Bad Cover Version

This week, Cracked.com put out their list of the 20 worst cover songs of all time, which is a fairly accurate, as those guys generally are.

20. "You Shook Me All Night Long" — Celine Dion and Anastasia
19. "Downtown Train" — Rod Stewart
18. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" — Guns N Roses
17. "Demolition Man" — Manfred Mann
16. "American Pie" — Madonna
15. "My Generation" — Hilary Duff
14. "It's My Life" — No Doubt
13. "Video Killed The Radio Star" — The Presidents of the United States of America
12. "Walk this Way" — Macy Gray
11. "Another Brick in the Wall" — Korn
10. "I'm A Believer" — Smash Mouth
09. "Satisfaction" — Britney Spears
08. "Sweet Child O Mine" — Sheryl Crowe
07. "Big Yellow Taxi" — Counting Crows
06. "911 Is a Joke" — Duran Duran
05. "Anarchy in the UK" — Motley Crue
04. "Behind Blue Eyes" — Limp Bizkit
03. "Feel Like Making Love" — Kid Rock
02. "Dock of the Bay" — Michael Bolton
01. "And It Stoned Me" — Bob Dylan

I thought 311's cover of the Cure's "Lovesong" was a fairly obvious omission, though they cover most of the obvious choices pretty well. I had the good fortune not to have heard a lot of these songs before reading this list, but thanks to the wonder of the internet, I can now hear the Who get butchered by two different singers of different genders, each singing in their own crappy genre. Celine Dion doing AC/DC is every bit as shrill and painful as I imagined, and if they didn't have the streaming audio of it, I probably wouldn't beleive that Duran Duran actually did a Public Enemy cover (do they even have 911 in the UK?). Conversely, Kid Rock covering "Feel Like Making Love" doesn't really seem like much of a travesty considering the original song sounds like it was written by a middle-aged forklift driver as a tribute to his adolescent niece. I would probably put Aerosmith's cover of "Come Together" on the list if for no other reason than it sounds so redundantly similar to the original that I go into a mild rage every time I hear it on the radio and I'm struck with the shrill screeching of Steven Tyler instead of John Lennon. Or how about Lou Reed doing his solo version of "Sweet Jane" (sans VU) and turning it into a bad arena rock song. Although probably the cover song I most despise is Van Halen's cock rock bastardization of "You Really Got Me". With more autoerotic guitar fills than there are extraneous pieces of white tape on his dumb-ass guitar, Eddie Van Halen singlehandedly turns the jerky mod minimalism of the Kinks into a giant, flaming, overwrought sonic turd.