10 Cover Songs That Make Absolutely No Sense
Music's Most Questionable Fusions.
The idea of covering someone else's material goes back to the stone age of pop music. Even as far back as the earliest singles in rock and roll, bands were just playing the old blues standards that came before them.
Before going into the old songbook though, you might want to make sure that you at least know what you're doing.
Over the past few decades, countless artists have taken to covering songs that don't fit in the same area code as their respective genre. From jazz to rock to country, nothing was off the table when it came time for these artists to pull out some favorites from their garage days. That's not even to say that these are all bad.
While some of them do have some major drawbacks, some of the best songs on here come when they turn the original song inside and out and make it into their own weird sonic invention.
That way, it becomes less of interpreting someone else's work and closer to something that you would actually write. Even though the adjustment period might be a little weird, these are all legitimate songs that actually managed to mesh in the exact right (or wrong) way. These are the songs you know...just not the right group.
10. Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds - William Shatner
Whenever you're covering the Beatles, you're going to need to be really careful. Aside from being one of the most successful pop rock acts of all time, some of the Fabs' classic material has pretty much etched itself into the minds of listeners for years now. That didn't stop Captain Kirk from leaving his stamp on things though.
Then again, it's hard to even consider this a proper cover of the song, I guess. Released around the same time William Shatner was known for playing the famous Captain on Star Trek, his first dabblings with the music world are similarly otherworldy, if only for shock factor alone. Instead of the usual vanity project, this cover of one of the Beatles' more psychedelic songs is much weirder than the original, as Shatner doesn't sing the lyrics so much as he does recite them in front of you. It doesn't really fall into the realm of spoken word either, instead being just the ramblings of someone who sees the lyrics of John Lennon as Shakespearian poetry.
From the moment this song starts until it ends, you're not really sure if Shatner is actually being incredibly reverent to the Beatles' masterpiece or actually just taking the piss out of himself and the song. Either way, the fact that something like this even exists out in the wild is proof enough of how weird the '70s really got.