Pet Peeve of the Day: Bad covers
I was bowling at the the Hillel league tonight at Royal Oak Lanes. Usually the music's very good, but tonight, for some reason, it was awful. Lots of nothing-music from the '80s. As I was walking out, I heard a cover.
Man, there's nothing worse than a bad cover of a song. Of course, there are just awful ones, like Madonna's cover of American Pie. But a cover can be bad even if it tries to be faithful to the original.
The reason I bring this up is the song that I heard as I was leaving the bowling alley. At first, it sounded like The Guess Who's 1970 hit No Time. But it wasn't. It was a note-for-note-correct cover of it by some unknown band. What was irritating was the fact that the singer was singing it in a happy mood. Happy? You can't sing a song about the ending of a relationship all happy!
Of course, that's not the worst you can do to a song. Take Fleetwood Mac's Landslide. Either the 1975 recording or the 1997 one will do. And compare it to what the Dixie Chicks turned it into. It's a perfect, harmonious, polished song absolutely devoid of any emotion. It's the musical equivalent of a zombie.
Songs like that must be what the playlist of Hell's radio station comprises. It's such a shame there are so many of them.
Comments
I agree with you regarding covers in general, but not with the Dixie Chicks. I really like their non-country-radio version of Landslide. When I learned it was a cover, I headed over to iTunes and listened to a preview of the Fleetwood Mac version. I've actually done that twice now, and I didn't like it either time. :)
Then again, I bought the Dixie Chicks' "Home" album based purely on the radio version of Landslide. The version on the CD is their preferred version and is a bit too country for me. Oh, well.
Posted by: Eric | November 9, 2003 11:25 PM