Cover Me Q&A: What’s your cringiest cover song?

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question comes from one of our readers, Micah Goldfus. He wants to know:

What’s your cringiest cover song?

You’ll find his answer below, along with plenty more from the Cover Me gang…

Ray Padgett

I want to tell you there’s no definitive answer to “What’s the cringiest cover of all time?” But then the little devil on my shoulder pops up and says, “Of course there is, moron. It’s this one. Is it even a question?”

For anyone who blessedly doesn’t remember, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, celebrities were doing! their! part! That wasn’t always bad; I remember a lot of fun Zoom reunions of sitcom casts (the Community table-read was my favorite). But that all followed, just a few days into quarantine, this all-star “Imagine” cover. This energy will forevermore be known as “pulling a Gal Gadot” in any international crisis going forward. Get a bunch of celebrities who cannot sing, and have no reason for being in the same video at all, and invite them to croon a clichéd song that can be the epitome of schlock in the wrong hands. And boy were these the wrong hands.

Want hard evidence of how cringey this is? Rewatching it for this blurb, I literally cringed. Repeatedly. In fact, I couldn’t watch it all the way through in one go. Like the most painful Michael Scott moments on the Office, I had to pause every few seconds to take a breath. It’s just too painful. Rich celebrities, safe and bored in their mansions, telling all the commoners terrified they’ll get sick and the hospital will have no beds to imagine no possessions.

I can almost forgive the well-meaning dummies. More painful are the stars you’d think would know better. Will Ferrell! Kristen Wiig! Maya Rudolph! Some of the comedic greats of our time there. You’d like to imagine (heh) they were doing this as a bit, but I don’t think they were. The sincerity is just too strong. The top YouTube comment says it all: “I played this to my dying grandmother who was on life support. She woke up and pulled the plug herself.”

But out of the ashes, a phoenix arose. This travesty was almost worth it for the parody video, where David Cross wrangled a bunch of better (let’s be honest) celebrities to do a parody where they sing… well, I shouldn’t spoil the surprise. Just click it.

Curtis Zimmermann

In the mid-aughts I worked a six-month stint at a record shop, and there were certain customer experiences that left a permanent mark. Once a guy asked me if I knew the name of “that ‘90s band with the bald singer and big tattoo.”

“Uh, Sublime?” I answered.

“Yes, that’s totally it!” He then proceeded to dig out copies of their albums and thanked me profusely, giving my musical knowledge way more credit than it deserved.

I never had any strong feelings about the band. I thought their mid-’90s hit “Doin’ Time” was somewhat decent, but they inspired neither joy nor derision from me. That was until I heard this cringe-worthy cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Scarlet Begonias.” I was at a pool party in the summer of 2023 when it came on some algorithmically generated reggae radio station. At first, I was like “Who is this?” But before I could even identify it using Shazam, I was already turned off.

Sublime butchers the whole thing from the start. Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the words while living in England, and the track is peppered with references to the country, starting with the opening lines: “As I was walkin’ ’round Grosvenor Square.” Sublime, in their misguided wisdom, changed this to “As I was walkin’ down Rub-a-Dub Square.” ‘Cause I guess they were singing to three-year-olds. It only goes downhill from there. They add in three stanzas of lyrics about meeting some strange woman, selling drugs and having a run in with the police, thus killing off the song’s romantic/party vibe.

The band set the whole track to a white reggae groove that feels as though it was produced by a second-rate band that a fraternity has to book when the cool band is unavailable. Many of the Sublime fans I knew in the ‘90s were not Deadheads and leaned more to the punk/ska side of the listener spectrum. So, I imagine this is the only version of the song many of their fans have ever heard, which seems to be the greatest travesty of all.

Patrick Robbins

They made her do it. I can only assume Hilary Duff got strong-armed into covering the Who’s “My Generation,” in an attempt to tap into that sweet sweet Millennial cash, under the guise of giving her fans an anthem they could call their own. What they wound up doing to Pete Townshend’s signature work shouldn’t happen to a… well, it shouldn’t happen, period. All the anger and excitement of the song is sucked out. They trade out Keith Moon for a drumbeat that a triple amputee could play. Most unforgivably of all, they slip in a word that don’t – repeat, DON’T – belong. #IYKYK

I hate to bash someone who was all of sixteen years old when They persuaded her to give this one a go. But the fact remains – They knew what They were doing when They only released “My Generation” in Japan. Second thoughts are your friends, kids.

