Gregorian Chant Cover Albums
The very idea of gregorian middle age style monks singing rock classics like Metallica's The Unforgiven or R.E.M's Losing my religion .. seems pretty ridiculous to me. Gregorian style chanting was popular hundreds of years ago and unlike a capella singers today, they all sang the same voice. No interesting harmonizations or anything. Why someone thought that would be a good way to cover modern pop and rock hits is a wonder, but the fact these records have gotten popular is an even bigger mystery.
Not surprisingly, the gregorian project is led by Frank Peterson, one of the founders behind the new wave electronica project Enigma. While Enigma was embarassing, it was only 1/10th as embarassing as the Gregorian albums. As cover albums, they're even worse than the mass produced pan flute albums because the cheese and pretentiousness levels are far off the scale. Fortunately, there are less of them, but they've been popular enough to make a total of 7 albums in the "Masters of Chant" series with number 8 on the way. A lot of us europeans have suffered their presence, but hopefully you americans have been spared .. so far.
These are parasites of the musical business. Their success is based almost entirely other people's hit songs which they warp into these embarassing parodies of their former selves. It's a crime I tell ya!
Good gods how bloody awful
edit :
Oops, there are more albums than I thought. There are a few more, including a christmas album which makes for a potential double crime.