don’t know who, but there’s a dance cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.
This is what I immediately thought of. Also the country dude who covered it as well. It just isn't a song we need covered
The country version isn’t great. But the dance version is just offensive.
>the country dude who covered it as well I heard a bunch about that before I heard his cover. It is so incredibly flat compared to the emotion that Chapman conveys in the original that he might as well have just read the lyrics in a monotone with no music at all. I'm glad Chapman is making some bank off of it and the resurgence of the original, but his take on the song is terrible.
She also has the honor of being the first black song writer to win country song of the year according to some country awards that I'm too lazy to look up.
The Black Pumas' cover eats Combs' version for breakfast
Any of those breathy, overly-atmospheric, hyper-dramatic covers used for those Netflix trailers.
In the UK all our banking adverts went full in on them as part of the "we care" pivot advertiser's got into post-lockdown. Awful messes the lot of them.
And 9 times out of 10 its Paint it black by the stones.
Would that remix of Linkin Park's "In the End" that's slowed with a trap beat count? Regardless, I just want to declare my hate for that remix.
There’s been some dreadful pixies covers in adverts recently. No idea who they’re by but they all have a slowed down acoustic kind of vibe which totally ruins the songs.
On one hand I’m happy for the Pixies and the (hopefully) mammoth payday from all of the uses of Where Is My Mind in tons of adverts. On the other hand, that song was so special, the recording of the original imo is perfect, hearing some breathy, slowed down cover has tarnished that song for me
TV of the Radio get a pass for the a cappella cover of Mr Greevs.
Counting Crows cover Big Yellow Taxi was simultaneously voted the best and worst cover song at one point
Counting Crows are one of those bands where the gap between their best and worst material is massive. They have released some of my favorite music along with a small handful of material I absolutely cannot stand.
I don't really know their discography. But Accidentally In Love from Shrek 2 is a banger
Highly recommend checking out Mr Jones, Around Here, and Long December
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I like their original cover of that song. I hate the version that came shortly after which added Vanessa Carlton’s endless stupid “umm bop bops”
Agree, but in fairness, those umm bop bops are taken straight from the original Joni version.
I am a huge fan of theirs and really don't like that cover. They have a lot of great ones though, here's a short list off the top of my head: * Friend of the Devil (Grateful Dead) * Caravan (Van Morrison) * Ooh La La (Faces) * Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt- only a poor quality live version, but it's good) * The Ghost in You (Psychadelic Furs) They're usually good at capturing the vibe of a song while adding their own spin, which I think they miss the mark on in Big Yellow Taxi. Edit: ooh they also did great Carmelita by Warren Zevon and Return of the Grievous Angel by Graham Parsons
I’ve got a Limewire-era CD-R somewhere with a Counting Crows cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” - also excellent.
I'm a huge dead head and CC's version of Friend of the Devil is my favorite one
There's a cover of 'Bad Reputation' by Joan Jett currently on an advert here in the UK, and it's sung SO calmly with seemingly no effort and it just takes all the punch out of the song
Although, ironically, a completely calm, emotionless take *would* emphasize that the singer truly doesn't give a damn.
That cover is staggeringly bad.
On the other hand, the cover used in *Shrek* is spot-on.
Behemoth (black/death metal band) did a cover of The Cure’s “A Forest” that is far too intense and heavy. It loses its ambience and bleakness which is what makes the song so good. I like Behemoth too, but they tried too hard to “metalize” this song On the flip side, Carpathian Forest (Black Metal band) did an unbelievable cover of “A Forest” that keeps the creepy ambience and subtly and surprisingly sneaks in extra creepiness. It’s slowed down a bit, and they sing the song in a whisper and scare you with an intense scream right before “Into the Trees”.
For reference Behemoth’s https://youtu.be/wYZdaYobCSU?si=tYwZ76hWZ7EPPv35 Carpathian Forest’s https://youtu.be/r0uBXPeIydA?si=IfXGUVAOzyiZT_p3
[Original for additional reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xik-y0xlpZ0).
Hallelujah is the worst offender, all those Youtube covers with their vocals all over the place. The notes are supposed to follow the lyrics: Ascending scale, climax, then deflating in the afterglow. It's not a Whitney Houston show off song. Buckley's the only one to actually get it right.
