The strange potency of bad music

A lesson is learnt. Good music, as we hear it, tends to be ours and ours alone. But bad music is everyone’s: we all suffer together. Last month I related the harrowing tale of a recent family holiday in St Ives, where my girlfriend and I, while not buying beach balls in a tourist-tat emporium, happened to hear Neil Diamond’s singular version of the Hollies’ ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. With customary lack of restraint, the old schlockmeister transforms a simple pop song into a full-blooded Broadway show-stopper. You have to hear it to believe it. It drips with goo and phoney sentiment. But it’s so vile you can’t ignore it. My girlfriend and I stood and listened all the way to the end, while our small children created havoc in the multicoloured-bucket-and-spade section.

And I have to admit, it got me thinking. There’s so much mediocre music around – vast oceans of the stuff, pouring out of pubs and restaurants, turned up full on TV ads, blighting films and documentaries and my street in north London (which has become a rat-run for morons with expensive car-stereo equipment) – but genuinely bad music is a much rarer beast. It’s more distinctive; it’s many times more memorable. Put it this way: Diamond’s version of ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ has stuck with me ever since, to the extent that some time soon I may actually be compelled to buy it.

So I opened the discussion to Spectator readers. What’s the worst cover-version of a decent song you have ever heard, by an artist or artists who should have known better? I disallowed records by the likes of Westlife, who mutilate good songs as though commissioned by Beelzebub himself. They know no better, and their perma-tanned managers become billionaires on the proceeds.