For the fourth straight year-end project I have worked on, a cover song has made my worst list.

HAS IT COME ACROSS TO YOU ALL THAT I DON’T LIKE COVER SONGS?

“Somebody That I Used To Know” – Three Days Grace

Rock
#4 peak (December 19, 2020)
#50 year-end, 9 weeks on chart in 2021

I don’t hate Three Days Grace. I’d say they are one of those music acts, like their countrymate Drake, who alternate between good and bad releases. On their good days, you get “Animal I Have Become,” “The Good Life,” and “Chalk Outline.” On their bad days, you get “Just Like You” and… this.

If you are at all familiar with rock music at any point over the last two decades, Three Days Grace need no introduction. The Toronto post-grunge band is one of those acts, like Shinedown, Seether, or Godsmack, who automatically earn heavy Mainstream Rock airplay for any song they release. I’m pretty sure Matt Walst, Barry Stock, and company could just release a song of them yelling and screaming while getting stuck in traffic on 401 and it would become a top ten song on the Mainstream Rock chart. My next project after this will be for 2011, for which Three Days Grace will be eligible again. But this is a new high point for Billboard’s undying love for the band: a cover song. But my first problem with the song isn’t with the actual song itself, or even that it’s a cover song. It’s with its placement on the year-end list.

This summer, I began accumulating year-end lists of my own using Billboard, in large part because I will be using more songs than those listed on the Billboard year-end lists for the 2000s and especially the 1990s. My first project creating year-end lists for the top 100, rather than 30 or 40, songs were for 1991 and 1992, so I could do my 1992 best and worst lists. In order to get a leg up this year and start listening before the Billboard year-end lists came out in early December, I wrote my own charts again for this year, and came up with my own top 50 for each chart. In order to conceive the charts, I used an inverse formula, where the #1 song got the most points and the #40 song got the fewest points, and so on. I was shocked when I read the official year-end list and saw this song, because not only was this song not in my top 50, it wasn’t even close. According to my rankings, do you want to know where it placed? Tied for 58th. Now, I know Billboard uses other tools in their overall rankings, like streaming or physical sales, but how on earth does a song that was that far short of making the cut on my list make the year-end list, especially when it was only on the charts for nine weeks this year? For reference, here’s the songs that failed to make the year-end list that were actually bigger:

• “Again” – Black Stone Cherry (eligible on my list)
• “The Triumph Of King Freak” – Rob Zombie
• “Scars That I’m Hiding” – From Ashes To New
• “Alone Again” – Asking Alexandria
• “Dead Butterflies” – Architects
• “The Unknown” – 10 Years
• “Built By Nations” – Greta Van Fleet
• “Ruthless” – Nonpoint
• Tied with “Ohms” – Deftones

Yes, I am aware that “Somebody That I Used To Know” was in the top ten for all nine weeks it was on the charts this year. But “Ohms,” which is tied with “Somebody That I Used To Know” on my list, charted higher at #3 on the first week of the Billboard year, and was on the charts for the same number of weeks. Additionally, “Again,” which is eligible for my countdown, was on the charts fifteen more weeks this year, at 24 weeks. How did Three Days Grace make the charts for a short-lived cover song while Black Stone Cherry got short-sticked? Blame it on the boom boom.

But anyways. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know the song I’m discussing here. Since its release in 2011, “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Australian singer-songwriter Gotye has become one of the unlikeliest #1 hits of all time, and one of the all time biggest one hit wonders. In an era where club pop was finally burning into oblivion (thank God) and music began to turn to EDM-influenced pop to replace it, I still can’t believe this was the single biggest song of 2012. But I’m glad it was. As the song’s massive popularity demonstrates, tons of people like this song. And I’m right there with them: in an era where producers sounded allergic to placing real instruments in their songs, it was so refreshing to hear a song led by an acoustic guitar, sparse percussion, and a surprisingly perfect use of xylophone to complement his emotions of emptiness after a breakup. I can’t give too much away, because one day I will be discussing this song when I do 2012, as it was a number one on the Alternative charts as well.

But you know who especially loved “Somebody That I Used To Know?” Matt Walst. At the time of the cover’s release, Walst gushed, “The first time I heard ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ I got goosebumps! This has only happened to me a few times in my life. I remember listening to it over and over and just being happy. Music releases a mood enhancing chemical in the brain that can set good moods and peak enjoyment. Music is truly the best drug!” Walst’s tenure with Three Days Grace has been mixed, and I may be being generous by saying that. It’s generally agreed upon by rock music fans that the band’s best days were up until 2012, when Adam Gontier was their lead singer. And I’d agree with that, since Gontier was by far the band’s most distinctive element. While you could make the element that many of their songs and guitar parts were interchangeable with other post-grunge acts of the 2000’s, once you heard Gontier’s voice you knew what band it was. Now let’s give credit where credit is due. Walst has been able to fit in with Three Days Grace without sounding like a rip-off of Gontier. Additionally, while 2015’s Human (the only 3DG album I’ve heard front to back to date) wasn’t great, “Fallen Angel” and “Human Race” are pure nostalgia for me, taking me back to that summer in Detroit where 89X played the album’s singles on a loop during my daily drive on M-39 and I-96. So I do have a soft spot for some of Walst’s material. That being said, before he was in Three Days Grace, he also made “Porn Star Dancing.” So there’s a problem. Okay, enough stalling. Let’s get into this cover.

