The Beatles are arguably the most popular, influential, and monetarily successful band on Earth and have been for the past 50 years. They, like many of their contemporaries, got their start playing do-wop, blues, and Motown covers. And equally over the years, many bands have attempted to cover Beatles songs. Some very badly.
This list is just a few of the worst Beatles covers. There are trends and patterns when dealing with Beatles covers. Some artists cover Beatles songs to try to squeeze a few dollars out of fans. Some cover a song and don’t add any of their own flavor to it, ultimately adding nothing to it, and many times taking away what was intricate, intimate, and beautiful about the song in the first place. And some should have just never happened in the first place.
5. “Come Together” – Axl Rose & Bruce Springsteen
The reason this is a bad Beatles cover is quite simple: the instrumentals are chop for chop the same as the original; nothing was added. When you’re covering a song by four of the most influential and iconic musicians of all time, you really need to find a way to make it your own because you’re not going to be able to compete with the original. The backing band seems like they lose enthusiasm many times throughout the song. It doesn’t seem like Axl and Bruce even “come together” or are even on the same page while singing together. It is also questionable how much Axl Rose cared for the Beatles. Why cover a song if you don’t feel moved by the original artist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmau_XWxgw
4. “Rocky Raccoon” – Jack Johnson
Like with Axl and Bruce, Jack Johnson doesn’t try to make this song his own. The combination of his voice being pasted out with little energy over the poor choice of instrumentals isn’t inspiring. All the emotion was taken out of the vocals and the instrumentals were sucked of their uniqueness and most of their compositional content. Not to mention the original instrumental break and Lennon’s scat style singing that changes the emotion and tone of the song by adding an upbeat section makes the song bittersweet and complex. When Jack Johnson does it, you realize the only reason you’d like this song is because you already know it’s a Beatles cover. He didn’t attempt to capture the emotion. Without that reference point, it’s the same filler as any other verse-chorus-verse Jack Johnson song, and even if he was the original author the song, it wouldn’t have the same impact as the original today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzWRkBQeer4
3. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” – William Shatner
This shouldn’t have happened. Everything that made the original song good, the psychedelic, half-spooky and half-intriguing vibe and arrangement of multiple instruments is gone. William Shatner’s “vocals” are laughable, although they may have been that way intentionally. This is an example of someone seemingly trying to use a Beatles song to make up for their lack of songwriting ability and make a quick buck using The Beatles’ name. This song (as well as the rest of William Shatner’s musical endeavors) shouldn’t even be considered music. This version is just insulting.
2. “I Am the Walrus” – Bono (Really, almost the entire Across the Universe soundtrack)
The entire Across the Universe movie builds off the same vomit as William Shatner’s cover. The movie was not about the music or the lives of the Beatles. It was entirely about making money ruthlessly by selling the soul of the Beatles’ songs to the devil, again. When experienced in the theater, this song might be alright, but try listening to it without the movie. During the legendary “coo-coo-ka-choo” part, Bono doesn’t even sound like he’s on time with the rest of the barfed out studio music that sounds like it was recorded a thousand miles away. This version has none of the layers that the original does. The original is truly a piece of sound art with quotes from a BBC Radio Broadcast of “King Lear” being pasted into the end, all of the different transitions and instruments meshed together in a way that had never been attempted before. Not to mention that Bono is trying to appear like he’s a Tim Leary/Ken Kesey type character in the movie is wholly unbelievable as well.
1. “Blackbird” – Dandy Warhols
This is yet another side of the same coin of “I Am the Walrus” from Across the Universe. Except this time the Dandy Warhols stripped a song that was beautiful, intimate and simple, into pointless computerized formulaic garbage. The saddest part about this cover is that the Dandys really don’t suck—just in this song. They slopped together an embarrassing version of “Blackbird” where they took the root notes of all the beautiful finger picking, stripped the song of all its acoustic-folk intimacy and turned it into filler that sounds almost the same backward and forward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoijzsGhi6I
The rate at which these vile covers are being produced is quicker than ever. It’s like the Happy Meal of music; in your heart you know it’s not real and probably bad for you, but you know it’ll taste the same and yield the same warm feeling each time. I would rather hear a bloodstained, badly tuned, horribly crooned-out cover of a Beatles song by someone like Charles Manson who obviously loved their songs to begin with (a little too much in his case) because even if it’s the same four chords, you can tell when the heart is there. Not all Beatles covers are bad—there are some great versions out there, but a cover should only be attempted for the right reasons.
