Cover These Songs...With Dirt

When he hears the cover, only Alice cries

In the past few weeks, two covers of songs have particularly annoyed me to the point where I need to vent.

The first song, which I have heard WAY too much, is a slow, painfully bad version of Alic Cooper's classic "School's Out" that was used in advertisements for Staples. The song is slowed down to a soporific crawl with synthesizer swirls, and uses those incredibly annoying, not-even-cool-for-two-minutes affected/affectless vocals from a female I have not yet been able to identify. You have to be very talented and creative to take on this over-the-top, let-it-all-out hard rock anthem and make something good, interesting and fun of it, and the performer and producer do neither.

Irony, shmirony; this interpretation says nothing and does nothing for the song or performer, the identity of who I have yet to discover despite several attempts.

Kurt still feels the pain of the new version

The other painful cover I started hearing a few days ago was that of Nirvana's "Come As You Are," again by an unknown female singer. This version of the song is being used as part of a campaign by the Lifetime Network for several programs, including "Witches of East End," which is what I saw and heard when I was subjected to this dreck. In this cover, a female sings the song at a dirge-like pace, similar to the original, but with none of the emotion, urgency or intensity of the late Kurt Cobain. Quite frankly, I wonder if anyone at Lifetime actually listened to the lyrics.

On top of really disliking this version of "Come As You Are," I am annoyed that Lifetime all but forced me to show way more interest in this program than I had planned (zero), and I hope someone makes some money off of this who needs it (I remain confused over the control and licensing of Cobain's/Nirvana's music, as in how much goes to Courtney Love, Dave Grohl and/or Krist Novoselic).