Well, the first and most noticeable part of the cover is that it sounds darker and more straightforward than the original, with the Dm-C chords of the original switching to a three chord structure going B5-A5-G5-A5, led obviously by loud, distorted guitars. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s freaking Three Days Grace. Call me up when they don’t have a song featuring a loud guitar in their choruses. Even “Lost In You,” “Chalk Outline,” and “Never Too Late” couldn’t help themselves. But the problem with the song isn’t that it’s generic, it’s that it completely misses what made the original so effective.

Part of why I enjoy the original “Somebody That I Used To Know” is that, in an era where nearly everyone was deep-frying their songs in gruesome synths and drum programming, it was so nice to hear a song where all the instruments sounded well-defined. The guitars were sparse but effective, and the xylophone added a surprising amount of melancholy. Well, Three Days Grace didn’t care about what I thought, because at the beginning of the verses, Walst is backed by a single acoustic guitar that is so muffled, so digitized, that it hardly sounds like an actual guitar. On Gotye’s original, the guitars were able to ring out so you could hear the distinction in notes being played. In Three Days Grace’s cover, the acoustics are so poorly mixed that I can hardly tell when it switches chords. And it’s particularly baffling since the lead acoustic guitar from Barry Stock comes out much clearer just a few moments later. It’s not like Three Days Grace can’t play acoustic guitar, “Never Too Late” had a prominent acoustic guitar. But the verses aren’t all. The chorus comes in and the song switches back to the primary chord progression. When I first heard the song, I figured the song was playing its standard eighth chords that have become a trope for Mainstream Rock, which honestly, would have been better than this syncopated melody. The stop/start melody played by the guitar in the chorus is shockingly sluggish and slow, and brings everything to a crawl. In a song like this, where Gotye uses the chorus to air out his frustrations with his ex, 3DG really needed to add some pep in their step, some speed to their instrumentation. Who would have thought the acoustic original would be faster-paced than the loud rock cover?

And as for the part you all know is wrong… you may remember that in the original “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Gotye brought in Kimbra to provide a guest verse in the bridge. In case you haven’t heard, in the Three Days Grace cover Matt Walst sings both Gotye and Kimbra’s parts. Let’s get into why this is a problem. There is a reason Kimbra is on “Somebody That I Used To Know.” While most of the song is sung from Gotye’s perspective, of how much he enjoyed their relationship and how angry he is that she broke up with him and cut him out of her life, Kimbra comes in to provide the rather damning notice that Gotye was not a good boyfriend and deserved what he got. It adds an extra element to why “Somebody That I Used To Know” is such an effective song: while so many songs about men in relationships focus solely on them and show little concern about the woman’s feelings, “Somebody That I Used To Know” presents us with both sides of the argument: the man is angered that she abruptly left him, and the woman is upset with his conduct during the relationship. So Walst is effectively jumping horses mid-stream. You are upset that she left you, yet she was also a jerk, since you sing both verses? There may be something wrong with your logic, Matt.

And yet, none of this is the worst part of song. The worst part is the chorus, where Matt commits the cardinal sin of covers: getting the melody wrong. At the end of the chorus in the original, Gotye’s vocals rise in ascension from F to A before descending back to F on the “Now you’re just somebody that I used to know” line. I would assume that Matt knew this, but he decided to put in his own melody in this part. In his melody, which is brought down 1 1/2 steps from the original (from D to F#), Walst simply sings a straight descending line over the three notes when it’s his turn to sing the concluding chorus line. Matt, you got it wrong. YOU GOT IT WRONG! YOU FRIGGIN’ CANADIAN!!!

So yeah. In a year where there was little competition aside from the supergroup L.A. Rats’s cover of Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” (it’s okay, I guess), “Somebody That I Used To Know” easily takes home the crown for the year’s worst cover to make a year-end list. When you cover a song, rule number one is to understand why the original worked in the first place. With its sluggish instrumentation, incorrect chorus melody, and non-ideal singing arrangement, Three Days Grace completely missed the point. “Somebody That I Used To Know” is proof that even when you love a song, it’s often best to admire it from a distance. I mean, industrial metal rockers Ministry admitted that they love “Boogie Shoes” by KC & The Sunshine Band, a song I also like. That doesn’t mean I want to hear them growl “I WANNA PUT ON MA-MA-MA-MA-MA BOOGIE SHOES!” over an endless blastbeat and droning guitars. On another note, I can’t believe I just wrote a column where I had to stick up for Black Stone Cherry. The “Boom Boom” guys. Well, bad cover songs do that to ya.

UP NEXT: A legendary pop punk band falls from grace at #4.

SOURCES

Childers, Chad. “Three Days Grace Rock Up Cover of Gotye’s Monster 2011 Hit.” Loudwire 22 July 2020. Web. 30 December 2021 https://loudwire.com/three-days-grace-cover-gotye-somebody-that-i-used-to-know/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

Fuse. “Hard Rockers Admit Favorite Pop Songs.” YouTube 30 April 2012. Web. 30 December 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkCdkusHkjU

IMAGE SOURCES

“Somebody That I Used To Know” single cover from Genius

Image from “Somebody That I Used To Know” music video (Gotye version) from Billboard

Image from “Somebody That I Used To Know” music video (Three Days Grace version) from IHeartRadio.ca