What's a song you love that has a horrible version of it?

[jamail77]

To make things worse, try as best you can to list an alternate version that is considered just as official as the version you enjoy listening to.

For me, that would have to be this video game boss theme. This version I actually like:
This version, while having some better aspects to it in terms of instrumentals, is horribly butchered by autotune:
This is a rare instance that forces me to say that the original Japanese version of something is worse. The only other thing I say this about is Dragonball Z voice acting. I've heard that the Japanese DBZ voices are supposed to be a homage to the way Bruce Lee talks due to his influence in giving Japan more legitimacy in action entertainment media, but I don't care honestly. They don't fit the characters as well to me. Having heard Cell's voice actor though, I can say that he stands out as damn good. He is supposed to be a good Japanese voice actor however so it makes sense I like his performance.

That's mine. What's yours?

 

[AlouetteSK]

Anything that has a Kids Bop verison.

 

[giles]

This fucking version. Fuck, just listening to a few seconds of it is enough to bring my piss to a boil.

I love the original though. Great "sing along" metal balad, although it pales in comparison to Fade To Black.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

This fucking version. Fuck, just listening to a few seconds of it is enough to bring my piss to a boil.

I love the original though. Great "sing along" metal balad, although it pales in comparison to Fade To Black.

Sweet jesus, what the hell did we do to deserve that?

Spoiler

This piece of shit. Aside from the fact that her voice is lifeless, it's been turned into a bland X Factor chart ballad which is really bloody weird given how critical of the industry Trent Reznor is.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

I was going to go with Leona Lewis mangling the fuck out of Hurt, But I'll see your bland x-factor cover of a song and raise you with another...



Which in itself is a cover of a Leonard Cohen song.

*Edit*

Or there's this piece of shit...

 

[jamail77]

Anything that has a Kids Bop verison.

How did Kids Bop even come into existence? How is it still around? It feels so outdated at this point.

This fucking version. Fuck, just listening to a few seconds of it is enough to bring my piss to a boil.

I love the original though. Great "sing along" metal balad, although it pales in comparison to Fade To Black.

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country". Huh. Being from the US, I'm used to hearing complaints about that being the other way around.

I was going to go with Leona Lewis mangling the fuck out of Hurt, But I'll see your bland x-factor cover of a song and raise you with another...

Just like giles, that is another video apparently not available in my country. The rest of the videos you linked are fine though. I really wasn't expecting to encounter this problem so fast.

 

[vid87]

Despite the fact that it legitimately got me excited for Guardians of the Galaxy by setting the breezy tone, I DESPISE the Blue Swede "Ooga Chugga" version of Hooked on a Feeling, right down to the fact that they changed the strong, evocative line of "I'll just stay addicted and hope I can endure" to "I'll just stay afflicted, if I can be sure." What does that even mean?!

 

[Scarim Coral]

Err honestly, I LOVED the alternative version but in saying so that is the version us Brit (and Japanese given by that title) got first when she appear!!!

OT- It has simply got to be this-

Spoiler: The awesome Stan Bush- You got the Touch

Spoiler: Crappy Bayformer version

The Revenge of the Fallen version is a atrocity! It butcher everyhing that made Stand Bush awesome!

 

[Klumpfot]

This song comes to mind!

The band Heaven Shall Burn recorded this thing:

Spoiler: It's great if you love bad metalcore!

Which is a cover of Edge of Sanity's song Black Tears. Amazingly, the original is heavier despite not having screamed vocals.

Spoiler: It's great if you love good metal!

Good god is the cover horrendous. The phrasing of the singer is awful, and it all sounds stilted.

However! I am apparently in the minority position on this; the cover has 10 times as many views on Youtube despite being on there for a shorter amount of time. In addition, the song's writer loves the cover and has sung it with them live.

Hrmpf.

 

[necromanzer52]

Let's see. I despise limp bizkit's cover of behind blue eyes, as well as that inexplicably popular cover of smooth criminal by that band whose name I'm too lazy to look up. But I think the grand prize must go to this.


Overall, it's not that bad, except for one small but very important moment. She changed the line to "I hope I don't die before I get old". Way to miss the entire point of the song, Hilary.

 

[blue heartless]

Alien Ant Farm's cover of "Smooth Criminal", by Michael Jackson.

 

[Catfood220]

This fucking version. Fuck, just listening to a few seconds of it is enough to bring my piss to a boil.

I love the original though. Great "sing along" metal balad, although it pales in comparison to Fade To Black.

Why would anyone inflict that on anyone? That's awful. Who the fuck is she?

Alien Ant Farm's cover of "Smooth Criminal", by Michael Jackson.

In fairness, that was the only good song on that album.

My own? Ok.


Its so fucking lifeless compared to the original. My friend who is a massive Snow Patrol fan claims to have kicked the radio in the shop that he worked when he heard this.

 

[MRMIdAS2k]

good lord she ruins the living hell out of this.

Just utterly rotten.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Ya know what song is awesome? Hallowed be thy Name by Iron Maiden


Ya know who screwed it up? Cradle of Filth.


Hey, ya know another really good song? Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne


Ya know who absolutely butchered it into oblivion? Cradle of Filth!


It's funny though, because in generally I really do like Cradle of Filth and they've done covers that I really liked such as Sodomy & Lust and, Black Metal.

 

[lacktheknack]

Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" is amazing. It's my favourite song of the eighties.

Dope covered it, and that was all right. Flo Rida covered it, and while he sucked, Ke$ha actually kind of rescued it. So that's all right.

But Britney Spears/Jessica Simpson (I forget which) also covered it.

And it took years off of my life.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

I actually like the Japanese version of that quite a bit.

OT: Well, for me there's Komm Susser Tod from End of Evangelion.


I love this song a whole lot.

And then the singer made a new version of it, and... well...


I... do not like this version.

And speaking of Evangelion, I'm not a big fan of the 2009 version of A Cruel Angel's Thesis:



By no means bad, just not as good and kinda forgettable.

Other than that, I really don't like Killswitch Engage's cover of Holy Diver.

 

[Vault101]

I'm not gonna say horrible but a version that REALLY irks

the original "high for this" by the Weeknd which I like

[spoiler/][/spoiler]

and then the cover by Ellie Goulding...which I don't

[spoiler/][/spoiler]

the reason being is someone changed the pronoun to refer to the subject of the song as "boy" as in male

WHHHHYYYY????

this pisses me off a lot, there is NOTHING remotely romantic going on between the narrator and the subject of the song, I interpereted it as....maybe something dark like a young girl going into prostitution for the first time OR getting a backroom abortion and an older woman trying to talk her through it, the terribleness of the situation comes through

maybe I'm being presumptuous in thinking a pronoun change to "boy" makes it romantic/sexual but I don't see why else you'd do it...is it like sposed to be "sex with me is so terrible/awesome you want to be high for it?" ugghh!

 

[Zontar]

Anything that was good that was given a dubstep remix, but particularly Zombie by the Cranberries. It's annoying enough to see that 85%+ of music videos people make using the song are with zombies instead of showing any understanding of the song itself, but that remix is just grating on my ears.

 

[Fox12]

The shit is strong with this one:


The Miley Cyrus cover was awful too, but this deserves special mention.

Hehe. Hehehe. Hahahahahahaha!

Kurt is crying right now. Why does everyone and their mother feel the need to cover this song?

 

[Lilani]

Jack's Obsession from the Nightmare Before Christmas. The song is about Jack trying to figure out what makes Christmas work and he's so obsessed and fixated on it it's driving him crazy. At the end he has an epiphany and thinks he's figured it out, but rather than making him content it just makes him even MORE crazy and obsessed.

Spoiler

Then, on the cover album Nightmare Revisited, which had a couple of gems like Amy Lee's Sally's Song and Marilyn Manson's This Is Halloween, there was a cover of this song by an artist named Sparklehorse. He proceeds to remove all of the desperate obsession and manic passion and makes it into a sad, lazy, listless, dispassionate, tuneless, and downright generic song that sounds like any other thing that would exist on any hipster's playlist.

Spoiler

I don't mind remixes and covers that drastically diverge from the original, I have some off-the-wall and not very well liked variations on Carol of the Bells and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. However, a cover that's very different from the original needs to either retain some core element of the original beyond simply the lyrics (such as melody, rhythm, general energy, etc) or needs to transcend the basic elements of the original and be its own unique interpretation of it, making its own statement about the themes of the song. I feel like this version is TRYING to do that, but I think it just drastically fails.

There isn't any kind of desperation to this. Yes there are other types of desperation and quandary other than the manic behavior Jack exhibits in this song, but this nearly sounds cheerful or carefree. Yes it's a bit trippy, but trippiness on its own is not desperation. People can trip out and be quite contented in the moment, and that's exactly how this song sounds.

The artist of this song committed suicide later on, but in my opinion that's no reason to not still criticize his work. Yes it's tragic, but Jackson Pollock also committed suicide and people aren't afraid to dismiss his paintings as just random splatters of paint any child could reproduce. He was an artist, and like any artist deserves to have his work criticized by its own merits.