10 Worst Hard Rock Cover Songs Of All Time
9. Happiness is a Warm Gun - U2
No other rock band had a career second act quite like U2. At a time when the biggest acts of the '80s fell apart in the wake of the grunge revolution, these Irish legends' experimentation on the album Achtung Baby put them back on top, with songs that were as earnest as they were artificial. The new direction looked pretty good on them, but doing the same schtick over and over gets a little old after a while.
Towards the end of the decade, Pop was the moment most diehard U2 fans jumped ship, with songs that sounded like Bono half-assing songs through MIDI software. It's bad enough that we had to put up with this for over an hour, but things went to a different level once we heard the covers on the B-sides.
It's already pushing it when trying to take on a Beatles song to begin with, and yet Bono saw no problem taking a clubbing to Happiness is a Warm Gun. For its entire runtime, one of the Fab Four's most artistically adventurous songs is drowned out in electric noise and Bono sounding like he's singing from inside an electronic dungeon. Making a bad album is already questionable, but please don't extend your new artistic vision into other people's songs.