Ah... This might play towards your Prog Rock leanings, i.e. "Music that makes musicians happy, not audiences." I am all about artistic expression, but I like to buy albums where the songs sound good musically, in addition to making the artist happy. I know it's a delicate balance.

Now "sounding good" is a very subjective term of course, but she's done so many GREAT jobs on other covers (Lovesong, Little Drummer Boy, Light my Fire, on and on...) that these really surprised me. It's like she wasn't even trying to add any emotion to the songs. Enjoy the Silence really bothers me because it's so drab and boring, it completely lacks the power of the original. I know that's probably what she was going for, but it doesn't make the song any better!

I guess I totally agree with your last statement, in that I can appreciate the artistic merit of taking these covers and "twisting" them. But the twisting ends up really sucking hard on all but a few of the tunes, when she has shown an ability to do wonderful covers in the past. Especially considering this is a studio album and not off-the-cuff covers on a radio show or by request at a live show.

In the immortal words of Butthead, "uhh.. huhuhuh.. she needs to, like, try harder or something."