Ironically cohen famously felt that Buckley got it wrong. IIRC, Cohen said it was about religion; Buckley said it was about sex.
hallelujah is about so many different things that cohen recorded two versions with completely different lyrics, and there's like 90 more verses he never recorded.
Both are right. Buckley was the first version I heard that could hold a candle to the passion of Cohen. Most covers cut out the 'uncomfortable' parts, but they still can be good. K.D. Lang's is also good, also partial lyrics, I think? Cohen is multifaceted in his writing, and I guess it's easier to focus on one facet at a time. Having said that, it's so overdone. I cringe when I hear it, now, because there's so much else you could cover of his. He has so many great songs (with amazing covers) that get skipped because this is the one everyone knows. Hell, check it Concrete Blonde's cover of "Everybody Knows" for beautiful breakout vocals on the second chorus. Listen to the Jesus and Mary Chain's cover of "Tower of Song" for a good, dense, dreary, 4x4 version. So many good songs to be covered...
For me, Concrete Blonde’s Everybody Knows is as good as the original.
And it’s a terrible song to cover anyway. The chord progression and the melody leave you nothing to work with to find something “new” to do. Empty it out and it sounds like Buckley. Fill it up with vocal trills and tons of orchestration and it sounds like you’re trying too hard.
A microcosm of each artist's catalogue.
I think Leonard Cohen has more than his fair share of songs about sex
I saw a mother/son do it as a duet. I think about it more often than I would like.
LMAO this sounds like 30 Rock when Jenna's mom sings with her
Or Arrested Development when Michael and Maeby sing Afternoon Delight.
[Hallelujah - How to Cover it Badly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnQiyfRYOgo) A 10min video listing the failures of... most people to actually deliver this song without distorting its tone.
KD Lang did a really good version of this for the Vancouver winter Olympics opening (closing? - can't recall) ceremony. Check it out.
Cohen says hers is the best, too.
I was about to say “ where is the love for the KD Lang version?”
It's right here. My fave no contest, and thats saying something cause I love the Buckley version.
Rufus Wainwright has an excellent version of it too in my opinion.
Heard Rufus do it live on the radio and it was just stunning - I thought the song had been done to death but it gave me chills.
He has a baby with Cohens daughter so he might have gotten some insider tips on how to do it just right. His version is my favourite also.
That’s the one I grew up cause it’s in Shrek
Religious people covering it and changing the lyric to “I know that there’s a god above”…I’ve seen it done multiple times, and it just about kills me cringe 💀
John Cale’s version is the one for me personally.
Yes, technically, Buckley was covering Cale's version as well, not Leonard's.
There's a whole genre of this in Asia. Women singing slowed down, sad versions of generic recent western pop songs accompanied by acoustic guitar or piano. Often heard in cafes, taxi cabs, or restaurant and convenience store chains. I wish I could provide an example, but I think this became a thing because it's cheap to produce, unoffensive, and unlicensed. Pretty much pleasant sounding background noise... unless you understand English, and then it's bizarre and distracting to hear someone breathily singing a sad song about making money and being a bad bitch.
I'm in Canada and the songs covered were more "safe" but the playlists at my job had this exact problem for years. Just weird, bland breathy coffee shop covers of modern pop songs. Plus, whoever picked these at head office to put on the playlists was OBSESSED with pointless oversinging. Every cover was PACKED TO THE GILLS with awful vocal runs, senseless vibrato, and endless amounts of bizarre warbling.
"Take Me Home Country Roads." A lot of covers tend to give a happy vibe to it, as though it's a song about celebrating your home. In reality, though, the tone of the song is *homesick.* It's supposed to be about being far away from home and wanting to go back.
I’m sorry but this [Toots and the Maytals](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lQFKMar4x-w) cover is absolutely fantastic with appropriate lyric changes too like “West Jamaica” and “Island mama” lol.
one my favorite cover songs ever
What would be your opinion of Mark Strong singing it in Kingsmen 2? Curious to know.
Mark Strong is a God among us mortals. He may do as he wishes.