Special Guest Micah Goldfus

It seems like Barenaked Ladies are fans of Public Enemy – they start out their cover of “Fight the Power” with a few lines from a lesser-known song from the rap group, “Lost at Birth.” If this is the case, that makes this cover even more cringy because then they really should know that they are not the band to cover this song. Lines like “most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps” just hit differently coming from a clean-cut, suburban, Canadian band. The drums are nice, but the pianos add a cheesy edge, as do the variety of hypeman background noises and comments that feel a bit ridiculous coming from anyone other than Flavor Flav.

It’s also an odd choice that of all the lyrics to change, they went with of the song’s most famous: “Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me you see / Straight up racist that sucker was / Simple and plain.” For this line the Barenaked Ladies add characters like Buddy Hackett (was he actually racist?) and Nutty Buddy (which can’t be racist because it’s a candy bar) to the call-out.

And let’s say for the sake of argument that this is not an earnest cover but meant to just be funny – even that would be a cringy decision. Surely someone would have flagged that maybe we shouldn’t get a laugh out of a song that was so associated with racial tension and police brutality.

Ultimately my reaction to first hearing this cover is two questions: “Who thought this would be a good idea?” and “What power are these guys fighting exactly?”

Jordan Becker

When I started college in 1978, I was a big fan of Genesis and Peter Gabriel, and when I joined the college radio station, WPRB, in 1979, I discovered the soundtrack to the film All This and World War II while pawing through the stacks. It’s a collection of Beatles covers, many by well-known artists, that had been released in 1976, and I have zero recollection of having heard of it before seeing it at WPRB.

By the time I heard Gabriel’s cover of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” I had enjoyed at least one, and possibly two of Gabriel’s post-Genesis solo albums. So, I had high expectations when I dropped the needle. And it was not good. Awful, actually. It’s a lugubrious take on the song, featuring Gabriel overemoting with an orchestral backing track.

Plus, while Gabriel was famous for singing in different voices in Genesis to represent different characters, in this song, he switched between his “normal” voice, and a pinched, nasal delivery that is painful to listen to, for what seems like no reason at all. This may be excused, in part, by
the fact that the song was Gabriel’s first release after leaving Genesis, and perhaps he was experimenting with his vocal style.

In any event, I’m pretty sure that I played this once on the radio, and never again.

Hope Silverman

I love Nina Simone. Really, I do. I own many of her albums. I have read multiple books and watched innumerable documentaries and videos of her. I’ve spent an excessive amount of time listening to her old interviews on YouTube. (Sidebar: There’s a particular one from 1991 that rings in my head regularly, where she talks about how happy she is that Clarence Thomas has been appointed a Supreme Court Justice in one breath then tearfully speaks about her thwarted dream of becoming “the world’s first black classical pianist,” saying “I think I would have been happier …I’m not very happy now.”) So yes, like most of us, I have plenty of time for Miss Simone.

I also love Daryl Hall & John Oates. They are one of my favorite bands of all-time (for real).

Why do I mention all this? Well, I just I wanted to make clear that the words that follow regarding Nina’s 1978 cover of Daryl Hall & John Oates pop classic “Rich Girl” are born from genuine disappointment and it truly pains me to say what I’m about to say.

So Nina Simone is responsible for not only what I consider to be one of the most bizarre covers of all-time (her defiantly brutal take of “Alone Again, Naturally” which has to be heard to be believed), she is ALSO responsible for one of the cringiest, most square-peg-meets-round-hole covers I’ve ever heard.

Nina’s version of Daryl Hall & John Oates 1977 #1 pop classic “Rich Girl” has been streamed over a million times on Spotify, so some folks clearly enjoy it. But I will counter with the fact that just because a lot of people like something doesn’t make it good.

There are the usual lyrical tweaks of course because Nina’s gonna do Nina always ( “Rich Girl becomes “Little Rich Girl”), but that’s the least of this cover’s problems. Nina’s “Rich Girl” is bad for a myriad of other reasons. See, Nina and songs that are “confections” don’t mix so good. So unsurprisingly, things go off the rails the second she opens her mouth.

