It takes everything that was fun and spontaneous about the original and wrings the holy bejeezus out of it with overproduction. Kind of like the last few Radiohead albums, actually. Damn, the Police really were pioneers. This remake turned out so bad that the Police, although they did reunite for a tour, have still have not written or recorded any new music together since.
2. Violent Femmes, "Blister 2000": Odds are you've never heard this version unless you were one of the people who owned both volumes of the Grosse Point Blank soundtrack, so if you were blissfully unaware of this remake until now, I am so, so sorry.
The original, of course, is a masterpiece of quickstep folk-punk, the sound of which new indie artists are still trying to emulate today The updated version, however, adds what has to be the most obnoxious, flatulent horn section that wasn't specifically engineered to sound that way by Spike Jones.
The tempo has been slowed down to a lethargic crawl. That, plus the odd clink and clank of extraneous percussion -- and a fiddle out of nowhere because, at this point, why the fuck not -- come together to make the remake sound like something in the repertoire of a terrible lounge act.
If the Femmes ever up and performed this on a street corner for a laugh, no one would believe it was them. And odds are, they'd be justifiably pelted with refuse until they agreed to stop ruining a once-great song.
1. John Parr, "Tim Tebow's Fire: Okay, settle down. We'll get there. First, though, we must acknowledge that, for the theme to a film about spoiled yuppies dealing with various bullshit existential crises, the original song is pretty damn catchy. It almost makes us care about these gorgeous, whiny twats.
And really, the arrangement for the new version has stayed pretty much the same. Hell, even Parr's voice has held up surprisingly well. So why is it terrible? Well, it's a fanboy tribute to famously penitent NFL quarterback Tim Tebow.
If I was Tim Tebow, I'd be really uncomfortable with this song. Is this old guy trying to piggyback onto my fame and thus reignite his career, or -- worse -- does he kind of have a thing for me? Is this crass commercialism, obsessive man-crush, or some unsavory mixture of both?
I'm not being homophobic; If Tim Tebow were secretly gay, he could do way better than John Parr. The first time I heard this, I couldn't believe this was actually Parr himself. I thought it was the work of Denver morning-zoo radio hacks.
But then again, it's got us saying the name "John Parr" again, so that's good, right? Although we might be talking about him in a more positive light if he'd simply been caught smuggling a crate full of child porn into the country.
Did we miss any godawful remakes by the original artist? Leave 'em in the comments.
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