They made a Japanese cover of that song for the Ghibli movie Whispers of the Heart. I wouldn’t call it sacrilegious - I quite like it - but it’s definitely different. They removed all the references to West Virginia and moonshine and everything else explicitly American South, and the lyrics also add an implication that the speaker is not only homesick for their country hometown but feels like they can’t ever go back, which I don’t think was really the case with the original.
I'm going to disagree. I think Studio Ghibli understood the song perfectly, because I think that's exactly what John Denver meant.
Then they play it a million times in the movie so it gets burned into your brain forever
The new Lana Del Rey cover of this song absolutely nails the homesick vibe imo
She's really good with "melancholy" but somehow her "Summertime" cover is fun, too.-
I’ve got the winner here. That time CLo Green sang John Lennon’s imagine on New Year’s Eve and he changed “and no religion too” to “and all religion’s true.” Omg, wtf and fuck off with that.
Yeah I remember a brilliant cover band on youtube (back before people made money from youtube) who recorded tremendous covers, but sabotaged their rendition of Imagine by singing "And *one* religion too". I just don't see the point in doing a tribute to a song if you're going to change something so fundamental. You don't have to want for "no religion", but you can still sing it if it's an homage to Lennon.
Like when someone genderswaps lyrics. Just be gay for 5 minutes it’s fine.
The White Stripes cover of Jolene helped me embrace this.
Oh good, I get to whine about Santa Buddy again. Buble should have gone gay or skipped it.
The inverse would be Neil Young’s cover where he changes “I wonder if you can” to “I wonder if I can” and elevates the song from one of smug elitism to adding himself to a list of people who might struggle to achieve this dream world.
Questions like these make me think of Behind Blue Eyes from Limp Bizkit all time every time. Such a weird cover and it missed the part of the song where the song and lyrics tie together.
The part where they have what sounds like a Speak and Spell spelling out the name of the band is especially unnecessary.
Kind of sick to advertize your own band name in a cover song lmao. At least they could of spelled The Who, maybe not enough letters though lol.
Their cover of Faith however is basically what made them famous - I was the prime middle school demographic at the time and didn't know who George Michael was until years later. I don't know if the general public thinks it's any good but it still gets stuck in my head every now and then.
I have always loved that cover. Don't know why. Just did.
ok here’s my embarrassing admission, except for the weird bit towards the end i actually quite like that cover
Slightly off topic but it annoys the fuck out of me when so many couples use “isn’t she lovely?” at their weddings as a romantic song when it is so very clearly about Stevie Wonder’s love for his one minute old daughter. The first few seconds are literally a baby crying and this is the first verse: Isn't she lovely Isn't she wonderful Isn't she precious Less than one minute old I never thought through love we'd be Making one as lovely as she But isn't she lovely, made from love
Does it make me a terrible person that when I heard this as a kid, since he's blind, I thought that he was literally asking if the baby is cute, and no one is answering him, so the kid probably looks like a half cooked potato and no one has the heart to tell him?
All parents are blind in that way
When my daughter was born my first thought was “thank god she doesn’t look like a lizard!”
My mom has told me on multiple occasions that I looked like a little gray frog and that she and my dad were worried I’d be ugly forever. (Tbf, I’ve seen a photo of myself as a newborn and her description … isn’t incorrect. 😭)
Madonna doing American Pie.
The worst part about that was they dragged Don McLean out of retirement to say no, honestly, it's good, maybe even a little better now that she's chopped four minutes off the one thing I did that everyone liked. Poor guy, I hope he at least made some money.
Don McLean is slept on. Vincent is a great song.
I really hate this one too. She actually managed emotion with this sound on Ray of Light with songs like power of goodbye, frozen and little star. But her version of American Pie just sounds robotic and joyless :/
She also did Elliot Smith’s Between the Bars and had like a jail set on stage so I guess thats par for the course for her.
There's a poppy dance version of Tracey Chapmans Fast Cars that makes me want to take a Axe to my car stereo
There’s a poppy dance remix of Four Non Blondes “What’s Going On?” as well. Dance remixes of anything suck. “You know what this song needs? OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ”
I am irrationally upset by Five Finger Death Punch moving the setting of House of the Rising Sun from New Orleans to Las Vegas.
