sebadoh - pink moon
david bowie - china girl
slowdive - some velvet morning
marilyn manson - rocknroll nigger

The Spaghetti Incident, being the worst album ever, contains the worst covers ever. Aside from that, the most disgraceful wretched covers I've heard in my life have been done by actors. To the fiery pits with the whole bunch of 'em and their atrocities:

Robert Downey, Jr. - Joni Mitchell's "River"
Kevin Spacey - John Lennon's "Mind Games"
Juliette Lewis - PJ Harvey's "Hardly Wait"

A notable exception is Robert Sean Leonard's take on Wilco's "The Lonely 1", which is actually very decent.

Almost every covers of LC songs are better than the original (as heard in the I'm You Fan comp).
Except Tower Of Song by Nick Cave.

Sixpence None The Richer murdering "There She Goes" by The La's.

I love that one.

The Killers - Shadowplay is pathetic.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Year 2000/ All tomorrow's Parties. Cave does some great covers, but these two are not those.

Actually, now I come to think of it, VU might well be the last great uncoverable band. I can't think of anyone that's done a VU song that did it well.

Not terrifically well known, but the White Stripes did a piss-awful cover of Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Others, probably.

Here's a corker I had the pleasure of hearing for the first time recently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCE_eA0vmY8

patrick wolf and charlotte church doing when doves cry.

i don't know how i even heard that. s'like a little tiny part of me died that day.

all those damn covers of hallelujah. besides jeff buckley's.

the flaming lips' cover of death valley 69

they also did fuckawful covers of

bob dylan - isis
david bowie - moonage daydream

and a very good cover of dolly parton - jolene

every cover of every bob dylan song ever

pretty fucking much

except sonic youth did an ace job with 'i'm not there'
and the black keys did really good on the wicked messenger
and willie nelson did a good one
and johnny cash did it ain't me babe back in the day

But what about My Back Pages, Mr Tambourine Man and others by The Byrds?

oh the byrds kicked ass


the stones are another uncoverable band

there's some rage inspiring cover of light my fire i've heard before, but i don't know what douche did it.

Brutal in a good way or a bad way? And yeah haha

You mean Willie's cover of "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)"? That one goes very well until the horrendous '60s/'70s melodramatic Latin American protest dirge -um, bestowed upon us by Calexico- kicks in. Much better is his 1992 take on "What Was It You Wanted?".

good taste

aghhh yeah. that's from their first show, i think? i do like how you can hear some girl in the audience go "he looks like a weirdooo."

jarvis doing shot by both sides by magazine. shit shit shit. also radiohead doing it. though that song where they jack the lead riff is actually kind of okay.