worst cover version I’ve heard in years

The Polyphonic Spree

Someone asked me on Twitter the other day if I liked this.

No, I fucking DO NOT!! Puffy-faced twats. It resonates with as much sincerity and love for music and spontaneity as the following …

Bangs wept. What the fuck is up with these wannabe Christian rock bands? Complete fucking dickheads. That’s right: secretly Kurt was all chirpy and happy and buoyant. Secretly, he always intended ‘Lithium’ to be sung by a bunch of vacuous smiling twats like Phil Collins defecating all over ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ or the Cheeky Girls wiggling their cheeky buns in ‘Touch My Bum’… it’s just that he never quite got round to recording that version. ‘Lithium’ isn’t an unhappy song at all. What the fuck was he thinking?

Listen up. If you think, even for one moment, that there’s anything of merit in the Polyphonic Spree’s horrendously smug, twee, oh-look-at-us-we’re-so-daring-because-we’re-aping-the-bouncing-cheerleaders-in-the-original-’Teen-Spirit’-video, rendition of ‘Lithium’ then you can fuck RIGHT OFF and take your collection of Washed Out and Vampire Weekend watered-down music with you. Fucking fuckwads. It’s like all the jocks at school given free rein to fuck with the music that you hold most precious, most dear and – laughing at you the whole way – proceed to turn it into something as bland as whatever the fuck bland teen soap opera is showing on TV right now. I bet they sell a shitload of music. Probably to Daily Mail readers. The world is mostly composed of shitheads like them.

You want to hear some great Nirvana cover versions? Go here.

And here. And here.

P.S. I wrote this blog entry before I heard the recent Spin Magazine Newermind 20th anniversary tribute album. It’s bad, sure (aside from the two tracks linked to above). Really bad in places. Atrocious. But nothing can match the fucking Polyphonic Spree for sheer smug shitheadedness.

(continues overleaf)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 11:23 am. It is filed under Everett True and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

24 Responses to “worst cover version I’ve heard in years”

  1. David says:
    July 21, 2011 at 11:30 am

    This is fucking terrible, I agree. But ‘smug shitheadedness’, really?

    Pot.. Kettle.. Black..

  2. David says:
    July 21, 2011 at 11:33 am

    Geez, you didn’t so much get up on the wrong side of the bed as you did topple into a firey pit of anger. I love it – even though I am a Polyphonic fan.

  3. mike says:
    July 21, 2011 at 11:48 am

    I don’t like it either, but we still live in a world where Duran Duran’s cover of “White Lines” is easily accessible. So, at the very least, Polyphonic Spree has stiff competition.

  4. Maggie says:
    July 21, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    Polyphonic Spree are jocks? Geez, wish they were at my highschool…

  5. sickcat says:
    July 21, 2011 at 8:13 pm

    That is the most AWESOME cover I’ve ever heard! Refreshing, powerful, uplifting, kicking horns… It gives me goosebumps. So what if it’s a different style and feel. That’s art. And great music is great music. Forget about being cool and open your mind and heart.

  6. Everett True says:
    July 21, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    Refreshing, powerful, uplifting, kicking horns… It gives me goosebumps.

    Wow, these Take That fans are intense, aren’t they?

  7. Erika Meyer says:
    July 21, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    “Lithium” always had a nursery song quality. How brilliant is it to take it to the next level and act out all the lyrics “eensy weensy spider” style? The second clip…if you are ever in a band and at some point find yourself horrified by your own fans? This will put it all into perspective.

  8. Princess Stomper says:
    July 22, 2011 at 5:53 am

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much passion and energy go into a performance that has left me so utterly cold. It’s like television sincerity.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBPZd-V5ZkM

    Wait, I actually take that back: I got more shivers from the autotuned monstrosity of a song I never liked in the first place.

    As for Take That, they’re doing nothing for my nausea.

  9. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 7:31 am

    Here’s an example of cover versions done by hipsters, but done well.

  10. Blair says:
    July 22, 2011 at 8:43 am

    I don’t think anyone familiar with Tim’s work in Tripping Daisy, Polyphonic or Preteen Zenith would ever say he/they are wanna be christian rock, hipsters, smug or vacuous. Cheeky? Sure. But like it or not, it’s genuine and sincere.

    And it’s the worst cover? Really? Limp Bizkit doing “you know you’re right” doesn’t have something to say about that?

    Bite me.

