The ten worst cover songs

Do you applaud the ambition or mock the utterly misplaced audacity? Well, the latter, naturally. Duran Duran's mid-Nineties covers album Thank You turned out to be a backhanded compliment: acknowledging their influences (Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan) while simultaneously massacring them. Their tilt at Public Enemy in particular ticked all the required boxes. Pale, middle-class art-school ponces from Brum tackle a rap about the tardiness of US ambulance drivers responding to emergency calls in black ghettos, with predictably ludicrous results: 'Every day they don't never come correct,' whines Le Bon. 'You can ask my man right here with the broken neck' (who's that, Simon, yo' bro' Nick Rhodes?). Shockingly misconceived in both theory and execution.

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King Karaoke is welcome to auto-emote his way through the songbook of Bryan Adams, but Keating shamefully reduced Shane MacGowan's epic Broadway tussle to the aural equivalent of a trip round Asda with his gran. He changed the line: 'You cheap, lousy faggot' to 'you're cheap and you're haggard' because he 'wouldn't want to offend anyone'. He failed.

3. Frank Sinatra 'Something'

Not just because Sinatra would introduce George Harrison's classic as the work of 'two kids called Lennon and McCartney'; or that he was always oddly unconvincing handling material that held any kind of contemporary resonance. It's simply that in the bridge, he's singing to someone called Jack. 'You stick around, Jack, she might show,' he roars. What on earth is going on? And who is Jack? We will never know.

4. UB40 &Amp; Robert Palmer 'I'll Be Your Baby Tonight'

Not Dylan's greatest song by any means, but it didn't deserve this. Above a tinny synthesised beat which displays all the roots reggae warmth of Terminal A at Luton Airport, Ali Campbell's piggy whine meshes with the distracted mutter of Robert Palmer - who sings as if he were double parked, patting his pockets for his car keys - in the most horrific fashion. Nauseating.

5. David Bowie 'God Only Knows'

Bowie rarely excels on other people's material; his talent is too singular, too angular. Here, he takes the most exquisitely crafted meditation on the marriage of spiritual and earthly love and proceeds to sleepwalk through it as though he were reading out telegrams at a wedding. As a pointer to how detached Bowie was from his instincts back in 1984, look no further.

6. M People 'Itchycoo Park'

Never has the claim that 'it's all too beautiful' been quite so misguided. Listening to this is like looking for a distant beauty spot while a sheep repeatedly farts in your face, the rowdy grandeur of the original replaced with M People's antiseptic faux soul. Then there's that horrible foghorn voice which some equate with passion rather than poor technique.

7. Johnny Cash 'Danny Boy'

Criticising Cash these days is akin to dissing Gandhi, but truthfully, the Man in Black only ever had two songs: the fast one and the slow one. Towards the end, producer Rick Rubin would shamelessly prop Cash in front of material which explicitly referenced his desperately failing health. His tuneless stab at 'Danny Boy' is awful: as saccharine and cynical as any Westlife Christmas single.

8. Atomic Kitten 'The Tide Is High'

Deciding that Blondie's version was OK, but not quite up to the punishing standards the Kitten set themselves, a new section entitled 'Get the Feeling' was added: 'Every time that I get the feeling/ You give me something to believe in/ Every time that I got you near me/ I know the way that I want it to be,' they trilled, evoking three Tesco shop girls making a Tannoy announcement.

9. Candy Flip 'Strawberry Fields Forever'

Ric Peet and Danny Spencer believed that one of the most sublime pieces of music ever made could be improved by a semi-simian scally whining over a cheap cymbal-and-snare racket. That it went top five at the height of the 'Madchester' cash-in craze in 1990 is evidence enough that the drugs really didn't work.

10. Kevin Rowland 'The Greatest Love Of All'

It begins with a voice in the darkness: 'It's over, no more. Mum, mum?' Oh dear. 'Fucking heavy, innit? Let it go. It's OK.' Actually, it's not. This cry for help is truly disturbing, setting pointedly rejigged lyrics and spoken self-laceration against a sickly sweet AOR backing. A caring record label would have left it in the vaults.

Making the law

After a long, dark night of the soul, much of it spent listening to Elaine Paige attacking 'Radio Ga Ga' with gusto, I reluctantly decided to ditch the kitsch stuff: Barbara Streisand's singular reading of 'Life on Mars', anything by William Shatner, Richard Harris, Mike Flowers or Gareth Gates - it all went. Because once you go down that road, there's no turning back.

Instead, I wanted artists who genuinely thought they were doing nothing wrong, who may even have believed that they were making significant improvements to the originals ('Hey, betcha Blondie wished they'd come up with our 'Get The Feeling' bridge, eh girls?'), or at least felt they were paying their respects in an appropriate manner, mano a mano.

I suspect Duran Duran applauded themselves for smashing musical boundaries after they'd cut '911 is a Joke' back in 1995, little realising that such boundaries exist precisely to prevent washed up new romantics having a pop at hip hop. Likewise, Keating surely thought his stab at the Pogues would earn him a little gravitas, instead of draining the last remaining drops of dignity from his cup.

So none of those clever covers dripping with irony and winking bad taste. Instead, I've made elbow room for the monumental cock-up made in earnest. We're talking good old-fashioned arrogance; opportunistic cynicism; bad advice; downright awful artistic judgment. It's all here. Sorry Elaine.

Have your say

Which cover versions make you shake your head in disbelief? Who would you nominate for your own hall of shame? Let us know by emailing us at omm@observer.co.uk.

· Graeme Thomson is the author of Complicated Shadows: The Life & Music of Elvis Costello, newly published by Canongate