I have this weird aversion to them that has nothing to do with having ever heard one of their songs. So, in complete ignorance of the original, I find this cover perfectly palatable.
I'm afraid that merely liking this version in itself is already a grave aesthetic trespess.
Forgeeve us our trespesses,: as we forgeeve those who trespess ageenst us.
It means a "three weight" in Spanish argot, and is a euphemism for exactly the sexual position we all know Nosflow enjoys.
I don't mind Smashing Pumpkins but, speaking of bad covers, I find it hard to forgive their version of Landslide.
Covers of Landslide are inherently bad. I can't imagine liking one. I don't even like Older Stevie Nicks singing it.
I keep viscerally feeling that the post title runs afoul of Godwin's Law. Speaking of which, and in reference to an earlier comment, I was blown away by Thom Yorke's new band's cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart." I would probably have hurt people around me in my enthusiasm if I'd been there.
I'd bet there's one good cover of Landslide out there. Ta-Nehisi Coates posted some really terrific Fleetwood Mac covers a year ago or so... here is one that isn't quite as good as the performance he posted, but same artist. I like it better than the Kills' awkwardly artsy version.
Landslide was supposed to be the song in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (and was, in the book) but I think they couldn't get the rights or something. Hi, I am an emo 16-year-old and know this.
I'm going to go ahead and pull out my mainstream radio cred and advocate for the Dixie Chicks Landslide.
IIRC, that was so bad that some radio stations stopped playing the Dixie Chicks completely.
The Dixie Chicks' "Landslide" cover is indeed at least as good as the original.
Yes, this is really impressively awful.
It remains a weird wonder to me that I can find pretty much any song ever with just a few keystrokes. I think Hilzoy maybe commented about this the other day on facebook, but it might have been someone else. Anyway, that Dixie Chicks cover is neither any better nor any worse than Gwyneth Paltrow's version on Glee, which had the great virtue of Santana (not that Santana, silly) occasionally singing.
Huh, I just keystroked my way to the Gwyneth Paltrow version, which I think is actually better than the Dixie Chicks' cover, but perhaps only because I so empathize with Santana pining for Brittany.
Anonymous 4 sing Wayfaring Stranger here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiO6Swghf6I
Huh, I just keystroked my way to the Gwyneth Paltrow version
So dirty!
I'm not a fan of "Landslide" but the KT Tunstall cover seems pretty good.
21: you can pluck my low-hanging fruit any time, dollface.
The song in the OP is so bad that all the other songs this group has previously recorded are now, in light of the OP, worse.
Anonymous 4 sing Wayfaring Stranger here:
Interesting.
I also like Eric Bibb's version.
I'm going to go 8 one better, and say I don't even like the original of "Landslide". It manages the unusual combination of being both saccharine and dour at the same time.
The original wasn't the Stevie Nick's one? I had no idea.
OK, now I am lost. Saccharine and dour is a great combination, kind of hard to pull off. There's even a single english word for the blend, bittersweet.
Landslide was originally sung to the tune of the Horst Wessel song.
You're both right! The original version of "Landslide" was by Young Stevie Nicks in 1975. But it was Old Stevie Nicks who made it a hit, with the 1997 live version.
When I started listening to the cover in the OP, I thought "oh, I must not know this song." But I 'stroked it (thanks von Wafer!), and it's of course a song I've heard ten thousand times, that they managed to remove everything distinctive from. I might have recognized it by the time they got to the "The killer in me is the killer in you" lyric, but I'm not even sure of that.
The definitive cover by Gweneth Paltrow of anything is her cover of Straight Outta Compton.
The song in the OP is so bad that all the other songs this group has previously recorded are now, in light of the OP, worse.
I actually kind of, well, tolerate the song they did with TaySway.
Three children in Compton die each time the clip in 32 is played to the end.
Holy crap, I had the same reaction as 31 except I hadn't looked up the original, and thus hadn't made the connection. Gah?
Saccharine and dour is a great combination, kind of hard to pull off. There's even a single english word for the blend, bittersweet.
Saccharinedour is more amusing than bittersweet.
We all live on a sour douchharine. A sour douchharine.
I just listened to the song in the OP. I was half-expecting to have the same reaction that Smearcase had in 2 but, no, that is truly awful. It is painfully bad.
I heard it on KCRW, as if it needed to be said.
I was blown away by Thom Yorke's new band's cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart."
I've had this cover of "Disorder" by d'arcy* on pretty heavy rotation recently.
*Guys from Fierce Brosnan and Static Radio (not that there's anything wrong with that that's going to mean anything to anybody here).
Oh Gwyneth Platrow. Her performance in Royal Tenenbaums is one of my favorite things but it gets harder and harder to deny she is something awful.
There's a live version that may be worse because bonus verbal intro and audience reaction. And I liked this commentary from the blog I found it on: So enjoy Joy Williams and John Paul White doing their folk/country thing on one of the best rock songs of the 90s. It's quite soothing, I think.
"But maybe it was quite enraging, it's kind of hard to remember exactly."
You're all spoiled for covers. At the risk of echoing YouTube commenters, at least they did something different. The worst cover of any Smashing Pumpkins song is the dozy pub band drop kicking a half arsed impression of Billy Corgan's whine into two rows of one third-drunk quarter-attentive audience members, before proceeding to kick American Pie in the head for two verses which somehow share a lot of lines and three choruses.
OT: How hard is it to send a mass email in such a way that a recipient can't "reply all" to everybody? Because that keeps happening here. It doesn't seem like it should be possible to do if the person sending the first message knew what they were doing.
At the risk of echoing YouTube commenters, at least they did something different.
It's unclear why that's good in itself.
Oooh! I have an IT bitch! The geniuses who designed the Heebie U website couldn't handle the "back" browser button. So if you ever automatically click back one page, you get kicked out of the system.
49: because a crap attempt at something new is worse than a poor imitation.
How so? Can't they both be crappy? The imitation because it's poor, the attempt at something new because it is, admittedly, crap? This sounds like Rob's entirely unconvincing thesis that Scarlett Johansson's album of shitty Tom Waits covers inherited coolness just because it was a Waits cover album.
48: Not hard, but it does involve someone knowing what they're doing. Either the sender can consistently know what they're doing (using the Bcc feature of their mail program rather than Cc, and making sure to have a real To: address in there as well) or can use a specialized mass-mailing tool that is intended to get this right, instead of their usual mail program, or the local IT admin should be able to set up some kind of announcement-only list where replies don't go to everyone and there's some kind of control on sending to it (moderation, or an extra password).
They both may indeed be crappy ... In this case I thought the linked cover was alright.
I've changed my mind about the worst cover - a cover worse than the half-arsed pub band is the pop singer releasing a version which is in the same style as the original, save for subtle weaknesses that make it sound slightly worse. We already have recording technology. All that exists for is flipping the release date to appear in a recent chart.
I don't mind the Tori Amos Smells Like Teen Spirit or Shatner's Common People either ...
AFAICT, too, this is the same approach they take to everything they do.
An actually good band with a similar (but actually well done) style, such as Born Heller, might have been able to make a cover like this work. But I suspect it was just entirely misconceived.
In this case I don't know the band. If they just sing every song this way, with different words, that devalues it. Is just like Google translate but with tunes or something.