Commentary

The first time I had my heart broken by a Psychedelic Furs song was in 1986, when they re-recorded their cult hit “Pretty In Pink” to be the theme song for the John Hughes movie of the same name, starring Molly Ringwald. Apparently Ms. Ringwald was almost as big of a fan of the band as I was and thought to use her fame as a springboard to catapult them to the top of the charts. At that time my favorite words were “artistic integrity,” and I was furious when the band took their hazy, punk-influenced ode to a streetwalker and turned it into a bubblegum movie theme (Richard Butler, the leader of the band, would later acknowledge that it had been a mistake, saying, “I had someone a lot more down-market than Molly Ringwald in mind when I wrote that song”).

Fast forward to 2008…I’m sitting in a fast food salad place eating lunch with my lawyer husband, and he’s in the middle of a story about his latest court appearance, when I drop my fork and shriek. He thinks I’m reacting to his tale of woe, but in fact I’m reacting to the worst cover version I’ve ever heard, and of course it has to be one of my favorite songs of all time.

I’m referring to “The Ghost In You,” off of the album Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings by Counting Crows, whom I used to like before this travesty. I assume the rationale for the cover was more or less the same as the Furs’ cover of their own song– they must have been a fan in the 80’s and hoped it would get the Furs a new generation of listeners—but hearing it literally made me lose my appetite, and now I’ve lost more than that. Every time I think of the song, instead of Richard Butler’s wistful version, I’m hearing Adam Duritz’s off-key, melodramatic delivery and feeling like throwing up. I’ve been through childbirth twice now, and I can truly say that a bad cover of a great song is more painful by far.

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