The five worst covers in Reading and Leeds history
When artists play a big festival like Reading and Leeds festival, they feel the need to give the crowd something special. This often results in disaster.
The number of iconic moments that have occurred throughout the history of Reading and Leeds Festival is too many to count. For the decades that this festival has been setting up its stages, excellent artists have had the pleasure of gracing them. Whether they do so as unknowns or established superstars, the music that has emanated from those speakers is the stuff of legend.
When you look back at some of the festival line-ups of Leeds Fest past, you get a feel for just how much of an influential festival this is. Nirvana, Pulp, Patti Smith, Arctic Monkeys, and Bruce Springsteen are just some of the names that have played here. The pressure on artists when they agree to perform is massive, as it doesn’t feel as though they are merely performing in front of the tens of thousands in the crowd, but they are performing in front of the ghosts of festival past.
In a bid to make a name for themselves on this big stage, artists often choose to play covers, giving the audience and the festival a treat that doesn’t exist outside of that moment. Some of these covers have been the stuff of legend, while others are… less so. Just this weekend, we saw two covers which are arguably some of the worst in the festival’s history, and that got us at Far Out wondering: what are the worst covers in Reading and Leeds Festival history?
Well, if you’re a sucker for musical punishment, you’re in the right place, as we formed our comprehensive list below.
The worst covers in the history of Reading and Leeds festival
The Kooks and Rebel Wilson – ‘Gangstas Paradise’
When the video of The Kooks and Rebel Wilson performing ‘Gangstas Paradise’ was shared on social media, the captions were all some variation of “The cover we didn’t know we needed.” Really? I also don’t know that I need a breakfast smoothie made of nails and dog shit. Let’s fire up the blender!
Some things sit in the realm of obscurity because only certain genius minds can comprehend them, meanwhile, other things are considered obscure because they’re terrible. This cover falls into the latter. Why did it happen? Are The Kooks desperate to make headlines because the news story “‘Naive’ is still a pretty good tune,” probably wouldn’t run? This desperate claw at being conversation-worthy is blood-curdlingly cringe and disrespectful to hip hop. A public apology is expected.
Bring Me The Horizon – ‘Wonderwall’
When The Kooks and Rebel Wilson’s cover of Coolio came out, everyone thought that they’d seen the terrible cover of the weekend, but no, in come Bring Me The Horizon to pour some fuel on this fire. During a year where a lot of music lovers can only talk about one band and one band only, Bring Me The Horizon made a shameless effort to capitalise on the Oasis hype with a terrible rendition of the band’s classic ‘Wonderwall’.
Imagine the original ‘Wonderwall’ but really bad, sung with whiny emo vocals and thrashing instrumentation that can only be categorised as “sound” (not to be confused with the Mancunian word for good). It seems that Bring Me The Horizon are the Readings and Leeds answer to the Oasis reunion, if the question being asked is, “How can we take one of the most exciting reunions in the history of music and make it shit?”
Bastille – ‘No Scrubs’
Okay, let’s stop focusing on the weekend just past, as while Reading and Leeds is predominantly a festival which has showcased exceptional music in its time, there are a number of instances where something terrible has seeped through the cracks. In 2015, when Bastille played, they decided to roll out their cover of ‘No Scrubs’ by TLC.
Luckily, there’s no video evidence of this song, but you only need to imagine it for a few seconds to get a good indication of how painfully dreadful it was. ‘No Scrubs’ is a song that thrives in its fun and bounciness, so to hear a dreary indie cover of it where the band are taking themselves way too seriously is incredibly painful and something that, ironically, only a scrub would voluntarily listen to.
Twenty One Pilots – ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’
When are people going to learn that it’s never a good idea to cover Oasis? Yes, this goes out to all you annoying bands in pubs trying to do your best Gallagher impression as well, stop it! At least those bands in pubs have an excuse that they’re not professional musicians, I’m still trying to understand why Twenty One Pilots thought it was a good idea to deliver their version of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’ when they performed at Reading and Leeds in 2019.
The cover is pretty faithful to the original, just slightly more stripped back. The problem doesn’t come from its execution, but from the fact that it exists in the first place. Oasis’s music hits home for so many because of where it comes from, not just how it sounds. The Mancunian twang that intrudes at the end of words, the honesty of the lyrics, it all builds to make something greater than music alone. Having another band cover it, even if that cover doesn’t sound terrible, simply doesn’t sit right.
Foo Fighters – ‘Let There Be Rock’
Let’s analyse the two things that make the AC/DC song ‘Let There Be Rock’ so good. Number one: Bon Scott. Number two: Angus Young. In case you didn’t know, Bon Scott and Angus Young are not members of Foo Fighters, and therefore, it makes no sense for Foo Fighters to play this song, and yet, they did it anyway.
Dave Grohl doesn’t have the right voice to sing this song, he tries to add his grunge-like gravel to the words, but Bon Scott delivers this track so perfectly because of the way the words are relatively sweet-sounding. Grohl’s offering doesn’t portray that. Equally, nobody in Foo Fighters can play the guitar like Angus Young can, and therefore, the guitar solos in between verses fall flat. All in all, this is a cover version that lovers of rock music could have done without.
