Flavorwire

Way back in the deep, dark days of Flavorpill past — i.e. about a year and a half ago — we amused ourselves over the quiet period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve by compiling a mixtape of the best cover versions ever. Hearing about Mastodon’s hugely unlikely cover of Feist’s “A Commotion” (and Feist returning the favor with her interpretation of the metal behemoths’ “Black Tongue”) has got us thinking about the topic again, with a slightly different slant: what about similarly outlandish covers, ones that shouldn’t work but somehow do? There have been some truly weird and wonderful ones over the years, so we’ve put together a selection after the jump. Let us know if you can think of any more.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard — ”Sussudio”

One day someone will write a serious cultural dissertation about the hip-hop world’s enduring, inexplicable fondness for Phil Collins, but for now, we’ll devote ourselves to the following question: can Patrick Bateman’s favorite song, the track that basically exemplified everything that was horrible about the ’80s, be redeemed by the Wu-Tang Clan’s most notorious lunatic via the assistance of Auto-Tune and a couple of rambling verses about rhymes “so dirty you couldn’t clean them with Comet”? As unfeasible as it seems, the answer may well be “yes.” It’s certainly a whole lot less objectionable than the original, anyway.