Britney Spears Ruined 1 Cher Song

Music

Britney Spears covered a song from Cher's hippie days. Sadly, it's just one of many pieces of evidence proving she's bad at covers.

Published on July 8, 2024

3 min read

Sonny & Cher's "The Beat Goes On" is arguably one of Cher's only additions to the 1960s classic rock canon. Britney Spears had the opportunity to make the song seem cool to a new generation and failed miserably. In fact, Spears has struggled to produce decent covers throughout her career.

Britney Spears covering a Cher song should have been a passing of the torch

Sonny & Cher had a successful television show, but today they are primarily remembered for two of their singles: "I Got You Babe" and "The Beat Goes On." The former receives a lot more attention than the latter, but "The Beat Goes On" is still a great song. It's a clever ditty about the way that culture changes on the surface but the core of humanity stays the same.

Some of the lyrics are a little clunky, but they're more memorable than the average 1960s pop song. Lines like "Grandmas sit in chairs and reminisce / Boys keep chasing girls to get a kiss / The cars keep going faster all the time / Bums still cries, "Hey buddy, have you got a dime?" are just as relevant today as they were when the song came out in 1967. The wisdom of "The Beat Goes On" later benefited Cher's image as the elder stateswoman of pop.

Spears covered the track for her debut album … Baby One More Time. Depending on how you look at it, the cover was either a passing of the torch from the Goddess of Pop to the Princess of Pop or lazy album filler. It's easier to see it as the latter because Spears' "The Beat Goes On" is just horrid.

Britney Spears is just plain bad at covers

"The Beat Goes On" could have used an update when Sears debuted in 1999, but instead, Spears' version adds some unnecessary record fuzz that makes the song sound even older than it is. Many critics have attacked the "Womanizer" singer for having a thin voice. Meanwhile, she adds some diva vocals to the track, which sound obnoxious and misplaced. Some dated 1990s synthesizers are the rotten cherry on top of a misguided cover.

While the "Everytime" star has given us some of the best dance tracks of all time and a few good ballads, she's not the best at covers. Her takes on The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" have been classic rock punchlines for many years. She also released a disco redux of "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega that isn't going to do much for fans of 1980s/1990s alternative music. It's probably best that Spears generally sticks to her own songs.

Cher's version was the hit but the cover appeared on a more famous album

The original "The Beat Goes On" reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, staying on the chart for 11 weeks. The track appeared on Sonny & Cher's album In Case You're in Love. That record peaked at No. 45 and stayed on the chart for 29 weeks.

Spears' cover of "The Beat Goes On" was not released as a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The song's parent album, …Baby One More Time, was a juggernaut. It topped the Billboard 200 for six weeks and spent 103 weeks on the chart in total. To date, …Baby One More Time is the singer's most popular album in the United States.

Cher and Spears are both great pop stars, but only one of them did a great version of "The Beat Goes On."