A double dose of dreadfulness.
This is going back a few years now, but the memory of this number one(!) travesty still haunts The Curmudgeon. Take two pop idol drones - the winner, and the other one (that the record company wanted to win) and pair them up. Fresh from Will Young's number one cover of a Westlife song, and fresh from Gareth Gates number one cover of the Righteous Brothers song (notice a trend here?) they were paired off, in much the same way as dog owners would mate their respective pooches. Well, it's easy money, isn't it? Especially if you cover a Beatles song. And just to make it even more bankable, get the cute one (that's, you know, not gay or anything like that) to sing an Elvis song. Ker-ching. Instant number one thanks to the pondlife that buy these horrible things.
And, oh mercy, is it ever horrible. Quite simply one of the worst cover versions of all time, what is surprising about The Long And Winding Road is the poe-faced sincerity of it all, and the record labels attempt to trick the listener into thinking this is something special, when in reality it's two whiney puppets slowly beating a classic song to death, all the while thinking their pained, touching vocals add anything to the song, when in fact it makes it more boring than, well, watching Pop Idol.
As for the double A-side cover of Suspicious Minds? Close your eyes, think of someone who doesn't actually like the song but is being told to sing it - THERE. That's what it sounds like.
A deeply woeful single and, in a long, long list of reality television spawned atrocities, this ranks up there as one of the very worst.
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