Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions: Lemonheads’ “Mrs. Robinson”

Bad Cover Version is going retro-90s today!  In addition to purchasing a plaid skirt and blue cords and even trying on a dress made of flannel (I put it back!  I realized I looked like I was wearing a lumberjack’s nightgown, if lumberjacks wore nightgowns), I heard something that reminded me of this cover.

The Lemonheads’ singer, Evan Dando, was the indie-rock pretty boy of the early 1990s.  He dated Winona Ryder.  He dated, but supposedly and infamously did not sleep with, Juliana Hatfield.  Kathleen Hanna wrote a weird zine about his fame.  He appeared in People magazine’s list of the 50 most beautiful people.

And then he became a crack addict.  Good-bye slacker sexpot fame!

The following cover of “Mrs. Robinson” was released in tandem with the video release of The Graduate.  Supposedly, the band hated it and didn’t want it to be released.  But why then shoot a video?  Why record it in the first place?   If they hated it, I completely understand.  I hate, hate, hated this version when it came out.

… On the other hand, I just listened to it, and I don’t find it as offensive as I once did.  Am I just nostalgic for the early 1990s?  Or have I heard it so many times that I have succumbed to its sound?