Listen: you can hear a song screaming as it is murdered
Following on from the podcast discussion about media predictions that The X-Factor Xmas No 1 (as patented by S. Cowell Asoc.) will be a cover of zen master Cohen's Hallelulia, I have just heard a Radio 4 piece revealing that the latest CDs by Il Divo AND Katherine Jenkins also contain covers of same popular ditty. In Jenkins's case the lyrics have even been Bowdlerized.
Apart from realising it's time for the formation of the Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Songs, this fact also got me thinking that Len's song must be one of the most covered pieces of modern music. Two questions to the Ladies (there are some here I know) and Gents out there:
(i) How many cover of Roshi Cohen's good time ditty are there? I know of at least seven.
(ii) What is the worst cover ever...maybe we could do a compilation, oh Duran Duran got there first.
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The Krankies singing "Starman"
http://www2.b3ta.com/krankiessingbowie/
Nurse! Nurse!
The worst cover ever
is surely The Rolling Stones execrable version of My Girl on their cobbled together US release Flowers.
This is so far beyond shite...
that it actually enters a new dimension of shiteness. Listen and weep...
I lasted
1 minute 02 seconds
I can't pretend to have all
I can't pretend to have all the covers of Hallelujah that there are, but a quick look at my iTunes reveals covers by:
Jeff Buckley,
Allison Crowe,
Imogen Heap,
Bono,
Rufus Wainwright,
Susanna and the Magic Orchestra (from a Word CD, no less).
A search on the iTunes store adds:
Kate Voegele,
Katherine Jenkins,
k.d. lang,
Bon Jovi,
Blake,
Kathryn Williams,
Il Divo,
Aled Jones,
Michael McDonald,
Daisy Chapman,
Willie Nelson,
Sara Gazarek,
Bettie Serveert,
Lucky Jim,
Steve Acho,
Mary Coughlan,
Douglas Rich,
Vitamin String Quartet,
The Piano Strings Ensemble,
The Blaisdell Ensemble (who may well also be the Piano Strings Ensemble),
Hana Pestle,
Keren Ann,
Yaron Herman Trio,
Euan Morton,
Nicholas Barron,
Captain Smartypants,
Bow Jenkins,
Freshman Fifteen,
Henna Heikkinen,
Many Angels,
The Malchicks.
And, yes, I listened to the previews to check they were covers and not other songs with the same name.
Ahh...
but have Van Halen done it yet? Surely the mark of a great song is when Eddie and the boys see fit to twiddly the life out of it...
Or the Krankies?
John Cale
too
And Christine Collister.
I have 15 from that list, as I "collect" cover versions of songs I like by artists I like. I hadn't known of the Mary Coughlan or the Keren Ann, so those wil be bought tonight. I have no time, however for Bonios crappiest of the all the crappy versions.
I have the Bono one
... but only because I bought the "Tower of Song - the Songs of Leonard Cohen" tribute album on CD, and it's got covers on it too.
Out of interest, have you heard of the Coverville podcast? Sounds right up your street. http://www.coverville.com/
Never the podcast.....
...buy it is one of a few blogs I visit regularly on the hunt for covers.....
or...
get out and about more sans audio aids
There must be a law somewhere!
The Good Lady Wife has always laughed off my despair when a favourite song of mine is butchered until she heard one of her favourites, Tom Baxter's Better, being taken to the slaughterhouse by Take That.
Although nothing can prepare you for the awfulness that is this from the boy Mick!
Premeditated murder
For the b-sides of their single Bad Cover Version, Pulp got in two unlikely acts to do deliberately "bad" covers of a Pulp song. One was Roisin Murphy doing Sorted For Es And Wizz, and the other was this:
Good excuse to enjoy the main video again...
"Bad Cover Version" by Pulp: