ironic covers of pop songs by indie bands - classic or dud?

Yes, Horace. We are one of those snakes eating its own tail.

god, this cheesy covers shit is DUD if there was ever such a thing. all this irony bollocks needs to die, and take all those hipsters with it! Or something. hee hee. : )

not sure how DV could have missed it.

I'm probably never going to get around to forming a rock band because I'm terrible at working with people and not motivated enough but we would do awesome Styx and Queensryche covers. Oh wait I did do a microtonal prepared guitar tribute to "Dust In the Wind" that mostly got good reviews and marks.

Well if yr going to do the song the exact same way it's already been done, why do it at all? You should at least try and make some mark on it, no? (Disclosure: I've never heard any of the songs you've mentioned here so I can't judge the songs on how much they've been altered)

I confess to preferring the Sonic Youth version of "Superstar".

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 did it the same way first and better (but they didn't have their version of it performed on Entertainment Tonight like SY did, so I guess they aren't popular enough for this discussion). TFUL 282 also did a great cover of "Green Eyed Lady" which may or may not be ironic.

But most indie-or-whatever bands covering pop hitss (including Travis and Flaming Lips doing the ones mentioned above) leave *no mark at all*. I'm not saying to just Xerox the original; I'm saying not to do the same useless thing w/ it that every other boring indie moron does.

How exactly is that Kylie cover "filler", by the way? I was under the impression it was the main point of that EP (which I admittedly haven't otherwise heard), since it's the only song on the EP I've heard anybody say anything at all about. (And I guess you could say EP cuts are filler by definiton, but only if you ignore the fact that this particular band's first and best record ever was also an EP -- the one with "I Want My Own Planet" on it, LSD Records, 1984. They were also better back when they used to cover the Sonics and Elvis Costello {or Brinsley Schwarz or whoever}, but never mind.)

It's not that it's satanic, Dom, just seriously boring. What immediately comes to mind is that mind-numbing version of "Crush" by the D-Plan. They were a particularly wack covers group, when they did "Close To Me" by the Cure (a song that actually SOUNDS sort of like the D-Plan) they bogged it down like nobody's business.

I just bought Sugar Ray's new album, on which they cover Joe Jackson, which is totally not meant to be ironic. I was hoping the track "Blues From A Gun" was a non-ironic J&MC cover, but the writing credits reveal it to be an original.

The Sonic Youth 'Superstar' is a work of godlike genius.

No one on these threads has yet explained why indie covering pop song (slowed down, acoustic) is bad and evil and horrid and Satanic, whilst Scooter/Sammy/whoeverthefuck covering of old rock songs (speed up vocals, increase drum volume level) is such a great idea.

because Scooter doing anything is a good idea.

Ladytron's oh-bondagey cover of Oops Oh My was the best part of their set (blowing yourself off the stage, c/d?)

Foo Fighters: "Baker Street"
Paul Westerberg: "Make Your Own Kind of Music"
Korn: "Silly Love Songs"

Dud

Any Madonna cover

PS Fountains of Wayne also did ELO's "Can't Get It Out of My Head"

I just recently learned that that terrific song "Blonde in the Bleachers" on that same CD is by Joni Mitchell. Talk about a moment of indie-ish know-nothingness.

The other day I heard a terrible cover of "Sk8er Boi" on the college station - sung to a chintzy, hookless Casio beat by a indie guy with a vocoder. Terrible terrible terrible.

You know, I'm almost willing to *believe* this might not suck -- It's such a great song that even one of the dullest bands on earth might not screw it up. (On the other hand, I seriously doubt the Foos' version is a fraction as amazing as Carnival of Coal's dark French goth metal version, which made my singles list a couple years ago.) (And yeah, they slowed it down and made it ominious. Oh well.) (Well actually, the original's pretty ominious, too. But CoC didn't drain the life or the melody or the beat out of it, which is the trick.)

Throbbing Gristle did this with one of the own songs, "United," where it ended up a ten-second blip on one of their LPs. I guess they were embarrassed to have released a catchy single.

Any Madonna cover<<

Actually, "Into the Groovy" by Ciccone Youth is way better than "Superstar" by Sonic Youth (as are the Plastic Bertrand and Crime and Shonen Knife covers Sonic Youth do -- which are also better than the vast majority of Sonic Youth's versions of Sonic Youth songs). And the Carpenters' "Superstar" is one of the best, saddest, and most beautiful singles in the history of the human race. Sonic Youth's version doesn't even deserve to be in the same SPECIES.

You've never sat through a local ska punk band gig now, have you?

Golden Shower of Hits, baybay!

You know, I'm almost willing to *believe* this might not suck -- It's such a great song that even one of the dullest bands on earth might not screw it up. (On the other hand, I seriously doubt the Foos' version is a fraction as amazing as Carnival of Coal's dark French goth metal version, which made my singles list a couple years ago.)

