1. Duran Duran '911 Is A Joke'
Do you applaud the ambition or mock the utterly misplaced audacity? Well, the
latter, naturally. Duran Duran's mid-Nineties covers album Thank You turned out
to be a backhanded compliment: acknowledging their influences (Elvis Costello,
Lou Reed, Bob Dylan) while simultaneously massacring them. Their tilt at Public
Enemy in particular ticked all the required boxes. Pale, middle-class art-school
ponces from Brum tackle a rap about the tardiness of US ambulance drivers
responding to emergency calls in black ghettos, with predictably ludicrous
results: 'Every day they don't never come correct,' whines Le Bon. 'You can ask
my man right here with the broken neck' (who's that, Simon, yo' bro' Nick
Rhodes?). Shockingly misconceived in both theory and execution.
2. Ronan Keating 'Fairytale Of New York'
King Karaoke is welcome to auto-emote his way through the songbook of Bryan
Adams, but Keating shamefully reduced Shane MacGowan's epic Broadway tussle to
the aural equivalent of a trip round Asda with his gran. He changed the line:
'You cheap, lousy faggot' to 'you're cheap and you're haggard' because he
'wouldn't want to offend anyone'. He failed.
3. Frank Sinatra 'Something'
Not just because Sinatra would introduce George Harrison's classic as the work
of 'two kids called Lennon and McCartney'; or that he was always oddly
unconvincing handling material that held any kind of contemporary resonance.
It's simply that in the bridge, he's singing to someone called Jack. 'You stick
around, Jack, she might show,' he roars. What on earth is going on? And who is
Jack? We will never know.
4. UB40 &Amp; Robert Palmer 'I'll Be Your Baby
Tonight'
Not Dylan's greatest song by any means, but it didn't deserve this. Above a
tinny synthesised beat which displays all the roots reggae warmth of Terminal A
at Luton Airport, Ali Campbell's piggy whine meshes with the distracted mutter
of Robert Palmer - who sings as if he were double parked, patting his pockets
for his car keys - in the most horrific fashion. Nauseating.
5. David Bowie 'God Only Knows'
Bowie rarely excels on other people's material; his talent is too singular, too
angular. Here, he takes the most exquisitely crafted meditation on the marriage
of spiritual and earthly love and proceeds to sleepwalk through it as though he
were reading out telegrams at a wedding. As a pointer to how detached Bowie was
from his instincts back in 1984, look no further.
6. M People 'Itchycoo Park'
Never has the claim that 'it's all too beautiful' been quite so misguided.
Listening to this is like looking for a distant beauty spot while a sheep
repeatedly farts in your face, the rowdy grandeur of the original replaced with
M People's antiseptic faux soul. Then there's that horrible foghorn voice which
some equate with passion rather than poor technique.
7. Johnny Cash 'Danny Boy'
Criticising Cash these days is akin to dissing Gandhi, but truthfully, the Man
in Black only ever had two songs: the fast one and the slow one. Towards the
end, producer Rick Rubin would shamelessly prop Cash in front of material which
explicitly referenced his desperately failing health. His tuneless stab at
'Danny Boy' is awful: as saccharine and cynical as any Westlife Christmas
single.
8. Atomic Kitten 'The Tide Is High'
Deciding that Blondie's version was OK, but not quite up to the punishing
standards the Kitten set themselves, a new section entitled 'Get the Feeling'
was added: 'Every time that I get the feeling/ You give me something to believe
in/ Every time that I got you near me/ I know the way that I want it to be,'
they trilled, evoking three Tesco shop girls making a Tannoy announcement.
9. Candy Flip 'Strawberry Fields Forever'
Ric Peet and Danny Spencer believed that one of the most sublime pieces of music
ever made could be improved by a semi-simian scally whining over a cheap
cymbal-and-snare racket. That it went top five at the height of the 'Madchester'
cash-in craze in 1990 is evidence enough that the drugs really didn't work.
10. Kevin Rowland 'The Greatest Love Of All'
It begins with a voice in the darkness: 'It's over, no more. Mum, mum?' Oh dear.
'Fucking heavy, innit? Let it go. It's OK.' Actually, it's not. This cry for
help is truly disturbing, setting pointedly rejigged lyrics and spoken
self-laceration against a sickly sweet AOR backing. A caring record label would
have left it in the vaults.
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