Glenn Danzig is best known for his campy, B-movie lyrics, laced with over-the-top violent imagery. In The Misfits, he sang these songs in his �Evil Elvis� like voice, backed by furious punk thrashing. The band has been covered by numerous punk and metal bands, both good and bad�Metallica, Guns N� Roses, AFI, to name a few. But somewhere along the way, a few troubadours decided that their teenage punk hero�s lyrics worked just as well with just a voice and acoustic guitar.

David Pajo (Zwan, Slint) recorded a version of �Last Caress� under his Papa M (a.k.a. Aerial M, or just M) moniker. This version, with its lightly picked guitar, plaintive vocals and the distinct sound of tape hiss, has more in common with an early Simon & Garfunkel demo than with any musician sporting the Devilock. There are even some sound effects of birds singing in the mix. Sure, there�s a creepiness to lines like, �I killed your baby today /And it doesn�t matter much to me as long as it�s dead,� but then there�s the strangely affecting line �Sweet lovely death / I am waiting for your breath / Sweet lovely death / One last caress,� which makes this version sound more like an old-timey murder ballad�confessions of a self-loathing killer�than the hysterical slasher-fest of the original.

The Lemonheads have a similar approach with their version of the classic �Skulls.� But there�s something even stranger about this one�it sounds just like any Lemonheads song. The song�s arrangement is so similar to any one of his acoustic pop songs that you might not even realize Evan Dando is saying things like, �Hack the heads off little girls and / Put them on my wall.� In fact, as a little experiment, place this one on the next mixtape you give to a lover (maybe sandwiched between �Into Your Arms� and �Confetti�) and see if they say anything�chances are they won�t notice Danzig�s incredibly vivid serial killer lyrics beneath Dando�s honeyed vocals.

The collaboration between Danzig�s lyrics and a troubadour never got better than on Johnny Cash�s �Thirteen,� a song written specifically for the Man in Black, that tells the story of a cursed man, who is (naturally) a cold-blooded killer so loathed he wasn�t given a name at birth, but was instead branded with the unluckiest of numbers. Though the song isn�t quite as gory as the Misfits tunes, it�s probably twice as dark and foreboding, and Cash, as always, makes it his own, sounding believable as the wicked man doomed to earth to do the devil�s work.

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