I Think You've Blown Your Cover

And now we enter the final blog of the musically themed week. Today, I'm taking a look at crappy cover songs.

Of all the things to remake, covering music is the easiest due to the end product being 3-5 minutes in length. So, this has lead to countless covers of classic songs. Sometimes, the covers end up being far superior to the original (while Love Hurts by the Everly Brothers is good, Nazareth's take is leaps and bounds ahead), sometimes both are equally excellent (Bob Seger's or Metallica's Turn The Page. Either version, I win). And then there are the songs listed below, who just missed the point.

Years ago, I was watching a program with the latest music clips when a cover of Summer Rain came on. And I recoiled in horror from what I heard. Dance music. Passionless vocals. No emotion whatsoever. And what I saw didn't appease matters. Girls dressed like skanks. In a dark, vague place that's probably a swanky nightclub. And they're smiling.
This is a song about a man going to war, leaving a wife behind, and how they'll be together eternally, always dancing, in their hearts.
When Belinda Carisle sings it, the song is just bursting with emotion, with sincerity and the music chills you. The clips transitions between Belinda dancing alone in a room and a black-and-white sequence of memories of the day her husband left. The clip tells a story that accompanies the song and it's a beautiful story.
But this cover, by a band I will not name lest I promote them in some way, is putrid and cold. This applies to a lot of covers and remixes but adding a dance track to most songs is a bad idea. I'd never want to hear Hey Jude as something you could dance to, so why would people approach ballads with this mentality? This cover might as well replace the words with “We're so very slutty, slut slut slut slut slut”. And I say to them, how dare you take a wonderful song and attempt to rape it with your filth. You're lucky that her song will always be timeless and yours will be a footnote to a footnote!

Madonna's version of American Pie is also a cover that changes the tone. It sounds a lot happier and it's shorter too. If you're going to cover the song, at least do the whole thing and do it right.

Jessica Simpson is especially guilty of this crime, with at least three counts I'd like to bring before the court.
Take My Breath Away suffers the opposite of Summer Rain, in that altering the song to give it softer music just lacks passion. And her vocals in that song make her sound bored, like she's under obligation to perform it. Angels suffers from the same problem.
But These Boots Were Made For Walkin'... hooooo boy, does that mangle the song! The Nancy Sinatra original was an empowering song, with commanding vocals, about a girl asserting her independence. Jessica Simpson's version, on the other hand, makes it sound like the boots made for walkin' are for sexual purposes. It's like she thinks its Opposite Day. She sucked the empowerment out and made the clip look like a pornography trailer.

Hilary Duff's version of My Generation, besides being upbeat and optimistic, changes one crucial line: “Hope I die before I get old” becomes “Hope I DON'T die before I get old”. Way to go, you completely failed to understand the point of the song. If you don't understand the song, don't cover it just because it might sound pretty to you. There aren't any unicorn references so I don't know why you bothered you little twit.

But it's not just female singers showing disrespect to music. Staying with The Who, Limp Bizkit's atrocious effort with Behind Blue Eyes needs to be mentioned. Besides Fred Durst sounding bored and that awful “Discover L, I, M, P” in the computer voice, one lyric reading really captures how made of fail this cover is. In the original, “No one knows what it's like/to feel these feelings/like I do/and I blame you!”, the last part is said with such anger, such fury, it's like a confrontation. It's reaching to the soul. But in Limp Bizkit's version, Fred sneers when he says it. It's almost like he's a child responding with an immature “Yeah, well, you suck!” style. So, to Hell with you for trying to destroy the music of The Who.

And just one more: Big Yellow Taxi. The original by Joni Mitchell is a nice little folk song, with some bittersweet observations on how the quaint little things in life get swallowed up by progress.
The part of the song that features the line goes like this: “Late last night, I heard the screen door slam/and a big yellow taxi took away my old man”.
Now, the Counting Crows version gets many things wrong: getting Vanessa Carlton to do the backing vocals, which are barely worth mentioning and wasn't needed; making the song sound upbeat; but worst of all, it changes the lyric mentioned. Now, obviously they weren't going to talk about their boyfriend going away but the new lyric is “and a big yellow taxi took my girl away”. So, not only does the music seem to stop on this line, like it's some big revelation, but the rhyme is lost! I have always hated this song, even before I knew it was a cover.

Anyway, those are some of my least favourite cover songs. Short blog I know but I think I'd better stop before I get too angry and rant-filled, even if there are lots of covers I've forgotten to include (like Britney Spears singing I Love Rock And Roll. Yeah, you love it so much that you do pop songs. Words fail me sometimes). Next week brings a new theme, which I will reveal with the first blog of the new week.

So, as we wrap up musically themed nitpicking week, are there any covers you wish would be banished from the face of the Earth?