Mylene Klass Does Daft Punk?!?!

Mylene Klass is a very attractive woman.

Mylene Klass can actually play piano very well.

Mylene Klass looks good and plays piano in the new advert for Pantene.

But something is bothering Axl as he watches this advert for the first time.

What is that song?

He knows he's heard it somewhere before but he can't quite...

Oh my God, it's Daft Punk.

It's 'Aerodynamic' by Daft Punk.

It's been transcribed for piano and strings.

It sounds pretty awful.

Now, you probably think what with Daft Punk holding absolute hero status in my head that I'm going to go on a massive rant about how this should never have come to pass, but I'm not. See, when it comes to music and cover versions/sampling, I don't really have much belief in the sacred cow way of thinking. People whine too much about bad cover versions in my opinion. If someone is willing to let their music be covered and/or sampled, then why wouldn't people do it if they want to? Someone doing a bad version of a song is hardly going to have any impact on the original, is it? In fact if anything, having a bad version of a song out there gives you a chance to reappraise the good version, and makes what you like about it more predominant.

Q magazine (like anyone takes them seriously anymore anyway) have this month published another one of their beloved lists. It's called something like '15 Cover Versions That Should Never Have Been Allowed To Happen' or something ridiculous like that. In it, they slate, gripe and generally slag off the 15 cover versions they feel should have never been allowed to see the light of day. Factual errors aside (they have a pop at Will Young for his cover version of The Doors' 'Light My Fire', slating the way that he has turned it into some sort of lounge pop hideousness, but completely fail to mention that his version is in fact a cover of the arrangement of the song that was re-written for Shirley Bassey years ago, so Q's dismay is actually directed at the wrong person.), this is just a stupid list. Yes, we all know that Take That's cover of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was dreadful and that Brittney Spears doing 'Satisfaction' was awful, but you know what? There are some damn fine covers out there too. Whatever your opinion of Jeff Buckley is, his version of 'Hallelujah', yes it's pretty dreary, but it really tapped into the essence of what the song was about and reflected it really well. Pretty much the only good thing Gypsy Kings ever did was take that dreadful old dirge "Hotel California" and turn it into something fun. When I saw Stars Of The Lid live at ATP this year, they performed a version of Arvo Part's 'Fratres', which I thought was just breathtakingly beautiful.

So let My Chemical Romance cover Bob Dylan's 'Desolation Row' and let Bill Bailey have his moment covering 'Creep' at the end of his last dvd (and make no mistake, it is a truly fucking terrible cover version). Let Alien Ant Farm cover 'Smooth Criminal'. By all means let's complain about them and say that they are shit because they are, but when people start saying they are sacrilegious, shouldn't have been allowed and stuff like that, I just find it a bit ridiculous. At the end of the day, people doing bad cover versions are only embarrassing themselves, and you can still listen to the good versions yourselves.