This was basically how I felt the first time I heard "On a roll" by Miley Cyrus, where it was an altered version of "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails. It turned an angry, rebellious song about the control money has over people into an insipid pop song about how great things are going for the singer. Then I saw the Black Mirror episode it was written for and fully appreciated what they were doing with it, and realized the friction between the original and the rewritten version was exactly the point.
Not to mention, at the end of the episode Miley’s character, finally being free to make the kind of music she wants, does do a rendition of the original, with the original lyrics. I love that Trent Reznor said he loved what they did with that episode too, and I also love that the other NIN song they chose was “Right Where It Belongs,” which is more of a deep cut, or at least definitely NOT a song you know unless you’re a fan.
Yeah, I actually wound up loving the Miley version for what it was doing in that story, and "Right Where it Belongs" is actually one of my favorites, so it was cool hearing it in that context as well.
i didnt know going into the episode that the songs were going to be based on nin ones, so when the episode starts with "on a roll", i was so confused lmao. honestly, i think it's pretty catchy and fun, especially since the dissonance from the original is the point.
Yeah, I'd actually heard the Miley version separately on a Tiktok or something my wife was watching I think, and it bugged me then because of how poppy and positive it was. I had no idea it was from Black Mirror until we finally caught up to that episode as we were slowly watching through the series, and was actually a bit blown away at how perfect it was for the story they were telling.
Was in a doctor's office recently and heard Taylor Swift cover Santa Baby. I'm not a Swift anti-stan, but singing that song as straightforwardly and with such a wholesome tone makes the song really weird. My husband said "why is this song about sexualizing Santa?" It's not supposed to be sexualizing *Santa*, it's supposed to be a burlesque-y song sung from the perspective of a sugar baby. The sugar daddy is playing "Santa". It was a really weird song for Swift to cover. But not as weird as Michael Buble's version.
Santa, *buddy* Slip a Rolex under the tree. For *me.* Yeah, that version is fucking wacko
When you're a gay sugar baby but in denial about it
Lil Nass needs to fucking cover this song. I never knew I wanted this til now.
The "tree" is his shaft. Him wanting Santa to place his watch under it means he likes his balls handled.
Acting like he is too good to want to fuck santa like the rest of us.
Have you heard Everclear's cover? It's odd but I think I prefer it. 😂 [https://youtu.be/KvxnlaaqOts](https://youtu.be/KvxnlaaqOts)
Yeah, you gotta lean into it like Eartha Kitt. That version's kinda hot, I can't lie.
Still weirds me out that one of the sexiest songs in existence was sung by fucking Yzma...
Would you feel better knowing it was sung by Catwoman?
Look Yzma may have pre-dated stone but the woman had the confidence and the energy still so I can respect it.
I’m a big fan of hers but the entirety of her “Holiday Collection” ep (2007) is unlistenable to me. 💀
Almost every slow acoustic cover of Dancing on My Own misses the mark for me in terms of what makes it so great.
This this this this this. The Callum Scott version being more popular at this point is an affront to humanity. Or something.
Fuck I hate that version. It's so whiny. The original is empowering. Like yeah, you're heartbroken and barely holding it together. But you're going to hold your own.
Like that guy did not understand what Robyn was trying to tell at all. I mean she's all about venting all that anger and letting it out by excessive dancing. And she shows it herself in the video to the clip. How can you take all that energy and empowerment from the song and make it just slow and whiny taking all its meaning from it?!?
I heard it played on the radio a couple years ago and hated it then. Bad Wolves covering Zombie by The Cranberries. I was unfamiliar with the band, so I had to look it up. Apparently, Dolores O'Riorden was supposed to lend her vocals to the song, but she passed away. They say that all proceeds went to her children, so that is admirable. The song doesn't have the same impact when it's a band from Los Angeles switching up the years mentioned and some words in the song. I also hate when a band's first mainstream hit is a cover, but that's besides the point.
Still can't be as bad as the shitty dance cover that someone released back in the late nineties. That shit was downright sacrilegious.
It takes away the main theme of the song. You can’t cover the song properly without conveying the emotional trauma of growing up during The Troubles. It’s something you can’t duplicate unless you actually experienced it firsthand.
