'Cover' your Ears! The 10 Worst Bon Jovi Cover Versions of All Time

Bon Jovi's baffling popularity has continued unabated for two decades now, as this weekend's Central Park concert shows, however in our minds, there is nobody more deserving of both a solid punt to the arse, or a safe dropped on them from a sufficient height, than these crap-rock poster boys, whose music is so middle of the road, their tour bus should have its own dedicated lane.

If only we could lace 'em up and kick 'em when they're down, but they're never down, churning out the same Springsteen-lite cacophony year after year.

To honor the band, and also in the spirit of celebrating the worst of everything, we've decided to put together a tribute, of sorts, to Bon Jovi, the world’s most famous Bruce Springsteen tribute band/wimp rock quartet.

Unlike some bands, the core group has remained relatively intact. This has enabled the Jersey boys with Swiss watch- like reliability, to consistently put out unspeakably awful music year after year.

The sole exception of course, the booting bass player Alec John Such (the 'soul' of the group in that he sported soul patch facial hair), because he ‘couldn’t play his instrument’—a requirement obviously forgotten as few of the remaining members actually know how to play theirs (with the exception being David Bryan, the band’s keyboard player, who actually trained at the Juilliard School of Music, and judging by his current gig tickling the ivories with the Jersey dunder-heads, is about as overqualified as the 'Ice Man' Chuck Liddell doing security detail at a Girl Scouts Jamboree)



Their intrepid leader Jon Bon Jovi, of course, is Bruce Springsteen— if Bruce had a tin ear, Meg Ryan’s hairstylist, and penned gems like ‘Tomorrow's getting harder make no mistake, Luck ain't even lucky’ instead of great songs like Born to Run, Highway Patrolman or Thunder Road.

It is not hyperbole to say that BJ represents everything wrong with modern music, or at least, modern horticultural hair band music that became more bankrupt, creatively speaking, than Bear Stearns, and peaked around oh, 1987, unbeknownst to the band.

Bon Jovi is a church-basement rummage sale clearing house version of The Boss. Their ‘rock-lite’ is more sanitized than a trauma burn unit and their Forest Gump libretti induces more projectile vomiting than the elimination round at a chili eating contest. If this wasn't enough, and from our vantage point here it certainly is, their news anchor bobs will guarantee they’re a shoe-in for the next installment of ‘Old Men who Look Like Lesbians’.

The only thing worse than an actual Bon Jovi song, however, is Bon Jovi doing a version of someone else’s, automatically better original. Worse still, would be someone actually COVERING a Bon Jovi song, but to the best of our knowledge, the likelihood of this occurring is about as probable as a meteor the size of the state of New Jersey striking the earth.

Since their own music wasn’t bad enough, here is Bon Jovi doing what they do best—spilling their own REO Speedwagon / Journey / Three Dog Night / Springsteen-lite effluent on some of the world’s most well-beloved songs. Luckily for all concerned, these are so popular that nobody would mistake them for Bon Jovi originals and mislead any future generations. Here, in no particular order, because the pork rendering plant stench emanating from each, is indistinguishable from the other, is our 10 Worst Bon Jovi Covers of All Time:

10. Save the Last Dance for Me, Pomus and Shuman. Among the 'better' song on this list, only in the sense that it's better to have testicular cancer than say, lung. The presence of Willy Deville's voice means fewer verses for JBJ


9. You Were Always on My Mind Willie Nelson. Since his battle with the IRS, legendary Willie Nelson seems contractually obligated to work with just about anyone, and unfortunately this includes the Bon Jovi frontman


8. Rockin' in the Free World, Neil Young. This 'free world' musically speaking, is more like a police state run by a strong-armed military junta


7. Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen. The second piece of Canadiana desecrated by the Garden State purveyors of garden-variety pop rock, that neither pops nor rocks.


6. I Thank You, Hayes & Porter, as performed by Sam & Dave. Debasing the Stax Records legacy




5. Not Fade Away, Buddy Holly & Norman Petty, made famous by Buddy Holly & the Crickets. Contrary to the wishes of music fans, Bon Jovi have been living up to the title



4. Fever Eddie Cooley & John Davenport, made famous by Peggy Lee
A rectal thermometer would fail to detect any heat emanating from this lukewarm version.



3. Twist & Shout by Phil Medley & Bert Russell, made famous by the Isley Brothers and the Fab Four. If the Isley Brothers got wind of this, they'd commit fratricide.






2. Help by Lennon & McCartney. This is beyond 'Help'. If Paul McCartney heard this, he'd pummel Jon Bon with Heather Mills' peg leg

1. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. by Otis Redding, made famous by Aretha Franklin
Bon Jovi's ironic, disrespectful take on Redding's classic