The five worst cover songs sung by actors
We all enjoy a bit of karaoke now and then, nothing quite makes a night like watching an absolutely sozzled HR director clamber up on a table and screech out their favourite tune into a mic while assembled colleagues make a mental note to never let them forget it, but actors have an outlandish sense of entitlement when it comes to singing that it’s tough to replicate.
They will happily put themselves in a recording booth and take their song of choice and record it professionally, sometimes even making a video to go with it, to allow the world to share in the ‘gift’ of their voice.
It doesn’t matter if they can’t sing very well, or if anyone involved in the process might raise a concerned “is this actually a good idea?”, the important thing is that they get to sing, and do it for everyone to hear, forever.
So enjoy these examples of musical egos run amok, the worst cover songs ever sung by actors, from Baywatch supremos to Gladiators to bendy-legged comedians.
David Hasselhoff – ‘Hooked on a Feeling’
Nowhere near as entertaining or as satisfying as the video in which he drunkenly munched a burger topless, perennial German favourite Hasselhoff took a break from running down a beach in slow-mo in shorts in order to make this inexplicable cover of this Björn Skifs and Blue Swede song from 1974, set to a video that contains the most egregious use of green screen in history.
Who knows what he’s doing in it, what the spears are for or really what anyone involved in producing it was thinking? What’s obvious is that it is both terrible and amazing in equal measures.
Russell Crowe (and Zucchero) – ‘Just Breathe’
Like some kind of movie star meets musician version of the film Inception, this is amazing for several reasons, firstly because it’s an awful attempt at a beautiful song by Pearl Jam, secondly because Zucchero looks like Russell Crowe dressed up like Zucchero so you can’t tell who is who and thirdly because Zucchero looks like Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam does now, in the same hat and everything.
Why Russell Crowe persists with the singing thing is anyone’s guess, because he isn’t particularly good at it, and he makes loads from films, enough to never need to work again, and certainly enough not to bother recording this kind of nonsense.
Bruce Willis – ‘Respect Yourself’
Performing an incredibly ironically titled cover version, Bruce Willis took a break from flinging esteemed British actors off the top of tall buildings to take on this classic by the Staple Sisters. For some reason, Willis actually had a pretty successful singing career at the end of the 1980s, but then it was the decade that taste forgot, so that might explain it.
In this, he wisely keeps his crooning to a minimum, instead spending his time cleaning up a fictional bar in which he doesn’t work, playing a bit of harmonica and lying around on pool tables.
William Shatner – ‘Rocket Man’
Awful, awful, awful. Whatever they were drinking and smoking at the start of the 1970s it wasn’t beneficial, and why Shatner decided to swap flying around the galaxy (which he was good at) for a sideline doing strange spoken word versions of popular songs (which he wasn’t good at) God only knows. Actually, it’s a relief he didn’t do ‘God Only Knows’ come to think of it.
This cigarette-puffing cover of the Elton John classic is a painful four minutes that you’ll never get back, so if at some point you Google Stewie from Family Guy doing it instead, then we understand.
Jim Carrey – ‘I am the Walrus’
Whether or not you enjoy this is probably affected by how much you like Carrey’s incessantly over-excited schtick that was literally everywhere in the ‘90s. If you like it, and you like people that literally never shut up and need attention all… the… time… then you’ll probably appreciate this unhinged version of the Beatles classic from Magical Mystery Tour.
Be warned though, it contains all the ‘weird voiced, shouty, playing his own leg for a guitar’ Carrey-isms you’d expect from him, long before he calmed the fuck down and did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is so good that he can do what he likes tbh.