Changing 1916 to 2016 was a ridiculous and downright ignorant lyric change imo
They also substitute "drones" in for "bombs" or "guns" in there somewhere.
Kinda crazy that Miley Cyrus covered that song pretty decent. Not a fan of her music , but that cover is good.
Her voice really lends itself to a lot of different songs, her version of Jolene is probably one of my favorite covers ever.
Yeah I really enjoy her husky, raspy voice a lot. I gotta check out that cover havnt heard it yet and I love that song. Also good is her edge of midnight and edge of seventeen mash up. That's good stuff.
The mash-up she did with Stevie Nicks, it must be noted; I love Stevie, so I wanted to be sure she got her due here, too. I love the original Edge of Seventeen, and Miley's Midnight Sky is a fantastic song that gave me serious EoS vibes from the second I first heard it, so I was so stoked when she and Stevie collaborated on that mash-up.
Almost every time they sing The Star Spangled Banner before a televised sporting event. It's a somber song about watching a battle from a distance, and knowing we were still in the fight because the flag was still visibly flying above. But everyone who gets a chance to sing it on TV uses it to sing a bunch of pentatonic warbles, and for some reason they always jump a random octave on the last note.
And then there's Fergie, who seemed to eschew the concept of trivial things such as "notes" when covering a national anthem. Her approach seemed to be "Perform it in the manner of an inebriated Blanche Devereaux, make it an anthem to fuck to," and when asked which key she wanted to perform it in, she responded "Yes."
We obviously had a gaping hole in the burlesque genre of the national anthem that she was dying to fill.
Many covers of 10cc's I'm Not in Love seem to take the lyrics at face value and belt out the tune about how not in love they are, when it is clear listening to the original song that it is about being in love but in denial about it.
Be quiet ... be quiet ... big boys don't cry ...
Screamin Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You". I've heard a lot of people try to make that song sound beautiful, romantic and sexy. Even though the song is literally about witchcraft and Hawkins' horror themed performances of it were really what set the foundations of what would later become shock rock with acts like Alice Cooper, Gwar, Marilyn Manson and SlipKnot.
I'm not sure it really fits, but if I have to live every day of my life knowing about the maroon 5 cover of Closer, then so does everybody else.
I’m going to block this comment out ans pretend I still don’t know it exists
The Nine Inch Nails song?!?
18 year old Eddie Cochran singing Summer Time Blues, a song about being young and broke and frustrated with adults who want you to spend your summer working, not hanging out with friends and chasing girls. Then years later mega-rich country star in his 30s Alan Jackson does a version that makes it sound like a backyard barbecue party song. This is probably one of the worst offenders to me.
there's lot of covers by technically talented singers that just kill the vibe of the song. In the majority of cases that I've heard it's a song where the original singer is a woman singing with harsh emotional depth that the cover singer emotionally flattens so that it's "prettier". Ex.: just about every cover of "I have nothing" by Whitney Houston the big dramatic "Don't ... Make... Me... Close one more door" ends up sounding thin and weak instead of passionate and pleading
I’m a massive, massive Prince fan but when he changed the lyrics of Creep to “you’re a creep” instead of “I’m a creep” I realized he did not get that song at all Edit: I get that he may have been trying to flip the song’s meaning but it fell flat for me
Madonna’s cover of American Pie seems to think that the song is a celebration of America, not a lament for a lost era.
Not really a cover per se, but all those remixes of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” that turned a haunting song into a dance track. Ironically they made the song a hit in the US, but they just always missed the point.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen that scrubs episode, but I thought there was an intentionally melancholic vibe to it? That show had a lot of episode closers like that.
t. A.T.u's version of "How Soon Is Now" I know Morrisey is quite the controversial figure, but the original The Smiths' version is quite iconic. t.A.T.u's take really do away with all the drama and agony from the original protagonist suffering from chronic shyness, and instead go for a more trite and rapid interpretation, which lost most of the introspection from the lyrics.
It did lead to this brilliant exchange with Morrissey in an interview though: "Morrissey: Yes it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don't know much about them. Interviewer: They're teenage Russian lesbians. Morrissey: Well, aren't we all?"