The FF's version only distinction that I noticed was to replace the word "booze" with "crack." I'd always written off the original version of the song as typically bland 70s AOR, and the FF's faithful cover hasn't converted me. OTOH, this CoC version you describe sounds intriguing.

Another bugbear of mine: blandly faithful or perfunctory covers. Why perform someone else's song if you don't either 1) love it and convey any of that passion in the performance, or 2) interpret it in a manner that you believe casts a new light on the song?

WHERE WHERE WHERE can I hear this?

WHERE WHERE WHERE can I hear this?

I heard they did it for a Peel session recently. It could be on the interweb at the BBC site for download.

A bad Madonna cover by a good band - Teenage Fanclub doing like a virgin. It was all slowed down and borified.

I heard the t.A.T.u. cover of How Soon Is Now once and thought it was very good.

like I say above, they may not be being ironic, but there is still an implication of "by covering this cheesy pop song, we, A Serious Band, have conferred legitimacy on it by showing people how good it is". I mean, sure they might actually like the song, but I bet they don't do cover versions of every song they like.

if this was considered acceptable behaviour, you best believe many would.

PS Tool, not Korn, did "Silly Love Songs" referenced above.

As for the Carpenters' comp, my fave was always Johnette Napolitano's "Hurting Each Other," another desperate plea from Karen which gets the big guitar clone treatment.

And let's not forget the Saturday morning cartoon comp, side one of which is pretty much perfect in the unironic covers dept. from Liz Phair and Material Issue yelping the Splits' "Tra La La" song to Matthew Sweet and Richard Lloyd decimating "Scooby Doo" to the Ramones' vastly superior take over Aerosmith on "Spider-Man" to Juliana Hatfield and Tanya Donnelly's bitchin' "Josie and the Pussycats" (although still not as good as Kay Hanley on the OST) to the Buttholes' "Underdog" to Helmet's "Gigantor" to Rev. Horton Heat medleying "Johny Quest" and "Stop That Pigeon." Oh, and Mary Lou Lord finally finds her theme song with "Sugar, Sugar."

Actually, I think that was the Replicants...

I'm inclined to wonder when a cover is deemed "ironic" anyway. Is it because if it is a cheesy top 40 pop song well, it must be ironic? OK sure, some covers are shit (Teenage Fanclub's "Like a Virgin" for example) but some are really good and/or really bizarre.

Like Goldfinger's cover of "Just Like Heaven" for example, although I'm wondering if that counts, seeing as the scorn here seems to be reserved for "cool bands doing uncool songs badly" or something. Hrm.

My current fave - the Faint doing Sonic Youth's "Mote". The fact it is in some ways better than SY's version amuses me. Maybe I'm missing the point of ironic covers with what I'm picking, I dunno.

Cue Hayseed Dixie (who recently expanded their ouevre to Kiss). Although I did enjoy the rasta-Elvis-"Heartbreaker Hotel" irony collision of Dread Zeppelin for about 10 minutes.

Dream Syndicate supposedly used to cover "Cuts Like a Knife" back in the early '80s. I've never heard it, but I bet it's pretty good. (They also suppsedly used to cover "Werewolves of London," "Don't Fear the Reaper," "Knockin on Heaven's Door," and "Rain" {or some other song I may or may not have ever heard the original of) by Eric Clapton, all of which I also haven't heard, and all of which I might like. But the Bryan Adams idea always struck me as the most intriguing of the lot; it really is a great rock song, to begin with.

Here's one I like: The Dillinger Escape Plan covered Nine Inch Nails' "Wish" when I saw them a couple of months ago. "Wish" works as pop compared to the rest of the stuff the DEP was playing. Also, I experienced it as pop, even though the I liked it in large part because it was harder than anything else on the radio, the same way I experienced Metallica as pop a year or two before. And because the DEP's new singer is about my age (23) and went to high school one suburb away from me (in Columbia, Maryland), one can assume he experienced it the same way. But so anyway the band did the song totally non-ironically and managed to convey both the hardness and popness of it. It showed me new things about both the song and the band covering it, which is I guess what covers are supposed to do.

Also, I never saw Nine Inch Nails live (their 1995 Baltimore Arena show was a formative experience for a lot of my friends, but it was school night to my parents). And except for the members of the band and the parents of the kids there (and I guess the bartenders), I was about the youngest person at the DEP show. So seeing them cover it sort of re-youthified the song for me. It didn't matter that it squashed everything else that the Dilinger Escape Plan did that night. I'll take my great moments where I can get them.

Suggestions please (I will read through the rest of this thread and the other one as well for ideas later). As a point of reference, here are some examples of what I like:

Sarge - Time After Time
Kanda - Freedom
Chaki - When U Were Mine
Class - We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off

Is an unexpected cover (because they're very different in style to the origanl artist) necessarily ironic?

(wham's wake me up before you go-go with the irony knob turned up to number 11) is the only real classic. all others= dud. sorry.

Napalm Deth could cover "slow"

if anyones still reading this