I recently heard U2's cover of The Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." I almost threw up through my ears. Aside from being biologically impossible, it also would've been extremely gross. Thankfully, that didn't happen. Instead, I just cringed my way through a minute and a half of the song before having to turn it off. Now, I'm generally pro-cover. I like the idea of an artist taking a song he or she enjoys and putting his or her own spin on it. And I find it works really well for smaller, less-well-known songs. Bad Astronaut covering Armchair Martian is fantastic. The 2005 Believer CD of indie artists covering indie artists is very enjoyable. But I guess the problem comes with covering iconic, canonical songs. Those prove to be uncoverable.

Evidence #1: The Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody." Thanks to YouTube, I found a handful of covers: Elvis, Roy Orbison, The Supremes, LeAnn Rimes, and the Platters. I only made it through to the end of one of them. Place your bets now. Let me say that, compared to U2's monstrosity, they're all better covers, just not great. Elvis has a good voice, but it doesn't quite work for the song. Nor does Roy Orbison's voice. The Platters slowed the tempo way down so that it makes the track kind of boring. LeAnn Rimes does a decent job, but they threw in a couple superfluous country-ish things that I didn't like. So yes, it was The Supremes' cover that I made it to the end of. Diana Ross handled the song well, for sure. But if I'm honest with myself, I would never choose The Supremes' version over the original. The Righteous Brothers own that song.

Evidence #2: The Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together." Speaking of The Supremes... I only found three covers -- thankfully -- which I think says something about how uncoverable this song is. First up: Bobby Darin. There's some weird Grateful Dead guitar effect going on in this version that really turns me off. Next is the Marvelettes who, even down to the name, seem like a replica of The Supremes. Vocally, this is an incredibly strong track -- maybe even better than the original's. But the production kills this song. There's way to much going on. It's an admirable effort, though. Finally, there's some dude named Jimmy Somerville who does a cover. I don't know who he is, but he's all right. Just kind of strange hearing a guy cover the song.

There are probably a few other songs I could use as evidence, but I'm kind of exhausted after looking at all those YouTube videos.