Our queen noticeably trails behind the beat on the choruses, which proceeds to knock the whole freakin’ tune off-kilter. It’s kinda like when an audience is trying to clap along to a song but aren’t quite aligned with the drumbeat of the band. The backing vocals are ridiculously ostentatious. There is an uncharacteristically heinous guitar solo committed by the usually wondrous Eric Gale (that’s right, even the great Gale was off). The bass line is straight out of a ’70s sitcom theme song. Nina’s “Rich Girl” is both anodyne and demented, which is a real achievement.

According to the exhaustive 2010 bio Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone by Nadine Cohodas, the studio sessions for the album “Rich Girl” was recorded for (ultimately titled Baltimore) were seriously fraught. After the album was released, Nina claimed to have no say in the tracks chosen for the album, comparing the experience of recording it to being held prisoner: “I was forced to sing songs… there was no sleep and there was no water.” As Nina scholars and fans know, Nina was not always the most reliable narrator when it came to describing how things unfolded, so I recommend reading the aforementioned book for the full picture (it wasn’t quite the way she described). Still, that doesn’t erase the main takeaway here, i.e. that she was not into recording this album. And if we move in a little closer, it’s clear she was really not into recording “Rich Girl.” It remains a fabulous Hall & Oates song, but damn, it sure was a shit Nina Simone song.

Seuras Og

If you felt the original “Feelin’ Groovy” icky enough in the first place, you wouldn’t be alone. Paul Simon himself is no fan of the song, apart, perhaps, from the royalty checks pouring in after he penned it. In part the hideous time capsule of the word “groovy” irredeemably labelling it as naff, in part the hideously jolly melody and kitschy vocal chorus, I can’t believe many hail it among his peak compositions.

So who better than good old Wladziu Liberace to bury the song for good?

I am sure that wasn’t the idea and, courtesy the spellbinding horror of the performance, he may have just about preserved the song, in all it’s ghastliness, for a posterity way beyond Simon’s worst fears. The performance comes from a Red Skelton TV show of 1968, the sort of harmless Saturday night fare that mixed “humor” with guests, singing toothless sap for their toothless audiences. If the singing and dancing troupe The Young Folk are not vile enough, witness the moment when the star himself limbers in. As lithe as Biden, and with a rictus grin, he re-writes the lyric to reveal his hipster credentials. A brief burst at the piano, which actually isn’t (too) bad, and then a dance sequence (there’s always a dance sequence), and Lee can’t resist shaking a leg or two, the grin still painted on. Can you believe he was only 48 years old? I love it and I can’t get enough of it.

Aleah Fitzwater

Everyone loves The Wiggles- This early 2000 childhood band is known for being grooving, locked-in, and making all-around great bops.

However, in the hands of the group, Tame Impala feels a bit odd… In fact, something about this cover in particular just feels 100% uncanny valley.

According to journalist Alicia Dennis, “Elephant” is “The best psych-rock song ever written about a pompous jerk” (Zimbio). In the hands of the Wiggles, a psychedelic rock song about someone who isn’t so nice just doesn’t have the same effect. The Wiggles feel like a ray of sunshine, not a collective fit to pull off a rocking garage-jam track about being a bully. Take this quote from NME’s Kevin Parker:

It’s not really a song about being a loner; it’s a song about the bully. The guy who thinks he’s great. The jock. You can imagine a real reclusive kind of guy who’s a bit bitter about this guy who thinks he’s great. Which is the opposite vibe of the loner, so it presents him in the worst light.

While the live performance on Like A Version was performed well, the rough-around-the-edges part was lost in translation, especially given the “Fruit Salad” interjection in the middle. Despite the unlikely combination(s), the cover actually ended up going viral. There is a time and a place for Wiggles mashups, as it turns out. And, to quote a comment from YouTube, “This type of stuff is the exact reason I have a playlist called “Forbidden Bops.”

Sara Stoudt

Whether it’s rekindled interest in the characters of aspiring singer-songwriter duo Marnie and Desi specifically thanks to the new projects of the actors that play them (Allison Williams in Fellow Travelers and Get Out, Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s in The Bear) or a new generation finding their way to HBO’s Girls more generally, there seems to always be a steady group of people who love to hate on the character of Marnie. She can come off as self-absorbed, oblivious, and yes, cringey.

