5: Jem – Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul McCartney)
At first listen, this cover appears to be totally innocuous. Comparison to the original, however, shows Jem's version to be weak, boring, and lacking in vocal talent. “Maybe I'm Amazed” as McCartney intended it is a work of good, solid rock and roll. This cover never gets off the ground. Between the irritatingly breathy vocal, minimal acoustic arrangement, total absence of dynamics, and consistently dirge-like tempo, Jem's cover is exactly the right sort of music for lighting some candles, eating a bottle of Vicodin, and taking a nice hot bath.
4: 311 – Love Song (Robert Smith / Simon Gallup / Porl Thompson / Roger O'Donnel / Boris Williams / Laurence Tolhurst)
Another apparently innocuous cover, this is on my list mainly for the same reason as Jem above: it's a flaccid abortion of an arrangement that completely fails to pay homage to anything but itself. 311 get so caught up in being all groovy and dubby and ska that their massive ego trip sucks all the soul out of the song. The Cure's success with the original was a smashingly great pop song with very personal, honest lyrics. None of that shines through in 311's cover. Instead of a timeless wedding gift from a songwriter to his bride, we hear mediocre generic reggae glossed over with a positively snide-sounding lead vocal.
3: Limp Bizkit – Behind Blue Eyes (Pete Townshend)
If the concept of failure could be distilled into something tangible and capable of making noise, it would sound like this. A forcibly pitch-corrected vocal with disingenuous delivery and some clichéd and unimaginative synthesizer arrangements are the misdemeanor charges in my indictment against the aptly named Limp Bizkit for this travesty. The much more obvious felony here is the murder of one of The Who's best bridges and the desecration of its corpse.
2: Scissor Sisters – Comfortably Numb (Roger Waters / David Gilmour)
And now, on a lighter note, some amusing electro-schlock. Really, this cover is barely even recognizable as “Comfortably Numb.” The first few seconds before the excessively falsetto vocal sound like they were sampled out of the intro of “Run Like Hell.” The iconic guitar solos have been omitted, and I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. It is very confusing indeed to hear one of the saddest songs from The Wall turned into a chirpy upbeat mix that would sound totally inappropriate anywhere but in a dance club.
1: William Shatner – Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)
Four words: Captain Kirk vocal delivery. I really shouldn't have to say any more than that, but I will. This rendition is so bad it's hilarious. It could also be classified as musical blasphemy and as psychological warfare.
