Disturbed released their cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" in 2015 and it was inescapable at the time.
The cover was on the radio, used by the French ice skating team at the 2017 ISU World Team Trophy ice skating event, played on Conan, and even used by NASA’s Johnson Space Center for a video, among other appearances. It was huge and it's still getting some play live from Disturbed. Now nine years later the song has resurfaced in a particularly awful form.
Forbes reports that a remix of Disturbed's "The Sound Of Silence" by producer Cyril has landed at No. 34 on this week's Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart, and boy is it a tough listen. The pitched down vocals sound terrible, the autotune is horrendous (look no further than the bit going from 1:40 up to vocalist David Draiman's gravelly delivery – it's kinda funny), and it's just… boring in that it never really goes anywhere. It's just Robo-Draiman atop some beats. Someone get Squarepusher or The Flashbulb in here to at least give this thing some life, yeah?
Still, good on the Disturbed guys for scoring a hit on a cover they did nearly a decade ago. They've certainly gotten some milage out it. Though if anything, this remix has made me appreciate the original cover a lot more in comparison to this Ableton Live-created nightmare.
"The Sound Of Silence" is currently Disturbed's most popular song on their Spotify, clocking in at 745 million streams and beating "Down With The Sickness", which sits at 726 million.
Perhaps more insane is that the cover has 976 million views on YouTube and their performance of it on Conan has 144 million, making it the most watched video on Conan's channel. So yeah, whether you remember it or not, this cover was a behemoth when it came out.
