There are certain songs that are just worn out. They may have been great at the time; they may have been dreadful. However, there are some songs that seem to reappear every few years like a drunken uncle double-dipping his his way through a Christmas buffet, and I, for one, have had enough:
Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow! – I beg you: no more of this twee rubbish. It’s not only been karaokeed to death, but every Xmas variety show features some twerp hamming it up whilst singing this.
All You Need is Love – I love the Beatles, but this hippy drivel is one of their worst moments. It seems to get covered (most recently by Noel Gallagher at the SPOTY) on a minute-by-minute basis, usually with the cynical intention of manufacturing a merciless sing-along. Who actually wants to hear this again?
Cry me a River – The sort of song only Michael Buble and hardcore karaoke buffs take seriously. Look everyone! I can REALLY sing! Appears on every album ever recorded where the cover features a man in a tuxedo with an undone bowtie.
What other songs never need to be covered again?
Without You.
Surely Harry Nilsson’s version is the definitive reading of this track.
We don’t need X Factor hopefuls squawking and squealing their way through it again ( and trying to get as many notes in as possible).
See also With A Little Help From My Friends. If you think you can improve on Joe Cocker’s version then knock yourself out, otherwise leave it alone.
And what of 4′ 33″ – each subsequent version further dilutes the original
I thought of Without You too (without U2?). I was minding a PA at a Christmas party recently and the DJ proclaimed that Mariah Carey “smashed it”. I don’t think he’d ever heard of Nillson, let alone Badfinger.
The other one that springs to mind is Hallelujah.
Ken Lee
Thanks for the laugh!
At least her singing is better than her English. You’ve got to give her that. Though it probably couldn’t be worse.
And now for something completely different…
Yes to Hallelujah. I recently saw someone murder it at a birthday party on a ukulele. Not what parties were invented for.
Oh, I dunno. Change the time signature, speed it up and do your best George Formby impression;
‘Well, it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.
Hee-hee, turned out nice again’
Surely the winner? John Cale, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, Alexandra Burke, Kathryn Williams, kd lang – and that’s just off the top of my head. There are plenty of other great Cohen songs for singers to interpret too.
*strums*
‘Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girl child in the dark
Comes in bells, your servant, don’t forsake him
Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart’
Happy Xmas ( War is over) and Imagine; two terribly over-exposed songs “of their time”.
Yes to Hallelujah. Those bloody X-Factor/American Idol judges nodding solemnly in their phony dignified manner as another bloody future superstar crams as many notes as possible in a brutally shortened version of Sir Len’s masterpiece. Fucking awful. I’m amazed Len still carried on singing it in his concerts after Sir Simon Cowell decided to bestow upon us his butchered handjob version on a saturday night.
Kathryn Williams (I favour her version over others) stopped covering it when Cowell stole it and only sung it again solo the night Leonard died.
I was in a Welsh record shop today and they played James Dean Bradfield butchering Last Christmas and Fairytale Of New York in a single sitting on Chris Evan’s radio show
Nobody should ever record a cover of any song unless they’re going to do something properly different with it, I think. Same applies, but to a lesser extent – some leeway can be allowed in certain circumstances – with professional live performances by artists with their own material. One or two covers max is OK.
In a non- or semi- professional live setting it’s different rules entirely. Sing your hearts out and I won’t really mind that much if you make a decent job of it, even if I’m sometimes cringing a little inside. You never know, I may even get carried away and join in.
I heard the Ed Sheeran Fairytale of New York yesterday. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t think Shane and Kirsty can be improved. On.
God help us