The Audacity Of Crap: World-Class Shitty Cover Versions

Today’s post features some truly horrendous renditions of songs you no doubt know and may even be fond of—though that fondness may not survive a listen to these cover versions. And let that suffice as a warning to you. Some things can never be undone. One such thing is the experience of hearing Celine Dion perform an AC/DC song.

It’s difficult to accurately describe the awfulness of that video, but it felt a bit like being force fed poutine slathered in raw sewage while being made to endure an episode of The View with your eyes pried open A Clockwork Orange-style.

It’s said that nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition, but it’s quite possible that Kurt Cobain had an inkling that Take That would cover “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1995 and that would go some way towards explaining why he killed himself in 1994.

That was worse than Celine Dion’s version of “You Shook Me All Night Long” if that’s even quantifiably possible. The singer says he feels “stupid and contagious”? While it’s true that he certainly does look stupid and is able to induce a serious case of the douche chills on the viewer, but for him to actually feel stupid would require him to have some level of self-awareness, and if he had that he wouldn’t be singing a Nirvana song shirtless. And listening to the guitarist try to play that solo is like watching a monkey try to fuck a football.

By 1995, Duran Duran were already many years past their sell-by date. In an effort to deny their total irrelevance, the band somehow thought it would be a good idea to cover Public Enemy’s “911 Is a Joke”.

Just because rap music is consumed largely by white middle-class suburbanites, it doesn’t follow that those same people want to hear rap performed by white bread yacht rockers in pink leather pants. It would be like Prince Charles renting Boyz n the Hood expecting it to be a movie about out of touch, elitist, inbred fox murderers.

I’ll leave you with Jim Carrey covering Michael Bolton covering Percy Sledge.