"Oops, I did a crappy cover"

Oops I did it again

So Children of Bodom released a compilation of covers. Skeletons in the Closet it’s called. I can’t say I heard it, I didn’t, I’m not a big fan of covers and I’m not a big CoB fan either.

But the release of this album brings back the memory of their infamous cover of  Britney Spears’ hit “Oops I did it again”. According to the band the reaction of part of the fans to the weird choice for a cover was negative, “some people were so serious about it, they were just so pissed off” said the vocalist Alexi Laiho in a recent interview, “and I thought it was really funny”.

Some people who take (or at least used to take) the band really seriously were in fact deeply offended by the cover, I remember reading some complains about it at the time. I can understand the feeling, if you’re a fan of the band and they play a dark sort of metal – extreme metal – and sing about dark subjects, you have to take it kind of seriously to get in the dark mood of the music and enjoy it. So when the band comes with an “oh so funny” joke song the atmosphere is ruined, it makes it hard to listen to the band’s music and get into the mood again.

On the other hand I have to agree it’s  funny when people take it as an offense against metal itself, as if metal wasn’t entertainment but an institution with absolute rules that have to be respected, as if it was a sin against the gods of metal to joke about it, as if the real world was the world according Manowar.

Well, I don’t take metal really seriously, but I take music seriously, I like to listen to good music. I think the original song by Britney Spears is a decent pop song, it has a catchy chorus, I can live with it. The version presented by CoB however sucks big time. It doesn’t sound like a metal song at all, it just incorporates metal music elements like guitars and harsh vocals to the exactly same structure and tempo of the original version with really sad results. It sounds bad for metal fans, it sounds bad for Britney Spears fans, it sounds bad in its very essence. It’s bad music.

What’s the point in recording and releasing such a crappy song I ask? Just for the sake of the joke? it could be funny if it was an anonymous version of the song on youtube, but to have it on a cd, does it make any sense?  does anyone really enjoy listening to it again and again? does it have any inherent value that lasts beyond the silly joke? At least for me it does not and I think it’s kind of disrespectful to the fans of the band to deliberately throw out a crappy cover song like this one.