They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So you’d figure downright copying a song would be akin to getting down on your knees and slapping a good old fashioned knob gobbling upon the source material. These terrible perversions of music say otherwise.

Miley Cyrus covers “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Russ: What did you think of the original “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” by Nirvana, Patrick?

Pat: Well, it’s basically one of the most influential songs of all time. Started a revolution. Defined an era.

Russ: And when you need “influential,” and “era defining,” in this day and age you go to one person. And one person only. And so it’s only fitting that Miley Cyrus has been passed such a prestigious crown and allowed to pay homage to such an indelible number, right? (Editor update: Keep in mind this was before she shook her aberrant looking hindquarters at the 2013 VMAs and stumbled around naked with a sledgehammer in the “Wrecking Ball” music video.)

Pat: No. Just no. Here, Miley Cyrus makes an open mockery out of everything Kurt Cobain ever stood for. She could not have disgraced his legacy more offensively if she personally spit onto his tombstone. The best part is, she’s doing it totally unwillingly, since, was she even alive when Nevermind came out? She should just go back to smoking salvia and taking naked pictures of herself on her phone. That’s what she gets paid to do, right?

Russ: Miley’s singing here sounds like rival gangs of lean shouldered, feral cats engaged in war within the perimeters of some austere alleyway, all of them enmeshed in a screeching wheel and nameless ballet of battle, their caterwauls and mewls of agony cannonading off all through the night. But hey, she’s just being Miley!

Sam’s Song “The Touch”

Russ: This song is a remake of the original from 1986. You might remember it accompanying Optimus Prime in the animated Transformers movie as he killed the s--t out of evil robots, and decades later in Boogie Nights as Marky Mark sans Funky Bunch lecherously groped himself.

Here Stan Bush relives his glory days by belting out the lines that made him (not very) famous 25 years ago in a leather jacket three times too small while the worst special effects ever constructed by some five dollar bargain-basement editing program prance around him the entire time, pitiably contrasted with clips from the expensively constructed CGI Transformers of the movies.

But wait, why does the once uplifting and energetic anthem of the 80s sound so downright morose and in the vein of some third rate Linkin Park? And who the hell are these other guys? Only the most non-synergic band of strange bedfellows ever lumped together in what had to have been five minutes before the music video was filmed, that’s who! (The 58 year old lead singer, the rapper whose appearance can be summed up as middle aged uncle dressed as a Jersey Shore character for Halloween, and then extremely dopey looking guitar player.)

Bonus points for those of you who can stomach the atrocity to 3:00 in, where each member of the ragtag trio pauses during a break in the singing/terrible rapping to gaze at the camera with the most maudlin expressions they can muster; Stan teary-eyed, lamenting the depths to which his career has plummeted; Uncle Guido with head hung in shame, silently condemning everyone who lied to directly to his face by telling him he had any semblance of conceivable talent; and then dopey guitar player incongruously smirking and nodding like a goddamn serial rapist for no apparent reason; or perhaps just relishing in the fact that anyone watching just lost those precious 4 minutes and 11 seconds. (Sadly, I watched this video three times for the sake of the article.)

Pat: …the f--k is this? The juxtaposition of the wailing singing with the horrific rapping is such an awfully executed dichotomy that I really thought once the song devolved into the “rap” that a pop-up ad just infiltrated my computer telling me I was the 6900th visitor and I had just won a free trial of hemorrhoidal cream. Also, the dude actually singing sounds like Cartman busting out a ballad while taking a dump.

Some guys singing “Final Countdown”

Russ: You know when you’re walking down the street and you come across an old chalky dog turd just baking there on the sidewalk? And you think to yourself, “God there’s few things more foul-looking than that. But at least that decaying pile of stink will one day serve some purpose in nature?”

Pat: Um, I guess man. So what exactly, if anything, does that have to do with this? Oh, I know. Some kind of feces-based analogy that equates this song to a dried up piece of s--t, right?

Russ: No, not really. Just was thinking about how it happened to me other day. Weird what you think of when the mind wanders, idn’t it?

Pat: Uh, sure. Anyways, this sounds like a couple of seven-year-olds tooling around on a 20 dollar Casio. Or maybe being forced to perform for the twisted pleasure of their creepy Uncle Jasper who isn’t legally supposed to even be around them. Either way, this is tagged “Worst Cover Ever”, so I guess going into it I shouldn’t have been expecting Beethoven. Or even Europe.

4. “Hooked on a Feeling,” by David Hasselhoff

Russ: No. The Hoff’s voice and the video itself are f-----g gold and I won’t allow it to be disparaged in any way, shape, or form. If only more people had the foresight to watch this video before making poor life decisions, the world would be that much closer to a state of utopian bliss. This song in all its upbeat purity could prevent wars, cure diseases, and feed the homeless.

Pat: Agreed. I only wish that this was the first song I had to listen to, so that it could have given me the peaceful serenity to calm me from the impending shitstorm I was about to subject my ears to. Moving on.

“Come With Me,” by Puff Daddy

Russ: Befitting that this was on the Godzilla soundtrack, as it follows the general theme of the movie in that it takes a steaming s--t all over the legacy of an icon. No clue how P. Diddy somehow swindled Jimmy Page into playing or appearing in the video, but my best bet is some sort of blackmail or voodoo curse. (Coincidentally, how Puff Daddy became famous in the first place.)

Pat: A lot of people hate this song because it doesn’t do the original version any justice. I hate this song because it sucks.

Also, this is at about the fourteenth minute in Puff Daddy’s (I mean P. Diddy…I mean Diddy…I mean Diddy Dirty Money…ahh, who cares.) fifteen minutes of fame, so producers must have been literally throwing money at him so fast he didn’t even know how to use it. Tell me how this music video makes one ounce of sense? A bus crashing headfirst into what seems to be a thirtieth story loft? Diddy getting into a hilariously poorly created CGI elevator at almost the top of the building and then seemingly blasting off the speed of an aircraft carrier up to floors that moments ago didn’t exist, and then inexplicably soaring above our earth’s atmosphere amongst doves (that for some reason are chilling up there)? All of this culminating in a strange hybrid gospel/hardcore show with a gigantic effigy of Jimmy Page in Times Square?

The 90’s, man.

“Behind Blue Eyes,” by Limp Bizkit

Russ: The fact that Fred Durt’s singing voice sounds like absolute s--t smeared along the mouth of a constipated bullfrog isn’t even what gets me in this song.

It’s Poor Halle Berry. First she pretended to have consensual sex with the vulturine looking Billy Bob Thornton in Monster’s Ball, and here in this video was forced to smooch up on Fred Durst’s strange porcine lips. Arguably one of the most beautiful women of our generation coerced into abhorrent juxtaposition with two disheveled looking urchins of society whose genitalia have no right of being even within a hundred feet her.

If I were Halle Berry I would have rather nicely sipped the smokecolored water leaking from the rotted end of a gutter pipe in some sick parody of an ice luge than swap spit with these derelicts. She’s either the best actress in the world or just a closet masochist.

Pat: I’m sorry. I can’t even watch this. After about eight seconds my douchebag-sense started reaching critical levels. I’m afraid of what will happen if I continue.

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