In fact, one of the criteria for picking a cringey cover song for this post was a sense of earnestness in the delivery, and Marnie definitely has that. The context of this clip is that her ex-boyfriend, who she has recently reconnected with, is hosting a party to celebrate a business win. Marnie, of course, thinks this is a time to take center stage, making a toast and then delivering this wild cover of Kanye West’s “Stronger.” It’s not the place, it’s not the time, and it’s definitely not the song for this occasion, but Marnie is so absorbed in her song that she is not reading the room. Just a light piano and subtle drum beat as metronome behind her, she is all in for a slow delivery, dropping curse words whose harshness is a dissonant contrast to the sing-songy pitch of her vocals. The cringe deepens even now in this rewatch with the decline in popularity of Kanye.

But we still have to admire Marnie a bit. She really commits, and what could be dismissed as obliviousness just might be a calm sense of self-assurance that we all secretly yearn to have. Keep on blazing your own path, Marnie!

Tom McDonald

The cringe factor in Puddle of Mudd’s “About a Girl” is layered, like a lasagna, but one layer gets all the attention: Wes Scantlin’s failure to sing in key. It’s painful to listen to, yes, but all singers have their off nights. More horrifying is the visual level. It’s hard to watch yet harder to look away as Scantlin’s facial features buckle under the strain. Watch Nirvana’s Unplugged performance of the song for contrast: Cobain is the picture of ease and effortless intensity–audio off, you’d think he’s singing a lullaby. With Scantlin, it’s like he just sat on one of his testicles.

For deeper levels of cringe, consider that Puddle of Mudd chose to release the video. After it went viral and got showered with ridicule, Scantlin only doubled down, posting that the haters were jealous. A couple years passed before Scantlin could finally admit that his rendition “looked and sounded like total shit.”

What if Scantlin had hit all his notes? You’d still have to deal with the cringiest layer of the lasagna: the singer’s mediocrity. He tries to imitate his grunge idol, but with zero personality or feeling of his own behind it. Maybe Scantlin thinks it’s enough to mimic Cobain’s signature vocal tone. (That is a good party trick, but only at a high school party.)

The best thing you can say about Scantlin’s performance, and the worst, is that he gave it his all.

Mike Tobyn

“It’s A Godawful Small Affair…” If only, Barbra, if only.

David Bowie created one of the greatest moments in pop music with “Life On Mars.” It is a broadside against a woman who failed to fulfill one of The Dame’s greatest requirements, the ability to reinvent yourself. The song starts in an unprepossessing suburban front room, indicated by a piano, which could be in any suburban house. Perhaps not played by Rick Wakeman, I concede, but it is smallness that is the issue. Smallness of mind, smallness of world.

You don’t start big, you start small, and then build, showing what can be done with your own imagination, not imagination borrowed from the movies.

The remarkable thing is that Barbra (nee Barbara) Streisand knows all about reinventing yourself. She is a genius who has succeeded because of it. What was she thinking here, then? Is it a response to Bowie, showing that women can recreate themselves? If it is, then it is not clearly stated, or even inferred. Why the petty targets of suburban Britain?

We know why Bowie felt the need to insult John Lennon (alpha male behavior is all too prevalent). Why does Barbra? We know, from her book, there are lots of people that she did want to insult. Why pick on Bowie’s target? Why Disney?

There are so many small things wrong. Why is Barbra’s voice buried in the mix at the start?

When Bowie talks about the Norfolk Broads and Ibiza, he describes the paucity of imagination that leads English people to holiday there in the early ’70s. Why not swap names for their American equivalent (also, and I may be going to far here, I have never heard the letters I-B-I-Z-A pronounced in the way that Barbra does. Perhaps many Americans go with IBUTHA but I haven’t heard them).

The levels on which it fails are so many, the victories small or nonexistent.

One of the things that showed Barbra’s commitment and genius was her willingness to accept lower royalties for complete creative control. This is laudable. However, if you are going to create this, perhaps you should take the cash.

If you have a question you’d like us to answer, leave it in the comments, or e-mail it to covermefeature01(at)gmail(dot)com.

Cover Me is now on Patreon! If you love cover songs, we hope you will consider supporting us there with a small monthly subscription. There are a bunch of exclusive perks only for patrons: playlists, newsletters, downloads, discussions, polls - hell, tell us what song you would like to hear covered and we will make it happen. Learn more at Patreon.