Shameless.

Do make a point to enjoy Debi's Songs I've belted out shamelessly, a list that almost inspired me to echo-blog, until I started writing down the names of songs I've belted out shamelessly, like Babe by Styx, except for changing the lyrics thusly most days before leaving the house for work: Cat, I'm leavin... Also, ask a certain car-load of people I know about my rendition of Rush's Closer to the Heart.

So we agree then, that I should just leave that list alone.

CYA: there's more

Not only did three unacceptable omissions from the top five cover songs occur to me in recent days, but also I nailed down the three worst covers in the history of sound. Also there is an entire record that really messes up the greatest top 5 curve, due to its absurd overabundance of great covers, and that record is, Beat the Retreat, songs by Richard Thompson. We're just going to have to throw out any further mention of it, before the whole notion of top anything completely implodes.  

I'm not going to dwell on my omissions from the top five, except to list them. All sort of fall into this category of "too obvious," about which the husband feels means that they should be avoided, but I can't not pay my respect to the following:

Hurt, Johnny Cash (Trent Reznor)

So, this video loses to Justin Timberlake at like, the f'ing MTV music video awards, in '03. Show some respect, you corporate network bags of *&^!. This was basically the only watchable video produced in the last 10 years, is it me? Did you not drop whatever pointless thing you were doing, the first time that you saw it, and just stare? Boy, I did.

Unchained Melody, U2 (Righteous Brothers)

Sigh. Majorly melodramatic, I completely acknowledge, and yet, it once cured me of a broken heart.

Sweet Jane, The Cowboy Junkies (Lou Reed)

I was horrified that this song was used in that bloodbath movie with Woody Harrelson and what's her name, back in the early 90's, when movies about amoral, murderous drifters in convertibles were all the rage, before we became a nation of patriotic "everything but intercourse" Christians, after 9/11. There was easily a year in my youth where The Trinity Session was the only record I listened to.

and crap, there is actually a fourth:

Everytime We Say Goodbye, Annie Lennox (Cole Porter)

God damn, this is a great song, and also belongs on songs-that-make-me-cry songs, an entirely different list. Feel free to play this one at my funeral, instead of Early Morning Rain, owing to the matter of the line about the fast women, in the latter song.

So, on to those covers that are truly and outrageously unacceptable. There are millions, of course. And I am right away throwing out ass hats like Rod Stewart due to their potential to totally overload the circuits of suck. The criteria here is, an otherwise acceptable act, making an egregious mistake.

Helter Skelter, U2 (The Beatles)

Oh for the love of god. I am actually depressed that I have to sit here, listening to this song one more time in my finite lifespan, just to get an accurate read on how truly terrible it is. Who can forget of course, the idiotic Bono preamble, in which U2 proposes to steal the song back from Charles Manson? Excuse me? This is followed by a completely uninspired, bar-band rendition of the song, shoveled out to the screaming Denver crowd, and ends with heavy breathing over the final notes. Oh Bono, just stop it. We know you're a rock star.

I Can See Clearly Now, Jimmy Cliff (Johnny Nash)

This sanitized and emotionally bankrupt version of the unimpeachable classic can be heard lilting through the sound systems of any big box retail emporium of your choice, right this very minute. Make haste to your hometown Wal-Mart or Fred Meyer and try to prove me wrong, because I've got ten bucks riding on it.   How cynical was Jimmy Cliff, to take this peerless song and set it to some awful Casio Keyboard samba percussion backyard party beat, throw in some soulless, hotel lobby vocals, and then unleash it on the world? Even Anne Murray's version sucks less (although of course, by a degree invisible to the naked eye).

Against All Odds, The Postal Service (Phil Collins)

I basically hate Death Cab for Cutie, and this Power Station-style spinoff band, let me state that right out. And, being a yuppie Northwestern KEXP aficionado, that is saying something. I hate them because they are so damned smarmy and ironic, to the exclusion of really having anything to say, in my completely minority opinion, for which I may be hunted down and killed by my fellow Northwestern indie-rock-consuming yuppies.

This cover song is the airless peak of their sneering, digital sound, and reminds me of the scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas where Lucy hassles Schroeder to play the "right" version of Jingle Bells, finally satisfied with his last and completely sarcastic, one-note rendition. Come on Ben Gibbard, as if you didn't lip synch Against All Odds into a hairbrush, and totally mean every word of it, when you were 12.

Jerk.

In conclusion, I feel that some acknowledgement of the badness of the Tori Amos version of Smells Like Teen Spirit should be committed to print, and yet I can't entirely hate this song, because I admire Tori for taking on this baggage-laden uber-hit, and trying to Tori-ize it, even if the results make you want to kill yourself.

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