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When Covers Become Karaoke (Or Worse.)

By Eric | January 5, 2014 3:34 pm

In which Eric hears a terrible cover of an okay song and flies off the handle…

Every once in awhile you hear something that makes you stop and say “WHAT IN THE BLUE HELL IS THAT?!?!”. I was the unwitting victim of this today, strolling through the music section at Target. As everyone probably knows, they have a couple of TV’s that cycle video clips from whatever albums they’re trying to push. I walked by one this morning, and heard some familiar lyrics…

“But if I told you I loved you, would it make you want to stay?”

…and I’m like, “Wow, Black Stone Cherry? That album’s almost three years ol… HEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYY THAT’S NOT BLACK STONE CHERRY THAT’S A TERRIBLE COUNTRY KARAOKE VERSION OF STAY WHO THE HELL MASSACRED THIS WTFOMGBBQ!!!” I literally stopped dead in my tracks. Nate’s stroller probably could have used an airbag (poor kid, all that *and* he had to hear this too). Come to find out, whomever or whatever a “Florida Georgia Line” is (looked them up and found out they’re also responsible for that insipid “Cruise” song too) decided they would cover Black Stone Cherry’s “Stay”. I’m all for covers, hell, Black Stone Cherry does their share on their albums too (The Yardbirds’ “Shape of Things” and Marshall Tucker’s “Can’t You See” to name two), but this here cover is BAD. Really bad. Really, really bad. Michael Jackson is hearing this from the grave and is like, “nope, you guys are Bad; I can’t hold a candle to this.” Like, Eric going to a country karaoke bar, deciding to mock the entire pop-country genre by picking this BSC song, and singing it in the most ridiculous, obnoxiously twangy way possible bad. If I sang this song like these guys do, they’d throw me out of the bar (into PUBLIC). How this made it onto an album, let alone #1 on the country charts (I fell out of my chair when I saw that), is beyond me. I mean, a cover is usually some sort of homage to the song, not the poster child for every reason I can only stand like 30 seconds of current country music. Yikes.

And honestly, as big of a BSC fan as I am, their version of “Stay” isn’t exactly blowing the doors off either. There’s plenty of better songs on Between The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea (see White Trash Millionaire and Staring At The Mirror, for starters).

But you don’t have to take my word for it (thanks LeVar Burton!). In the interest of fairness, and because misery loves company, here’s both tracks linked so you can do your own comparison. You only need the first 30 seconds of each. Probably less for the FGL version (my ears started bleeding).

Topics: Blog | Tags: , , , , | 5 Comments »

5 Responses to “When Covers Become Karaoke (Or Worse.)”

  1. Amy Jeter Says:
    January 5th, 2014 at 4:05 pm

    Amy Jeter liked this on Facebook.

  2. Matthew Banquero Says:
    January 5th, 2014 at 5:36 pm

    Angry Eric!

  3. Matt Says:
    January 5th, 2014 at 5:57 pm

    That guy’s hair and the name of their album tells me all I need to know

  4. Matthew Banquero Says:
    January 5th, 2014 at 6:34 pm

    Matthew Banquero liked this on Facebook.

  5. Eric Bonus Says:
    January 6th, 2014 at 11:16 am

    Yep. And this is minor compared to some of the petty music things I’ve gotten REALLY angry over. But I need more content for the blog, so those’ll come later 🙂

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