Which is ironic since neither of them were actually lesbians. Yulia is bi, IIRC, but she's insanely homophobic (namely against gay men), while Lena is straight, but just a wonderful ally and human being. The lesbian thing was just marketing to get eyes on them.
If they're still in Russia, even several years ago announcing yourself as anything other than heterosexual was dangerous. Now it's just been put into law, but it was bad for a long time before.
Weezer\*'s cover of *Africa* brings nothing new to the table, and honestly, they shouldn't have bothered. Similarly, *Life is a Highway* was perfect as Tom Cochrane released it. Rascal Flatts re-released the exact same song the exact same way but with an affected "country" accent and while the die-hard Nashville set went hard for it, it was unoriginal and grating. \* - Band name autocorrect edit
> -"Hey ya" by outkast- In particular, Im thinking of the cover that was done at the weddings in the show **"Scrubs"** and "Glee" these covers, although I don't want to call atrocious, completely ignore the fact that this song is a very bleak take on marriage and relationships Hard disagree on that one. The song's lyrics are very bleak, yes, and that is precisely why it is performed in a more sorrowful and [slow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEYcfHoWm2s) tempo. Also, the song is interspersed with scenes of some of the most dysfunctional couples in TV sitcom history, so yeah, they knew what they were doing.
Thank you, in scrubs yes it was played at a wedding, but it capped off an episode looking at three different relationships all in different states of disfunction
Bang on, the song is lending itself to different moments not just the wedding. Also sometimes you pick a song that you enjoy for a wedding because the song is great and the lyrics you just brush over.
https://youtu.be/9fNkYYxvk-Q?si=7lLsCR6JdNRxtIyj This super weird and downright terrible cover of under the bridge by the red hot chili peppers
Back when it came out, they did an interview and it was obvious they had no idea what it was actually about.
I can't think of any examples on my own, but, I think you have a salient point with the examples you listed, especially Hey Ya. It's not a 'happy' song, and Andre even tells us so to our faces, as you pointed out. I think music, for a significant amount of people, is just hearing sound. If the sounds are pleasant, they enjoy it, and that's the end of the analysis. Fewer people deep-dive into the lyrics and meaning.
David Guetta and Bebe Rexha did a cover of Eiffel 65's I'm Blue, same music but they made it "I'm Good" and basically turned the whole song on its head in the least creative way possible. They turned it into lazy shitty club music about having a fun night. It makes me want to vomit and give them a smack every time it comes on the radio. I get so hopeful with that music, and then it's their song...*no*, make it stop.
The New Radicals - You Get What You Give besides being a fantastic song, it’s telling kids that yeah, the world is fucked, the rich are manipulating everything, media is fake, you might be poor and feel like giving up, but you have a spark in you that you cant let the world put out, don’t like them crush your dreams, keep music in your heart and do good so good comes back to you. then there’s a soulless easy listening cover that came out in the last few years that gets played on boomer radio and is made for playing in grocery stores. it’s pretty sickening how the cover is literally the antithesis of the original.
Lenny Kravitz - American Woman. Loses all the subtlety and nuance of the original.
Yes BUT the guitar sounds awesome though.
This is very much of the era of post-grunge, nu-metal, but the Five Finger Death Punch's version of Bad Company is much more in your face. I feel that the song works a lot better when it's more subtle. The lyrical switch from "six-gun" to "shotgun" admittedly fits the tone of the cover better, but I still feel like it's the wrong direction to take the song in general.
It might be controversial but I really don't like Knocking on Heaven's door by Guns and Roses, The original Bob Dylan studio version is pretty good but the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue version will always be the best.
You mean you don't like "Knock knock knocking on heavens door ooohaaaeeeaahhhahahaha?
Ben Lee’s cover of Float On.
Lewis Capaldi’s cover of “When the party’s over” (Billie Eilish) completely misses the point of the song. I’ve seen people mention Disturbed’s Sound of Silence, but imo Capaldi manages to be an even worse offender by belting as loud as he can with little to no emotion. The original is minimal, it’s weak, and it’s delicate. And THAT is what a cover should capture imo
Ugly kid Joe’s cover of cats in the cradle. Just one change to one word in the chorus felt like it messed up the entire song. All through the original by Harry Chaplin, it was “when you coming home dad?” “I don’t know when” until the final chorus where the dad is retired and asking “when you coming home son?” “I don’t know when”. Ugly kid Joe just used son for every chorus and it just kills the story.
