Will you recognize me, call my name, or walk on by?

Remember me? What seems like four years later, I keep my promise for covers of songs from John Hughes movies. Of course, I'm doing so from work so I hope you'll forgive the slapdashness of it all.

Billy Idol "Don't You (Forget About Me)" (Simple Minds cover, The Breakfast Club)
Maybe it's just me, but I have a difficult time buying Billy Idol singing a song like this. When the Billy Idol who resides permanently in my mind as an aging punk with an attitude sings a slow song, I want it to be about sex or drug trips, a la "Flesh for Fantasy" or "Eyes Without a Face." While I'm sure Idol is emotionally multifacted, desperate longing is not an option on my Idol menu. No substitutions, please.

Automatic 7 "Pretty in Pink" (Psychedelic Furs cover, Pretty in Pink)
Modern pop-punk is not my cup of tea and this version is not different enough from the original to make any real impact on me. And yet, here it is.

Halo Benders "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" (Smiths cover, Pretty in Pink)
A quirky little indie-pop whine of a version from the Halo Benders, a side project of Built to Spill's Doug Martsch and Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson, among others. I like geeky rockers and I like this cover.

Free Loan Investments "If You Leave" (OMD cover, Pretty in Pink)
This twee, influenced-by-'60s-orchestral-pop track comes from a "synthpop" (a modifier which confuses me a bit given this bands sound) tribute to OMD called Messages and is reminiscent of the stuff from Tullycraft and the Softies and others on that out-of-print Double Agent 1980 comp I love so.

Edit: The reason the Free Loan Investments track doesn't sound as if it should be on a synthpop tribute to OMD is because, um, it isn't. I got my OMD tribute albums mixed up, and this track is actually from Pretending to See the Future: A Tribute to OMD. My bad.