sebadoh - pink moon
david bowie - china girl
slowdive - some velvet morning
marilyn manson - rocknroll nigger

The Spaghetti Incident, being the worst album ever, contains the worst covers ever. Aside from that, the most disgraceful wretched covers I've heard in my life have been done by actors. To the fiery pits with the whole bunch of 'em and their atrocities:

Robert Downey, Jr. - Joni Mitchell's "River"
Kevin Spacey - John Lennon's "Mind Games"
Juliette Lewis - PJ Harvey's "Hardly Wait"

A notable exception is Robert Sean Leonard's take on Wilco's "The Lonely 1", which is actually very decent.

Almost every covers of LC songs are better than the original (as heard in the I'm You Fan comp).
Except Tower Of Song by Nick Cave.

Sixpence None The Richer murdering "There She Goes" by The La's.

I love that one.

The Killers - Shadowplay is pathetic.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Year 2000/ All tomorrow's Parties. Cave does some great covers, but these two are not those.

Actually, now I come to think of it, VU might well be the last great uncoverable band. I can't think of anyone that's done a VU song that did it well.

Not terrifically well known, but the White Stripes did a piss-awful cover of Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Others, probably.

Here's a corker I had the pleasure of hearing for the first time recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCE_eA0vmY8

patrick wolf and charlotte church doing when doves cry.

i don't know how i even heard that. s'like a little tiny part of me died that day.

all those damn covers of hallelujah. besides jeff buckley's.

the flaming lips' cover of death valley 69

they also did fuckawful covers of

bob dylan - isis
david bowie - moonage daydream

and a very good cover of dolly parton - jolene

every cover of every bob dylan song ever

pretty fucking much

except sonic youth did an ace job with 'i'm not there'
and the black keys did really good on the wicked messenger
and willie nelson did a good one
and johnny cash did it ain't me babe back in the day

But what about My Back Pages, Mr Tambourine Man and others by The Byrds?

oh the byrds kicked ass


the stones are another uncoverable band

there's some rage inspiring cover of light my fire i've heard before, but i don't know what douche did it.

Brutal in a good way or a bad way? And yeah haha

You mean Willie's cover of "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)"? That one goes very well until the horrendous '60s/'70s melodramatic Latin American protest dirge -um, bestowed upon us by Calexico- kicks in. Much better is his 1992 take on "What Was It You Wanted?".

good taste

aghhh yeah. that's from their first show, i think? i do like how you can hear some girl in the audience go "he looks like a weirdooo."

jarvis doing shot by both sides by magazine. shit shit shit. also radiohead doing it. though that song where they jack the lead riff is actually kind of okay.

Eric Clapton's pointless cover of I Shot The Sheriff that added nothing new at all, only robs the soul and meaning from the original.
Comparable to what Pat Boone did to black music back in the 50's.

Celion Dion & Anastasia (?) doing the cover of "You Shook Me All Night Long"

That happened..?

yes! lol. it's dreadful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULmC8JTTVy0

their dancing doesn't help.

Don't Leave me this Way by the Communards. I only hate this version so much because I love the original so much (by Harold Melvin and the Blues Notes)

Wet Wet Wet singing Love is all Around (originally by the Troggs) on Top of the Pops was very awful as well

That's a wretched atrocity and he should be shot dead. Then stabbed in the face.

Really? I quite liked that. You can't go wrong with that mid-70s country rock sound round my house, you really can't.

I should note I could never tolerate the Buckley version.

I have a tough time with Song To The Siren in general for some reason.

it's quite a ok cover version, 70's all over the place but never really irritating.

I've neaver really liked that song or any of the more notorious covers of it myself. I mean, it's a good song, it just doesn't do it for me.

Metallica covering Thin Lizzy's cover of the traditional Irish folk song "Whiskey In The Jar". James Hetfield, you are not a Irish folk singer, so ixnay on the Gaelic lines. Then again, I'm betting he only knew the Thin Lizzy version and had no idea in was a folk song originally. Their cover of Killing Joke's "The Wait" is more respectable, but it's still not as cool as the original.

I like most of what Soundgarden's done, but I heard a live bootleg in which they covered the Beatles' "Come Together" and it was just awful. Sounded like beer commerical music.

That one too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDw4bCx3icc

I'm surprised no one mentioned the best awful cover of all time:

Bono - Hallelujah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSwQX0Z5mHo

To be honest the original gets on my tits enough without Bono and you reminding me about it.

this isnt a cover version but it sounds like Noel Gallagher decided to try and cover a Guided By Voices song. Noel benefits from the assosciation