There's a series of albums in which "punk" bands cover non-punk music or just treads outside of the genre in general.

Occasionally, there's a hidden gem of a song in these albums, but for the most part the bands they use are shitty and not even punk. And I don't know who is in charge of these, but not only do the bands they choose suck, they also select some of the worst examples of the genres they are covering.

The latest example is Punk Goes Crunk - This could've been pretty fun, but it was unbelievably craptacular. The bands are the worst collection yet - they could do a "punk goes" album with real bands covering these assholes. The songs they pick are like 10% sensible - the rest of it leaves me scratching my head. Why the theme song to Men in Black? It's not relevant in 2008 and it was never a "crunk" song or a hot rap song.

Anyone else listen to these? Disappointed as I am?

Check out Me First & the Gimme Gimmes.

I think that the Punk goes POP is good, especially Send Me An Angel and Bye Bye Bye (but I really like Further Seems Forever). I also like the cover vesion of Dead Man's Party from Punk goes 80's.

I'd recommend staying away from Punk Goes '90s. I love almost every song on there, but they're a bit depressing at times. I was expecting they to, you know, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT with them, hopefully speed them up and put a little energy into them.

But alas, it's almost the exact songs sung about 17 octaves higher.

I've got most of the Punk Goes series. I need to check this latest one out eventually.

Seconded. I love the Gimme Gimmes. You really can't go wrong with anything of theirs.

This is so true. None of the songs were made punk. Pissed me off, should have been emo goes...

I recommend the punk chartbuster series. These are usually double disc sets from germany. Some of the the songs are european hits and I never heard of, but most are known. It always cracks me up to here Elvis' In the ghetto Sng in german punk (95% of the songs are english though)

I've been listening to MF&GG for quite a while... I have a credit card that expired about 8 years ago that has one of their album covers on it. They're good. Punk bands have always done covers of unlikely songs - it's practically a tradition. Tribute albums started to pop up paying homage to inspirational bands, but none ever really caught on big.

I'd say this "punk goes" thing all started though with an album called "Before You Were Punk" on Vagrant records which came out around the same time Me First's first full-length came out. Both were pretty successful and of course by now, it's just a cash generator so it's not as good.

I haven't really found much to like in the Punk Goes series apart from the occasional song... even then, forgettable.

Ed - I wasn't a huge fan of Me First's showtunes album.

mh###, I have the chartbuster series, but I don't think I've given it much of a listen. I should check it out again...

"Hardcore Takes The Rap" has some GREAT covers on it, including a hardcore version of "Baby Got Back"

My problem with most of the PUNK Goes... series, is that I wouldn't call most of the bands on them "punk" to begin with. That said, Punk Goes 80's does have some interesting covers on it.

I was excited about "Punk Goes Crunk", but that quickly went away after I heard it.

There are only 3 songs I like on it and the rest are either too close to the originals or really boring.

I love Set Your Goals' cover of "Put Your Hood Up", All Time Low covering "Umbrella" and New Found Glory doing "Tennessee".

I usually dig a few songs on these albums. I really like Yellowcard doing Michelle Branch's Everywhere. I agree that most of the bands aren't punk though.

Haven't heard the Crunk one.

Since there was some talk of MFATGGs in this thread, I thought some of you might be interested in this. It's really just a b-sides collection from their early recording sessions, but I've heard a lot of those older tracks and they're solid (IIRC, they wanted just one song per artist on their first album, so their covers of "Country Roads" and "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" among others were put on the vinyl singles that came out after the album). Looking forward to it because any Gimmes is better than no Gimmes, and a lot of these songs have only been available in shitty mp3s ripped from vinyl.