  11. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 8:55 am

    Tripping Daisy. Someone’s citing Tripping fucking Daisy in defence of someone’s work? Bangs wept.

    And if The Polyphonic Spree don’t want to come across as smug, vacuous, wannabe Christian rock then they probably shouldn’t sound – and look – like smug, vacuous, wannabe Christian rock.

  12. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 9:16 am

    @Princess. That’s a great comparison.

  13. Wallace Wylie says:
    July 22, 2011 at 9:19 am

    I resisted listening to this because I thought it would turn my stomach and make me yearn for the eternal peace of the void. You know what though…when I actually listened to it I was surprised by the fact that it was even more terrible than I imagined it to be. That guys voice…………..it makes me think of horrible, unpleasant things. I must now bathe in the blood of the innocent in order to cleanse myself.

  14. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 9:24 am

    He’s the Billy Corgan for the Twilight generation.

  15. Lucy Cage says:
    July 22, 2011 at 9:56 am

    Not even I am going to defend this piece of dim, one-dimensional, wrongheaded shite.

  16. Lucy Cage says:
    July 22, 2011 at 10:09 am

    It’s not the music I have a problem with (what thrill they manage to retain in this performance is ALL Nirvana’s: give it back, you twatty hiptards); or the way they play it (I *do* like Soldier Girl; I like euphoric; I like multi-instrumental mental); or even the fucking robes (Oh god. Oh god.); I don’t even doubt their sincerity so much as their ability to read: no, what it is is especially distilled by the be-cassocked girls ‘rocking out’ in the back there. Rocking the fuck out. And grinning their heads off as if you could entirely dissociate a song’s meaning from its melody and words, winkle it out and chuck it away. No. You can’t. And trying it just makes you look very very stoopid.

    …I’m so happy ’cause today
    I found my friends
    They’re in my head
    I’m so ugly, but that’s okay
    ‘Cause so are you
    Broke our mirrors
    Sunday morning is everyday
    For all I care
    And I’m not scared
    Light my candles in a daze
    ‘Cause I’ve found God…

    Grin on girls, grin on.

  17. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 11:01 am

    Wow. Now that is bad, Ed. But it’s conventionally, expected, mainstream bad … not bad in a Polyphonic way.

  18. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 11:04 am

    He pretends to light the candles, Lucy. He pretends to light the fucking candles.

  19. Blair says:
    July 22, 2011 at 1:14 pm

    You’re god damned right I’m citing Tripping fucking Daisy, their last two records are brilliant.

  20. Scott Creney says:
    July 22, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    A quote from P-Spree singer Tim DeLaughter off his Wikipedia page:

    ‘I found that my prosperity is through the growth of the environment, the trees and stuff. It’s weird—I see, like, the asphalt and there’s a little patch of grass that grows up in that asphalt and cars are going over it daily. We’ve all seen it, and it’s the worst environment for anything to grow, but that patch of grass that’s growing there in the middle of that asphalt with cars rolling over it somehow makes an enormous amount of sense to me. So I find a lot of religion in that as well. It’s an interesting path I’ve been on, but there again, you know, there’s my hope all over again. I think we’re all there in the same place, it’s just a different way of looking at it.’

  21. Everett True says:
    July 22, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    A quote from P-Spree singer Tim DeLaughter off his Wikipedia page:

    You’ve failed KKB101 (Digital Journalism).

  22. TheLastHeretic says:
    July 23, 2011 at 11:45 pm

    You would hope that even the puffy-faced shirt-rippers amongst us would know that those are two Nirvana songs you never cover. What’s the fucking point? Take That went slightly up in my estimation for actually picking up instruments and then I just went straight back to wanting to erase them from history.

  23. Bartosz BIniek says:
    April 7, 2012 at 12:06 am

    Nope Everett. You haven’t heard the worst Nirvana cover yet.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWFyxoTB7NI

    Here you are. You know, there’s a joke about that band: “Bassist made the best decision in his life”.

  24. Penelope Arnold says:
    April 19, 2012 at 11:28 am

    Bangs is dead & no one cares. Music critics? Famous to each other and no one else. Contorting criticism into entertaining creative writing – some sort of evolutionary fuck up. We criticism because we care… so much about our own inflated sense of artistic importance we must hate more than we love. Postulating that you love music? Contradicted by your incidious venom. Using your alleged understanding of a dead rockers motives as a way of elevating yourself higher and higher? Just plain bad taste.

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