Worst song, nay, worst THING ever...

And that would be the god-awful cover of John Lennon's Imagine, repurposed for the gloom-metal crowd by Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan's side project A Perfect Circle (their motto: "One shitty band wasn't enough!"). Somewhere between the monotonous, dirge-like singing and the de-tuned melody, they've somehow made Imagine depressing.

Let me restate that, because I don't think I've quite nailed it: This asshat took a song about hope and peace and made it sound DEPRESSING. When it's over, I don't feel like imagining a world without differences so much as a world without A Perfect Circle, or failing that, a world where I'm deaf.

Words cannot describe how utterly terrible this song is - you can only compare it to other things equally soul-destroying. I would have to say it's the musical equivalent of a forced prison salad-tossing, or perhaps it's the hunter who killed Bambi's mother. By the time Maynard James Keenan (hmm, a guy that goes by three names...just like Mark David Chapman!) is finished intoning "And the world will live as one" as if he's reading it off of a tombstone, I actually found myself wanting to vote Republican.

I was hoping that once Madonna had covered it we could officially close the book on covering songs that can't be improved on, but now I see that we at least need to call for an international moratorium on covering Imagine. Violation of this edict will result in forfeiture of all possessions (I wonder if we can?).

The upshot to all this is for 311 fans, who will find that that band no longer holds the title for World's Worst Cover for their abominable faux-ska version of "Lovesong" by The Cure, which was merely the musical equivalent of Pauly Shore's Bio-Dome.