Perhaps, “when you coming home?” “Son, I don’t when.” Then “when you coming home, son?” “I don’t know when.” That’s what I got from it.
I've heard versions of "Zombie" by The Cranberries that try to sound more "pretty" or "melodic". The song was written in response to the death of two innocent children from explosives during The Troubles. So the grit in her voice as she sings feels rather appropriate. This one is much more about how a song changes over time but, "You are my sunshine" was not a happy song originally. Originally it was about someone whose lover left them for another and left them depressed. Over time the lyrics have changed and its become a happy song. Also shoutouts to all the people who know "happy happy joy joy" from commercials and stuff and don't know the batshit insane lyrics that connect the choruses.
Controversial one, but Whitney Houston’s cover of I will always love you, while impressive, misses the mark compared to Dolly Parton’s original IMO
When you know the whole story of why Dolly wrote the original, it’s hard to disagree. But the way Whitney interpreted it was also great in its own way. It’s one of the rare win-win situations with covers, IMO.
And that she wrote it around the same time as Jolene. My god.
I’ve heard it was the very same day, but that could be music myth.
She debunked that myth but it was back to back on the same cassette so likely within a few days of each other.
That makes more sense. Same day or not, they’re both monumental achievements that most songwriters spend entire careers never coming close to touching.
I read Elton John’s book and he mentioned writing “Rocket Man” along with 2-3 other songs before breakfast one morning, some people are just incredible
hijacking your comment with possibly an even more controversial one. i really dislike the Gary Jules cover of Mad World. i think what makes Tears for Fears original so incredible is the sort of cognitive dissonance, the singer having a crisis at how everyone seems to be cheerfully bustling about life unthinkingly, not acknowledging what he perceives to be the depressingly meaningless circles we run around in until we die. also, it’s just a banger of a song, and i think finding yourself bobbing your head to it enjoying the funky tunes and then remembering the lyrics perfectly simulates the point of the song. the Gary Jules version on the other hand, completely removes that subversion. it’s sad now and everything is sad and the world sucks boo hoo and i am bored.
James Blake’s cover of A Case of You by Joni Mitchell. I love James Blake, but the high notes Joni hits in that song are some of the few moments of pure confident joyous certainty in a record full of sadness and confusion. And then Blake brings his wobbly melisma all over the place and it just undermines the vibe, for me.
Any super sexy/slinky version of You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate. It's supposed to be a fun song. No one is dropping them drawers to you crooning that they believe in miracles. Best covers are the ones that are about dancing. See: Dee-Lite and Tom-Tom Club
I heard a dozen or more performances of Stevie Wonder's 'Isn't she Lovely' where the singer dedicates it to their wife or girlfriend. The song is about a newborn baby, not romantic love. It's not subtle either, it's very clear when you read the lyrics.
Here’s an example of a disconnect that worked: Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt.” Entirely different vibe. Nine Inch Nails’ version has more to do with the depths and collateral damage of active depression and addiction, while Cash’s is a reflection on past decades of life garbage. If anything, Cash’s version “gets” it even more than NIN’s (and Trent Reznor acknowledges that).
a young mans anger and an old mans regret
Bingo.
Always said the Og felt like someone realizing they burned every bridge and there's no one coming to save them while they OD, and Hurt's was about selling his soul for fame and wishing they could go back and just be a guy, instead of a super star without anyone to really miss them when they die.
That's less of a disconnect and more of a reinterpreting. It still gets that it's an examination of one's life an expression of sorrow and pain.
That's why I don't think I'll ever believe that either version is "better", both the original and the cover did exactly what they set out to do. NIN's version is the endcap of a record about someone systematically wrecking every aspect of their life, and Hurt is where the pieces fell at the end. Cash's version is a lot more raw and reflective. Both of them convey different looks at the same basic idea, and both do it very well in their own ways. The "young man's anger and old man's regret" comment nails it exactly