what’s a song cover that you think is better than the original?


The first ones to come to mind are Whitney’s version of I Will Always Love You and Allen Stone’s Georgia On My Mind but I would love to hear other contributions as well! I feel like there are a lot of songs where a covered version gets more popular than the original and people end up not realizing that it is a cover (ex. i had a friend that genuinely believed the Jonas Brothers wrote Year 3000). so, what‘a a song that was written by one artist but (figuratively) owned by another?

kazana

Cream's version of Robert Johnson's 'Crossroads'

and Willie Dixon's 'Spoonful'

Santana's version of Fleetwood Mac's 'Black Magic Woman'

Pete Seeger and other's versions of Woodie 

Guthrie's 'This Land is Your Land'' as long as ALL the lyrics are sung

And one of the best covers ever is ... Jimi Hendrix's of Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower'

IMHO it's uncommon for a cover to overtake an original, 

but they do expose new audiences to not just unfamiliar songwriters, but for the curious often different genres of music also.  

Grace Jones - In Crowd

Randy Crawford - Imagine

UB40 - Ain't no sunshine

Joe Cocker - A little Help from my Friends

 

Maybe the Slits version of Heard It Through the Grapevine could be on this list. Sam Gopal’s Back Door Man (the original is fine, but just fine). Also, Nina Simone’s Love Me or Leave Me.