5 Cover Songs that Will Make You Cringe

By Naheil Qudah
Staff Reporter

Covers can be a wonderful thing. When well-executed, they can make you enjoy a song you never cared for, force you to hear new elements in a song you already loved or introduce you to an excellent band.

But sometimes they are a slow, painful way to rip any semblance of talent and emotion out of great originals. Below is my list of the five worst offenders.

5. American Pie, Madonna (originally by Don McLean)
It’s pretty ironic to hear a bad cover of a song about the decline of good music. The original is rumored to be about the death of Buddy Holly but this version is far too upbeat, making it sound like it was engineered for the dance floor. It has no escalation or emotion- but what it lacks there, it makes up for with too much reverb. It strips away the raw sound in the vocals that made the original song so earnest. Madonna may be talented, but this version has no perspective or sincerity.

4. Under the Bridge, All Saints (originally by the Red Hot Chili Peppers)
This is not just a bad cover, wasting no time damaging this classic Chili Peppers single- it’s a bad song, instrumentally weak and vocally insulting. It immediately attacks the paramount opening riff- arguably the best part of the original- by splicing it and speeding it up unnecessarily. The drum machine just makes it worse. The vocals sound more like girl power than a tribute to loneliness and loss. I can’t imagine how they obtained rights to cover this song.

3. House of the Rising Sun, Muse (traditional folk song, popularized by The Animals)
Muse is one of my favorite bands, so when I heard they had covered this tune I couldn't wait to hear their interpretation. Matthew Bellamy's vocals are strong and expressive as usual, but he went too hard on the vibrato. The effect? It sounds like he’s gasping for air most of the song. The worst part is the amount of distortion and synthesizers that found their way into this track, taking away the simplicity that made House of the Rising Sun such a classic. For a better cover, seek out Frigid Pink’s version.
 
2. Another Brick in the Wall, Korn (originally by Pink Floyd)
This track is a medley of four Floyd songs: all three parts of Another Brick in the World followed by Goodbye Cruel World. It is the product of the band’s massive struggle between trying to maintaining their sound while trying to keep the hard-hitting punch of the original songs. Floyd fans know that doing these songs consecutively weakens the model of Pink’s gradual growth from the album The Wall. Korn throws their angst in way too early at Part II, replacing the original’s thin use of electric guitar for the melody with heavy distortion and in-your-face downstrums. The instrumentation on this track probably won’t sound bad to fans of this genre, but from a conceptual standpoint it clearly ruins the passive-aggressive sound of a youthful backlash that was present in the original songs.

1. My Generation, Hilary Duff (originally by The Who)
Before you hunt this down on YouTube, decide how hard you want to cry so you can increase your speaker volume accordingly. Decades ago The Who smashed guitars and blew up drums to this song, but this version is an over-produced pop track with cheap techno undertones. In this unfortunate cover, reverb is allowed to run rampant and John Entwistle's epic bass solo is replaced by terrestrial, laser-like sounds. The original song was about refusing to be told what to do and never becoming one of the old disciplinarians who try to contain the youth ("I hope I die before I get old", sings frontman Roger Daltrey). This cover has a lyrical switch that undermined the song's entire message as Duff sings "I hope I don't die before I get old." Given the demographics of Duff’s fanbase, I understand the original lyrics might have upset some parents. The obvious solution would have been to leave this anthem of rebellion to The Who and not to cover it unless you’re absolutely certain you can deliver the angst of downtrodden mods from the 60's.

I’m a big proponent of making a song your own when covering it. It doesn’t have to sound exactly like the original but retaining its message is important, excepting situations where the covering artist is specifically trying to make a point (consider the Dead Kennedys’ version of I Fought the Law, in which front man Jello Biafra changes the lyrics to illustrate how money and social position can override legality). That said, sometimes a cover that sounds radically different from the original works out marvelously. Context and meaning are easily as important as instrumentation and vocals, and damaging only one of these elements will damage the song as a whole. Tying them all together is the foundation of not only a good cover, but a good song.