A song murdered by someone.

I really love bad covers, they are fun to listen to.  Nazareth's "Love Hurts" falls in that category.  I particularly love hearing Shonen Knife cover "Top of the World, "  and maybe even Dolly Parton doing "Stairway to Heaven."

Wow! a worse version of "Africa" than the original; I would have never thought that was possible.  What next, a bad cover of "We Built This CIty?"  Actually I found one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JphLIPqhpg&list=RD3JphLIPqhpg&start_radio=1

Don't forget Shatner's "Mr. Tambourine Man," another amazing cover.  This, and a bunch of other aweful covers can be found on a CD called "Golden Throats."  That album included Sebastian Cabot doing "It Ain't Me Babe).  That cover prompted me to find the original vinyl which is a whole album of him reciting the lyrics to Bob Dylan songs to a musical accompaniment.

Another album worth hunting down, is "No More Mr. Nice Guy"--Pat Boone doing covers of heavy metal hits in a sort of big band style.  

I don't know if "covers" include someone singing standards, but my all time favorite tasteless, crazy, brilliant and wonderful cover is Jackie Wilson singing "Danny Boy."  

Another cover that has some cheesy parts, but is utterly amazing and wonderful--so it is bad and it is good at the same time--is Lester Bowie (jazz trumpeter) doing "The Great Pretender."  

I don't know if great songs can ever be murdered by a cover--they survive and the cover just makes one appreciate the artistry of the original artist even more.  I like almost all covers I hear of songs I like, but my least favorite form of covers, categorically speaking, involve opera singers doing operatic covers of popular songs.  I bought, and then only listened once, to Kiri Te Kanawa doing hits from "South Pacific;" it was funny, but not that funny that I wanted to hear it again.

The original version of "Unchained Melody" is so superior that the Righteous Brothers cover shouldn't be played? 

"No Mr. Nice Guy," the Pat Boone album of metal done his way is a HIGHLY coveted album and hard to get without paying pretty big bucks.  It is really quite a laugh listening to that one.  

I have not heard the "House of the Rising Sun" mentioned above, but any version will find tough competition from Andy Griffith's version of that song.  

As long as you are not in danger from laughing to death, you should then move on to Mae West singing "Twist and Shout."

A great song is open to a lot of different interpretations/versions.  I think "Unchained Melody" is a great song.  There are more than 1500 recorded versions of that song, and MANY are worthy of being played even if the Righteous Bros. version is generally regarded as the standard bearer.  I have a number of the Righteous Bros. albums, including original release vinyl, but, that does not mean I don't like other versions of their biggest hit.  For example, I frequently listen to this version from 1960:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV8XwoIGo5M

I love the Concrete Blonde "Everybody Knows."   I have it on the soundtrack album for "Pump Up the Volume."  There are LOTS of terrific covers of Leonard Cohen songs.  Mostly because the songs are well written, but it is also probably the case that his performance will not fit everyone's taste, so his version does crowd out contenders.

I particularly like an R.E.M. cover of "First We Take Manhattan."  

I mentioned earlier Jackie Wilson's "Danny Boy."  I cannot begin to express how much of a contradiction is that performance--overwrought, corny, excessively showy and cheesy, and it doesn't help that the song is a tired warhorse--but, I cannot think of too many more amazing vocal demonstrations than this performance:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS9xhiudphU

NPR use to have a regular, very short, program where the host looked for truly awful recordings.  Some of them were collected and offered for sale on CDs (I don't know about current availability).  I never got them, even though I am a connoisseur of terrible covers.  Some particularly notable examples include a cover of a Beatles song by the sitting president of a South American country; the song so embarrassed the populace that a recall election was held and he was thrown out of office.  Another one, which I thought was really amazing was Bob Dylan and Tiny Time doing a duet (they were good friends) of "I Got You Babe."

By the way, I bought that Dolly Parton CD just to have her version of "Stairway to Heaven."

How do people react when a favorite is completely re-imaged as something else?  How about this version of Stairway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTCYLbFxTpI