Why do tribute albums always suck?

Metallica's Garage Inc. is great. Usually I prefer the originals, and it introduced me to a bunch of my favourite bands, but one cover that kicks the dreary original's ass is Turn The Page.

However, the best cover they've done is Commando. Bob Rock's backing vocals are the icing on the cake:



Another decent tribute album is Vader - Future Of The Past
 
I still can't imagine thinking that any Metallica cover is better than the original, let alone all of their covers.
 
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Man I can't believe someone just said Metallica's version of Turn the Page is better than the original. They completely fucking fail to capture the miserable spirit of that song in every way. (other than it might make you unhappy that it came on the radio instead of the original version) Their cover of Loverman is just horrific too, now that I'm looking through the track listing. They wish they could evoke the emotion of Bob Seger or Nick Cave.

I hate talking about Metallica in general though so I'm going to bow out on it. Yuck.
 
There's absolutely no way that Metallica's cover of "Stone Cold Crazy" is better than the original either.
 
I really like Maiden's cover of Cross-Eyed Mary, although I don't know if I'd say it's better.
 
It's a pretty big ask for a cover to be as good or better than an original. Presumably a band covers a song because they love the original and that it has some sort of classic status (at least in their eyes). So I don't think covers are supposed to be better than originals - they are tributes.

Covers can be fun to listen to if:

a. You like the original song
b. You like the band doing the covering.

My band used to cover Anathema's 'Deep' when we played live because we loved the song and it was awesome fun to play. There's not a chance in hell it was a shade on the original.

Maybe if bands covered shit songs more often everyone would be going on about how good covers are! As it stands you can't better a classic and I don't think most bands expect to.
 
There are a lot of good covers. Metallica covers tend to sound lazy and often totally unfitting. They usually sound like they're just going through the motions. Some of them are decent, but people like @Gargamel Bojangles that claim Metallica covers are all better than the originals just make me question if they've even heard them.

EDIT: I was always a fan of this Madonna cover:

 
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Dream Theater's Change of Seasons has some quality covers on it. I've also heard them do cover songs live that aren't on their albums. Diary of a Madman stands out in my mind. Some of the Dio tribute was ok.
 
The Dio tribute did have some cool shit on it. I'm guessing the response to this will be negative but my surprise favorite was Tenacious D doing Last in Line.



I can't hardly believe the emotion Jack Black's annoying ass put behind that,
 
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Krow said:
The Dio tribute did have some cool shit on it. I'm guessing the response to this will be negative but my surprise favorite was Tenacious D doing Last in Line.



I can't hardly believe the emotion Jack Black's annoying ass put behind that,
Click to expand...


I liked that one too. I like Jack Black though, the guy genuinely loves metal you can tell. Brutal Legend is an epic PC game also.
 
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