It’s easy to get cynical about cover versions these days. Every new movie trailer or advert seems to be accompanied by a tooth-achingly cute take on a classic track, clearly intended to avoid excessive royalty payments as well as to hit those lucrative nostalgia neurons.
It didn’t used to be like this, of course, and in many respects it still isn’t. Indeed, throughout the golden period of the ’60s and ’70s, many of the tracks that built the foundation of popular music as we know it turned out to have been performed by someone else before – or even by several artists.
And that’s okay. A good cover version is, to this very day, a beautiful thing. In most cases, the best cover songs will re-contextualise the original, making you see the darkness or poignancy in a lyric, or the underlying genius of a melody that was all but hidden in the original.
Sometimes it’s not that complicated, and a cover version simply succeeds though popularity or sheer brilliance, thus becoming the definitive version to most people.
The following 20 tracks are some of the best cover songs ever recorded, for a whole range of reasons. Which one is your favourite? Be sure to vote below.
The best cover songs of all time
- Next up, check out the best rock songs of all time
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