American singer, composer, and actor Pat Boone attends the 24th Annual American Music Awards at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, California, 27th January 1997. (Photo by Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images)
And Now, (Some Of) The *Worst* Cover Songs Of All Time
They can’t all be winners, you know.
Human nature assures us that, when playing music, people generally have good intentions. No one (or hardly anyone) picks up an instrument wishing to do harm. Songs are simultaneously precious and, when they’re good, durable and inspiring things. But sometimes, things go wrong. Deeply, wrongly wrong. Fascinatingly wrong. Infuriatingly wrong. Walk with us, won’t you, down this hall of shame so that we may show you those who have tried… and failed spectacularly. Be strong! We learn by doing.
“Let It Be” – The Beatles (‘Celebrity’ lip-dub)
In 2010, Norwegian nostalgia show Gylne Tider (Golden Times) put together what might be the most bewildering Beatles cover artifact on the internet: a lip-dub of the Ferry Aid charity version of “Let It Be,” performed by a seemingly random constellation of mostly ’80s and ’90s celebrities.
Set on a CGI beach, the video lines up Roger Moore, Huey Lewis, Jason Alexander, Ricki Lake, Glenn Close, Tonya Harding, Alfonso Ribeiro, Pamela Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, Mickey Rourke, members of Boyzone, and dozens more, all beaming into the camera and half-miming the song in front of green-screen waves.
Nobody is really singing badly, the audio is the Ferry Aid track. What makes it feel like one of worst covers is the uncanny frozen smiles, the stilted hand gestures, the way the stars seem both over-invested and totally confused about why they’re on a fake beach singing “Let It Be” for Norwegian TV. In hindsight it feels like a proto–Gal Gadot “Imagine” cover.
“Tutti Frutti” – Little Richard (covered by Pat Boone)
Critics have called Pat Boone a culture vulture for over half a century, but his version of “Tutti Frutti” is practically a case study in how 1950s pop tried to sandblast the danger out of early rock ’n’ roll. Little Richard’s original is all wild piano, ecstatic shouting, and barely-contained chaos; Boone turns it into a pleasant shuffle with choir-boy vocals, and his version actually charted higher at the time.
Little Richard was furious. Looking back on Boone’s success, he said, “When Pat Boone covered my record, I was mad… I said, ‘I’m goin’ to Nashville to find him.”
Today, Boone’s “Tutti Frutti” mostly lives on as the textbook example of a white-bread stand-in for one of rock’s foundational records.
“About a Girl” – Nirvana (covered by Puddle of Mudd)
Puddle of Mudd’s acoustic take on “About a Girl” became notorious as a kind of cautionary tale about covers. Wes Scantlin strains his way through Kurt Cobain’s melody, pushing his voice so hard that the performance became shorthand for a song sung painfully out of range. Even Justin Hawkins of The Darkness admitted, “I can’t even listen to it… he shouldn’t be doing it.”
“Faith” – George Michael (covered by Limp Bizkit)
Before “Behind Blue Eyes,” Limp Bizkit had already taken a swing at George Michael’s “Faith” on their 1997 debut Three Dollar Bill, Y’all$. The band stripped away the original’s pulse and turned it into a rap-metal stomp, with Durst barking the hook over down-tuned guitars. It helped break them on rock radio, but now it’s just looked at as a kind of prototype for bad ’90s covers.
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” – The Beatles (covered by William Shatner)
William Shatner’s 1968 rendition of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” from his album The Transformed Man, is one of those recordings people pass around partly to see how others will react. Over a brassy, go-go-club arrangement, Shatner delivers the lyrics as high drama, pausing oddly, shouting random words and growling phrases like “a girl… with kaleidoscope eyes.”
“911 Is a Joke” – Public Enemy (covered by Duran Duran)
Duran Duran’s 1995 covers album Thank You has a rough reputation, and their version of Public Enemy’s “911 Is a Joke” is the track most often cited as the reason why. Public Enemy’s original is about emergency response failures in Black communities. Duran Duran recast it as a slinky, mid-tempo rock tune, rapped and sung by a group of wealthy white British pop stars. Critics have called the album “tone-deaf,” and Q magazine later named Thank You the worst album ever, with “911 Is a Joke” singled out in more recent lists of history’s worst covers.
“Dancing in the Street” – Martha & the Vandellas (covered by David Bowie & Mick Jagger)
On paper, a David Bowie and Mick Jagger duet on “Dancing in the Street” for Live Aid sounds like a rock-fan fever dream. In practice, the 1985 single and its video have gone down as a kind of high-budget in-joke: two megastars in pastel jackets mugging for the camera, high-fiving, and shouting over a stiff, rushed track. The song was recorded quickly for charity and tacked onto the global Live Aid broadcast; decades later, the clip is still weirdly fun to watch.
“Firestarter” – The Prodigy (covered by Gene Simmons)
On his 2004 solo album Asshole, Gene Simmons decided he was the “Firestarter” now, turning The Prodigy’s rave classic into a chunky hard-rock track called “I’m the Firestarter,” complete with Dave Navarro on guitar. The arrangement sticks surprisingly close to the original, beat and all, which only made it more of a target for Prodigy fans. Band leader Liam Howlett later called Simmons’ version “fu*king awful” and complained that they had “carbon copied the music beat by beat” before shrugging it off as “a joke.”