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    Originals spoiled by a cover version

    I heard Percy Sledge's When A Man Loves A Woman this evening. Realised I dislike this song quite intensely now.

    It's all Michael Bolton's fault.

    So yeah, that sort of thing. We've probably done it before, and probably not long ago.

    #2
    Wild Horses by the Stones. Spoiled in that it's really quite good.

    EDIT: Yeah, I know about the chronology, but it's a cover version. I think.

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      #3
      In a way. The Stones recorded it first, but the Flying Burrito Brothers released their version first.

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        #4
        Funny enough, as I saw this thread, I was playing Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" to remind us that it's a lovely song, no matter what the Hyundai ad with Maroon 5 makes me feel.

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          #5
          The Day Before You Came, (Blancmange), as noted on Chart Music.

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            #6
            Hallelujah would have to be the one, spoiled by about a hundred dire cover versions.

            But usually, a bad cover version tends to bring me closer to the original. It's My Life would be one example. If I ever have the No Doubt version inflicted on me in public, I just go home and put the Talk Talk one on, and all is well again.

            I can't bring myself to dislike Blancmange's The Day Before You Came. To me, it's just likeably silly, where the original was melancholic with a little hint of menace. The lyrical switch from Marilyn French to Barbara Cartland does just about say it all, mind.

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              #7
              Blancmange's Day Before You Came was 'adequate', sure, but I couldn't see the point in their covering the song so soon after the original - and at a time when they were charting regularly with their own material. (And, sure enough, it pretty much stopped that aspect of their career in its tracks.)

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                #8
                I Will Always Love You—Dolly Parton

                Robson & Jerome's cover of Up on the Roof brings me out in hives.

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                  #9
                  On that subject, I recall a review of Gareth Gates's attempt at Unchained Melody as being 'so misread as to make Robson & Jerome's version sound definitive'.

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                    #10
                    Leona Lewis doing the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris”. And Ronan Keating.

                    I wouldn’t mind but it was the first dance at my wedding to Mrs P. And we end up with a fucking X Factor singer warbling “And I don’t want the world to see me”. Fuck. Off.

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                      #11
                      Why didn't you veto it?

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                        #12
                        A bedroom group called Undercover did a couple of covers of 70s songs back in the early-90s. Their Never Let Her Slip Away will only ever remind me of my first crush (Emma, if you're out there darlin'...*) and there's a brilliant clip on YouTube of them singing it/miming to it on a Brazilian TV show surrounded by a bevy on bikini-clad beauties. As he's adjusting the mic stand, you can see the singer thinking "How the F**K did this happen?"

                        However, their Baker Street strips the song of Gerry Rafferty's melancholy. And so because I grew up in the early-90s, it's the Undercover version that sticks with me.


                        *Actually, I know you're out there. We bumped into each other in the White Lion a while back.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                          Why didn't you veto it?
                          Should have made it clearer. We absolutely, definitely, did our first dance to the Goo Goo Dolls original.

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                            #14
                            Both Madonna and Jimmy Nail inflicted fatwah worthy indignities on "Love Don't Live Here Anymore" but I refuse to let them drag the original down. They couldn't ruin it.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Toby Gymshorts View Post
                              Wild Horses by the Stones. Spoiled in that it's really quite good.

                              EDIT: Yeah, I know about the chronology, but it's a cover version. I think.
                              Oh, I thought TG meant the excellent Stones song has been ruined by Susan Boyle's annoyingly-actually-quite-good cover.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by Giggler View Post
                                A bedroom group called Undercover did a couple of covers of 70s songs back in the early-90s. Their Never Let Her Slip Away will only ever remind me of my first crush (Emma, if you're out there darlin'...*) and there's a brilliant clip on YouTube of them singing it/miming to it on a Brazilian TV show surrounded by a bevy on bikini-clad beauties. As he's adjusting the mic stand, you can see the singer thinking "How the F**K did this happen?"

                                However, their Baker Street strips the song of Gerry Rafferty's melancholy. And so because I grew up in the early-90s, it's the Undercover version that sticks with me.
                                I remember them well, too. The thing was, although I already knew the original of Baker Street I'd never heard of Never Let Her Slip Away before the Undercover, erm, cover, so I'm not sure I even realised it wasn't an original for a few years. In my head I still hear their "...slip away...slip away" version even now, in fact.

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                                  #17
                                  Emerson Lake and Palmer completely ruined Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man for me.

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by Disco Child Ballads View Post
                                    Emerson Lake and Palmer completely ruined Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man for me.
                                    Quite liked it myself. Aaron Copland was positive about it too.

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                                      #19
                                      Undercover were the 90's. Never fucking off the jukebox in gay bars in London. And annoyingly catchy (both of them). "Baker Street" was of course, unsurprisingly awful.

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                                        #20
                                        There was a lot of this stuff about in the early nineties - that bloody KWS re-make of Please Don't Go was another. It wasn't at number one for anywhere near as long as Bryan Adams or Wet Wet Wet - but it certainly felt like it.

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                                          #21
                                          The Beatles Twist and Shout obliterated The Isley Brothers version. I've never forgiven them for that.

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
                                            Oh, I thought TG meant the excellent Stones song has been ruined by Susan Boyle's annoyingly-actually-quite-good cover.
                                            The Sundays did a cracking version of Wild Horses, as it happens,

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                                              #23
                                              Not me, but for younger Xers and Millenials many covers spoiled Tear for Fears' Mad World, for example this painful Alanisish number from a Canadian "singer-songwriter" type:



                                              A good example of musical horizons being stunted by MOR commercial interpretations.

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by Amor de Cosmos View Post
                                                The Beatles Twist and Shout obliterated The Isley Brothers version. I've never forgiven them for that.
                                                The Great Bert Berns who wrote it had no trouble forgiving them though, having built a mansion with a guitar shaped swimming pool from the royalties.

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                                                  #25
                                                  The Beatles version totally eclipses the good Isley Brothers' cover.

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