Has to be either Al Green doing the Bee Gees,Kris Kristofferson, The Doors etc many more
Or David Bowie Pinups album or Across the Universe and a few more
Both artists wrote great songs
Any other you can think of

On STW? Got to be Joe cocker hasn’t it.

The Associates cover of “Love Hangover” is sublime.

Just sublime…

I think the best ones are where the original artist says it’s no longer their record.
Best example I can think of is hurt by NIN covered by Jonny Cash.

Similarly watched a video last night on “House of the rising son” didn’t realize it’s almost a public domain folk song. But again Dylan cover someone’s version at which point the public thought it was his son then The Animals released it and Dylan had to stop playing it.

Or Foo fighters playing the Bee Gees to protesters.

I think the best ones are where the original artist says it’s no longer their record.

Yep.

NIN is a great example.

As is this. Especially as it’s a band that’s easy to dismiss.

Or this banging cover of a belter

And quite a few labbi siffre songs although in that case most covers struggle to match the original.

Can never get enough of the Dead Kennedy’s, so naturally I love this raw footage of them knocking out a cover of Rawhide (eventually!)

Got to be the Ramones too with Baby I Love You.

The Clash. I Fought The Law

I have a love of odd cover versions particularly those with odd instruments. A couple of favourites:

Novelle vague – a brilliant multi language joke!

The reggae / prog fusion with bagpipes?

Ca plane pour moi. Check out how many bands have covered that

Tragic circumstance around the actual recording of this one and fitting tribute to the original artist.

Not what I’d call my “favourite artist” but she’s got a belter of a voice:

I think the best ones are where the original artist says it’s no longer their record.

That’ll be Johnny Cash then. What. A. Song.

And funny to think of it, but this is a cover.

Different enough from the original

Thou put all their Nirvana covers on an album called “Blessings of the Highest Order” last year, which I enjoyed:

https://thou.bandcamp.com/album/blessings-of-the-highest-order

I think the best ones are where the original artist says it’s no longer their record.

Yep. I don’t think Dolly Parton is much worried about Miley Cyrus doing that. Miley Cyrus just isn’t a great singer, she tries to cover great songs but lacks the vocal range or musical imagination to turn it into something new. Here’s the original Jolene, the Miley Cyrus version does nothing to improve it.

More on the Miley Cyrus thing, her cover of Heart of Glass was just awful. She has a dreadful voice but tried to sing a song that was beyond her. If she’d reimagined it to suit her voice, it might have worked, but this was horrible.

The original (sung by a great pop singer):

The cover (sung by a worse singer who made a great song sound horrible):

Nouvelle Vague cover of the Dead Kennedys, Too Drunk to…
This is a good site I sometimes look at:
https://secondhandsongs.com/

I like daft covers, but I like daft covers more when they’re also great:

A particularly appropriate cover…

And a nicely understated version by Gabriel. Plus there’s a connection between them.

I’ve loved Shawn’s music from her first album, and she’s done many covers, her second album is called Cover Girl, and it was a while before I realised this was a Talking Heads cover!

This is, properly speaking, a cover. It was originally written for another artist, but Elvis finally recorded it for an album of songs he wrote for other artists.

And here’s the same song by the original singer, Aimee Mann.

I guess this could be called a cover, it’s David Bowie singing an Arcade Fire song, backed by Arcade Fire. Dunno, but it’s a blistering version regardless!

Came on here to say Johnny Cash – Hurt. Am not disappointed to see its already been said.

So my second choice would be Red Hot Chili Peppers – Higher Ground

Surely the best Dolly Parton cover is Dolly Parton on a slow day.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=MH9FyLsfDzw&feature=share

Quite a few but this one comes to mind:

‘One Note Samba’ by Antônio Carlos Jobim with Portuguese lyrics by Newton Mendonça. The English lyrics were written by Jon Hendricks. It was first recorded by João Gilberto in 1960.

Lush. Kitchen disco static sparks. Polishing lino with swift woolly socks…

How MC5 took Jerry Lee Lewis’s croony slowsmooch ‘Ramblin’ Rose’ (Fred Burch, Marijohn Wilkin) and smashed it into distorted-guitar-fuelled super-lewd proto-punk.

Johnny is the obvious one

One of my favourite every songs though is Metallica, Turn The Page

But I do like the Bob Seger original almost as much

I love the lunatic genius that is Leo Moracchioli:

Metal covers of just about anything, one guy doing all the music and videos (usually) alone, and he manages to pump out a new one every week!

Speaking of Jolene:

Johnny Cash. It’s almost unbearable to listen and watch that song and video. I’m not always able to make it through the whole thing.
Sublime.

Rosalía doing some genre busting:

The be good tanyas:

Luna:

Toots:

?

toots is winning so far on the oddness count! Brilliant

for another cover where the writer ( Bob Seagar) considered the thin Lizzy so good that it now was their song

Jeepers Lizzy were good if badly dated now

There’s the usual suspects – Dylan covered by The Byrds or Hendrix, Bowie & Leadbelly by Nirvana, NiN by Johnny Cash etc. Then there’s a few others:
– Nothing Compares 2U by Chris Cornell (Sure, someone here put me on to it.)
– A Change is Gonna Come by Otis Redding – who also covered Satisfaction and Daytripper
– Previously mentioned Ca Plane Pour Moi and Oh Sweet Nuthin
– Night and Day by U2
– Hard to Handle by The Black Crowes

And a lot more besides!