Terrible cover versions of your favourite songs

[Spirit]

If i was to pick one of my favourite songs of all time it'd be Duran Duran's The Chauffeur. Its a brilliant song that, imo, transcends and can be truly defined as a work of art.

Clearly many other musicians feel the same way because there are a lot of covers of this song.

But nearly all of them are utter crap (Deftones' version is okay) and it makes me sad. I must have heard over 50 different versions of that song in different genres and very few come close to even approaching the greatness of the original.


So, this is a thread to name and shame utterly terrible covers of your favourite songs.

Have fun!

 

[Link Floyd]

I know there's something but I can't think of it right now. :c

This isn't a favorite song, but Roseanne Barr's version of the Star-spangled Banner is pretty horrible.

 

[Nicolai]

Like, any fan remix of any Nintendo song ever.

That opinion may be a bit unpopular; I have many friends who love their Song of Storms piano or death metal cover, but I can't ever stand it. Same thing goes with anything from the Symphony of The Goddesses. Though 1st party mixes in things like sequels and Smash Bros can sometimes get it right.

 

[Turo602]

Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence is absolutely perfect the way it is. So it was a total shame for me to hear Disturbed make a weird, slower, and boring version of it that people ate up because it somehow sounds darker despite David Draiman's voice sounding so unfitting for the song.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Every cover of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. It's a great song filled to the brim with the sort of pop associated with 80s music, but every group or artist that decides to cover it slows it down, ruins the melody, and make it an over-all ****tier song.

Original:



Marylin ****ing Manson's version:

 

[Djinn]

The day I discovered there was a Nickelodeon boyband version of Song 2, was the day I found out there was no god.

 

[Vanessa28]

Too many to name. Some songs don't fit to be turned into a modern or speed up version. At the gym they remix many songs and turn it into up-beat versions because of the workouts at the gym , to spice things up a bit. But so many songs come by and absolutely don't fit the original. If you wanna cover a song, at least do it right. Don't turn every song in a damn Frankenstein version.

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

One that comes to mind instantly is Metallica's cover of Queen's Stone Cold Crazy. While many of the covers included in their Garage, Inc. album are great, particularly their versions of Whiskey in the Jar and Turn the Page, their cover of that classic Queen song never did it for me. Perhaps it's just that Freddie Mercury's voice is too perfect to try to cover their songs, I just never really liked this one. I feel like they made it too heavy.

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Going along with Queen, here's a pretty bad cover of their classic and beloved Bohemian Rhapsody, probably the best song Freddie wrote, and one of his best vocal performances of all. Panic! At the Disco recorded a cover of it for the Suicide Squad soundtrack album, and it's pretty ****. I don't mind some of their music, but this is one song they should never have touched. It just doesn't work with Brendan Urie's voice. At all. And it's literally a direct cover, like practically a copy/paste (with the unnecessary addition of strings), which I've never been a huge fan of for studio recordings. Plus there's the electronic sounding piano, compared to the acoustic that Freddie recorded on, and it just doesn't work for me. Totally ruins the song imo. Awful cover.

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In a different style, there's Celine Dion's version of Cyndi Lauper's I Drove All Night. Cyndi's version of the song is so full of emotion, and she sings it so well with her powerful voice. Celine's version is just really... bland. There's nothing interesting about it, her vocals aren't dynamic or emotional in the slightest, and it's another example of a studio cover that's basically a copy/paste of the original, with a more modernized and busier backing track. Celine's version gets a lot more radio play around here, just because of the whole "25% of Canadian radio must be Canadian music" thing, but I'll never listen to it intentionally over Cyndi Lauper's version. If it was an original, I can see it being OK at best, but as a cover of a classic Cyndi Lauper tune, it's just downright terrible.

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Lastly, here's Britney Spears's version of The Rolling Stones hit (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. I shouldn't even need to explain why this is terrible.

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You know what, I'll throw in Britney's cover of I Love Rock and Roll too. Disgraceful.

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There are tons of covers of songs I like that I have disliked, this is just a really small sample, and are the first ones that popped into my head.

 

[Castle]

Ugh!! Yes. Everyone just let Eurythmics handle Sweet Dreams and shut up.

The goo goo dolls (who names their band the goo goo dolls? seriously!) did an atrocious cover of Supertramp's Give a Little Bit.

 

[Squirrel]

Nearly anything from the "Punk Goes" series.

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For example:

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Covers of Queen are obviously the worst:



In comparison to this, Panic at the Disco did the song wonders. I don't even know what this **** is:



And here's more if you all wanna torture yourselves:



I think the drummer is drunk

Scratch that. I think they're all drunk


Now this cover isn't that bad (except instead of the melody during the verse being a fifth above the chord progression, it's in unison and it sounds a bit off) until the 36-second mark where the chord progression really changes for the worse before the song completely falls apart as it enters the chorus. It's like watching a train wreck

 

[DekuNut]

While Elton John wrote "It's Tough to Be a God" , the version that he sang with Randy Newman just doesn't work. Not his fault - this just isn't the right song for Newman.