Dreadful song...

I thought one of the points of a cover version of an old song was to either recreate the original in some way, or to do it better (or perhaps to cash in without much effort) but yesterday I heard for the first time the mauling that Ronan Keating & "not Cat Stevens anymore" (his new name escapes me right now) gave to the already diabolical song Father and Son. The original was syrupy tat but the cover was just shocking. "Not Cat" clearly cant sing anymore so just spoke his way through the record and to be honest Ronan didnt sound all that interested. And to think this was nearly Xmas number 1......