In mid-August, the editors of Rolling Stone asked the magazine’s readers to choose the 11 worst cover songs of all time, but they may have asked a little too soon.

One of the worst songs of all time had only just begun to infiltrate the national consciousness.

Of course, it’s just my opinion that Victoria Justice’s cover of the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back” is the worst thing to happen to Motown since “The Wiz.”

On a list of things that do damage to one’s ears, Justice’s “I Want You Back” would rank lower than dirty piercing guns but higher than mites.

It’s not Justice’s fault. She’s just another teen idol hoping to achieve lucrative mediocrity by surfing the coattails of greatness.

Justice performed this tune in prison togs on an episode of her miraculously unwatchable Nickelodeon show “Victorious.”

In the series, Justice plays a new student at a performing arts high school who, in defiance of her obvious physical flawlessness, is depicted as a misfit of some variety. Undeterred by her undefined and indefinable shortcomings, Justice’s character quickly makes friends with the least likable teenagers this side of a Larry Clark movie.

On “Victorious,” there’s lots of singing, lots of shouting and lots of flailing. The latter is sort of reminiscent of physical comedy in the same sense that seizures are sort of reminiscent of dancing.

The show was created by Dan Schneider, whose series “iCarly” is as ingratiating as “Victorious” is grating.

The Jackson Five’s rendition of “I Want You Back” has always struck me as an instance where talent and youthful exuberance were combined to create a perfectly syncopated explosion.

Justice’s version is what happens when torpid vocals and smarmy production values are combined to create the musical equivalent of a microwave burrito.

The Jackson Five’s rendition was about being young. Justice’s version is about being a youthful commodity.

Plenty of kids, no doubt, love Justice’s version and that would be fine with me if I knew that each and every one of those kids would somehow find their way back to the original and discover how much better it is. I am not sure how often that happens with cover tunes.

The cover tune that makes me angriest is Sixpence None the Richer’s remake of “There She Goes” by the La’s, and not just because the pop group (Muzak’s answer to The Cranberries) took this gorgeous, melancholy, jangly masterpiece and turned it into the soundtrack for a Sanka commercial.

What hacks me off is that Sixpence None the Richer made a bad hit out of a good song that most people had never heard and will probably never hear.

Of course, the beauty of a cover tune is in the ear of the beholder, or whatever the auditory equivalent of a beholder is.

Alien Ant Farm’s version of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” made Rolling Stone’s “worst cover tunes” list, but I have seen that same rendition cited on other people’s “best covers” lists.

William Shatner’s version of the Beatles’ “Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds” also made the Rolling Stone list, which strikes me as a mistake.

Shatner’s covers of pop and rock hits are so demented that they have become cultural artifacts in their own right.

Does anyone not listen to them with pleasure?

Boldly reinterpreting a song in some borderline psychotic manner is a far less aesthetically sinful, it seems to me, than slavish imitation.

Despite its loudness and sneering tone, The Sex Pistols’ rendition of “My Way” is as moving and relevant as Frank Sinatra’s elegiac version, just in a different way – its own way, I might add.

The last thing we need every Christmas is for a half dozen of the blandest ingénues this side of the karaoke bar in “The Stepford Wives” to release their earnest renditions of “White Christmas.”

Many of them are young country singers who grew up in the South and, therefore, have no more right singing nostalgically about white Christmases than they do about Spanish Harlem.

Britney Spears made the Rolling Stone list twice, but I must admit an affection for her cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

It’s undeniably terrible, but she sounds so bored singing the song that it almost deconstructs her career, a career she often seems to pursue more out of duty than passion

If Devo can make a joke out of a robotic version of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” can’t Spears make a wry commentary out of an enervated remake?

Whenever I hear Spears sing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” I think of Lili Von Shtupp singing “I’m So Tired” in “Blazing Saddles.”

The worst offender in the crappy cover sweepstakes is not Spears, Justice, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus or anyone who could be excused for being too young to know better.

It’s Celine Dion.

Dion has a beautiful voice but that doesn’t give her license to try to “rock out” or “get funky.”

Dion’s overcooked and ill-advised renditions of Cyndi Lauper’s “I Drove All Night” and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” are perennials on “worst cover” lists.

On this year’s MDA Telethon, she made soulless work of Journey’s “Open Arms,” and in her Vegas show, she reportedly desecrated Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” nearly every night, requiring her to repeatedly sing the lyrics, “Looking back on when I was a little nappy-headed boy.”

If you’ve seen Steve Martin’s “The Jerk,” then you know that the only white person who should not feel ashamed about singing that song is Navin Johnson.

This is ego and hubris, plain and simple.

When an unquestionably talented musical icon repeatedly attempts material that makes her strengths look like faults, that’s megalomania.

And that’s how you get the worst covers of all time.

The best covers are always surprising. They make you think differently about songs you thought you knew well.

I am partial to attempts by singer-songwriters and folk-pop bands to turn fluff into heartbreak (Check out Glen Hansard’s version of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River,” Aztec Camera’s version of Van Halen’s “Jump,” M. Ward’s version of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” Ray LaMontagne’s version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” and Richard Thompson’s version of Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did it Again”).

Ryan Adams’ version of Oasis’ “Wonderwall” is nothing less than a feat of derring-do, not that Adams has ever been averse to those.

Less then 10 years after Oasis’ song became a pop standard, Adams made it his own in such authoritative fashion that some listeners prefer his rendition to the original.

Adams is one of the few artists who always seems to be able to make ego, hubris and megalomania work in his favor.