This morning I heard what may be the worst cover version ever done. This is not an easy honor to achieve. There are many awful contenders: Limp Bizkit's "Behind Blue Eyes," or The Rolling Stone's "Like a Rolling Stone"--and who could forget Lou Reed's flat "Soul Man."
But I think a strong contender for the most laughably off cover version ever performed will have to be Joy Division's "Shadowplay" as offered up by Las Vegas' own The Killers. The song is from the forthcoming soundtrack to "Control," a film about Ian Curtis, the singer of Joy Division whose suicide in 1980 brought the band to a sudden end after a handful of singles and two albums. The soundtrack with The Killers cover will be released next month.
There is little funny about Joy Division's music or the life of Curtis. But there is comic relief in The Killers cover of "Shadowplay." It is almost hard to blame The Killers. The sound is exactly what you would imagine, and the lack of imagination is part of the inadvertent humour. Clearly, a perfect failure to fit band to song. The gloomy dead-end world of '70s Manchester as interpreted through a Las Vegas boomtown lens. The verse that begins with Curtis moaning "In the shadowplay acting out your own death" and ending "But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left" finds Killers' signer Brandon Flowers able to do more than stare--he adds a joyous yelp. To complete the undermining of the downer words, Flowers has added a silly woo-woo harmonic breakdown to give the song a happy vocal of an ending not on the original. At least the lyrics otherwise are still the ones from Joy Division's song. Otherwise, the sheer exuberance that The Killers bring to "Shadowplay," a morbid, death-haunted song, provides such a total disconnect to Joy Division's sound, a fan might not recognize "Shadowplay." The Killers' take on Joy Division comes closer to Duran Duran mimicry from the era of "Hungry Like the Wolf." To be this wrong in every way requires a certain genius. The Killers "Shadowplay" is guaranteed to make even the gloomiest darksider goth smirk.