The 35 best cover songs of all time

Originally by: Dolly Parton

In a 2022 interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Dolly Parton explained that Kevin Costner had personally called her in the 90s to use her song “I Will Always Love You” for an upcoming movie. She agreed but didn’t hear much else about it. It wasn’t until she was driving that she first heard the rendition by Whitney Houston. She was so overwhelmed by emotion she had to pull over the car to keep from crashing. Today, the song is the best-selling single of all time by a female artist. Even Parton admits that Houston made it all her own.

Originally by: Elvis Presley

I danced to this song at my wedding so you know I love it. Haley Reinhart, first known for her gig with Postmodern Jukebox and stint on American Idol, brings this oldie back to life with this sultry but vulnerable rendition. Set simply to piano, it hits that part of your heart that’s soft to the touch. Dare I say this version is better than the original?

Originally by: Ed Cobb

Just a few years after Soft Cell’s sultry synthpop version of ‘Tainted Love’ stormed the charts, the same tune was repurposed to devastating effect by Coil. Refashioned as a reflection on the era’s catastrophic AIDS crisis, Coil’s ‘Tainted Love’ swapped Soft Cell’s chirpy synths for tectonic, reverberant industrial blasts. Featuring Soft Cell’s Marc Almond in the music video (since bought by New York’s Museum of Modern Art), Coil’s ‘Tainted Love’ twisted Ed Cobb’s original into something far more mournful, shocking and poignant.

Originally by: the Beatles

When it comes to the Beatles, hardly any cover is going to do it for me. But singer/songwriter Cody Fry has a masterful grasp on instrumental arrangements. He takes the iconic, darker ’60s song and turns it into an epic journey worthy of a film with a full symphony behind him. I actually think the Beatles would’ve appreciated his take.

📍 Discover the best Beatles songs of all time

Originally by: Michael Jackson

The rendition of ‘Smooth Criminal’ from Alien Ant Farm isn’t so much of a cover as it is a tribute to Michael Jackson. The video alone features so many Easter eggs, including a light up floor à la ‘Billie Jean,’ a werewolf mask for ‘Thriller,’ plus MJ ad-libs peppered throughout the song. The band even nails the signature gravity-defying lean in the first half of the video. Plus, The King of Pop allegedly approved the cover, making it a hit from all angles.

Originally by: The Zutons

Poor indie-rock band The Zutons: The Liverpoolian band penned one of Amy Winehouse’s most energetic hits, and few realize that the song wasn’t wrested from the mid ’60s and given new life by Winehouse and Ronson. Winehouse’s performance of the bop is just too damn iconic: Even if the song was written by Ike Turner himself, it’s unlikely anyone would remember it as anything but hers.

Originally by: The Eagles

The Eagle’s spooky Boomer classic gets a rollicking makeover from the French flamenco maniacs, one that takes the ghostly musings of Don Henly and co. and transforms them into a wild, chaotic trip to hell and back. No wonder this is what the Jesus rolls to. 

Originally by: Otis Redding

Otis Redding originally released it in 1965, but the true power of this song wasn’t unlocked until two years later, when a rising R&B singer named Aretha Franklin turned it into an irrepressible feminist anthem. Franklin’s version also added what has become one of the tune’s most iconic passages (say it with us now: R-E-S-P-E-C-T). It became the signature song of the Queen of Soul, a tune that twisted its original ‘respect your man’ message into the ultimate and most enduring song about female empowerment of all time. Respect indeed. 

Originally by: Nine Inch Nails

For a song as heavy with melancholy as ‘Hurt’ already was, Cash's straightforward reading of it still somehow added weight. His reckoning with his own mortality and 71 years of transgressions feels pure, poignant, and not at all gimmicky – a worry Trent Reznor expressed when first approached about the recording. Reznor would come around of course, after hearing the song and watching the accompanying video, which featured an ailing Cash sitting among the rubble of his own shuttered museum. He would die seven months after shooting it.

Originally by: Bob Dylan

Frequently, the trick of cover songs is to take the bombastic and quiet it down, acoustify a track into new meaning. Hendrix does the opposite here, metamorphosing folkie Dylan into a churning rock n' roll freight train, fueled by the urgent, fluid guitar licks that only Jimi could pull off. Hendrix was by all accounts a superfan, and recorded a number of pristine Dylan covers, but years on ‘Watchtower’ remains the cream of the crop and the song’s definitive version.