20 outlandish rock and roll cover songs

Kris Kristofferson wrote the song “Be and Bobby McGee” but he was not the first artist to record it. Kristofferson was never known as a great singer and in the early days before he became a star, most of his original compositions were given to bigger names to release. In the case of “Me and Bobby McGee,” as you all know, the original recording was by...Roger Miller.

I know, you thought I was going to say Janis Joplin, but her version didn’t come until later. Miller’s original is a jaunty, albeit bland, version, noted primarily for the mariachi horns that come in toward the end.

There were at least five versions of “Me and Bobby McGee” before Joplin got ahold of it. The best was Kenny Rogers’ traditional country version. The worst – though also the most successful – was a sleepy take released by Gordon Lightfoot. Kristofferson did his own version, and there were a couple of others. Then, shortly before her death, Joplin sang it and none of the rest would ever matter again. Joplin’s cover became definitive.

20 rock and roll cover songs that are surprisingly brilliantly done

There are plenty of other examples of a cover version far surpassing the original in rock history. Sometimes, the cover may essentially replicate the first version, only in a better form. That would describe Bowling for Soup’s crisper, more energetic take on “1985.” Other times, the cover seems to reinvent the song. Jimi Hendrix did that for Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” turning it into the epic tale that it was meant to be.

I’m going to write about the second kind of cover today. None of these songs surpassed the originals (or, in some cases, the famous cover), but they did try to reinterpret the well-known version. You have to give these artists credit for trying. You may not like what they did with the song, especially if you are a fan of it in its best-known form. Even so, you might find it interesting to give a listen. With about half of the following songs, I have grown to actually prefer them to the originals. And even if I don’t, I think they are all worthy in their own right.

We’re going to get to 20 songs in all, but we’re going to do it a little differently from my normal style of list-making. I usually restrict selections to a single song from a particular artist. That way the lists aren’t dominated by one or two bands, and they can offer a little more diversity.

But seeing how diversity may or may not be in vogue right now - and furthermore, seeing how there are a handful of musicians who specialize in this very type of song – I’m going to single four such acts and reward them with a second selection. Therefore, if my math is right, we’ll end up with twelve songs from twelve distinct artists and eight others from four different artists, each of whom gets two entries.

So sit back, relax, ingest, or imbibe whatever you please. Some of the following songs definitely sound better when you are chillaxin’. We’ll begin with our Hall of Fame-level cover artists – two songs from each.

Tom Jones – “Burning Down the House” (1999) and “Talking Reality Television Blues (2021)

To borrow from Arthur Miller: “Attention must be paid!” Tom Jones is the king of what we are discussing today. No artist even comes close to the extremes he has traveled and the risks he has taken. Even in his early days as a pop superstar sex symbol, the Welshman with the amazing voice and even more amazing hair was putting a quirky spin on pop’s standard offerings. Then, pushing 60 and trying to connect with younger audiences, he pushed all his chips to the center and went for it.

1999’s Reload was the 34th album he released. He teamed up with a wide range of modern artists to record duet covers of well-known songs. His take on the Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House” kicked things off. He teamed up with the Swedish pop rock band the Cardigans and Jones runs wild with the vocals against a throbbing dance beat.

Then, twenty years later, at 80, he blows the doors off of Todd Snider’s insanely clever “Talking Reality Television Blues.” It’s a harrowing, apocalyptic sound and since it’s a talking blues song, Jones doesn’t really have to sing. Doesn’t matter; his delivery is as sublime as ever. It’s a totally insane creation.

Me First and the Gimmes Gimmes – “Uptown Girl” (1997) and “Love Will Keep Us Together” (2024)

Originally conceived as a fun side project for NOFX’s Fat Mike and the Swingin’ Utters’ Spike Slawson, the band has now put out eleven albums plus a greatest hits package, all on Fat Mike’s Fat Wreck Chords label. Band members have come and gone, but Slawson has stayed as the frontman, bringing his particular punk diva style to whatever they do. And what they do can be awesome.

Essentially, they take a wide range of well-known hits from pop, dance, country, and any other genre that strikes their fancy, and give them a punkish treatment. They play fast and loud and surprisingly often, the results are excellent.

The Billy Joel cover, “Uptown Girl,” comes from their debut album, Have a Ball, and relies on Fat Mike’s insistent bass and Lagwagon’s Joey Cape banging away on his drums triple time. I’m not sure the band thought they’d still blasting away on ill-suited originals almost thirty years later, but sure enough, 2024 saw Blow It … at Madison’s Quinceanera! 

It had lots of punked-up dance tunes like “Dancing Queen,” but the award for biggest transformation goes to the Captain & Tennille’s former number hit “Love Will Keep Us Together.” The original is virtually unlistenable (it was featured in some unnamed writer’s “Worst Number Ones” columns recently.) This is just a heavy rock take that kind of sounds like ‘80s glam punk, which is what the Captain & Tennille should have been doing all along.

Postmodern Jukebox – “Sweet Child o’ Mine” (2014) and “Black Hole Sun” (2016)

Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox grew out of pianist/arranger Scott Bradlee’s desire to take new songs and make them old again. He assembled the best of the working singers and musicians he could find and chose a range of modern pop songs, then gave each its own special old-timey treatment.

For his first album, 2014’s Twist is the New Twerk, he covered Lorde, Ke$ha, and Macklemore, among others. But he did his best work with a 1920s juke joint spin on Guns N’ Rose’s classic “Sweet Child of Mine,” sung by the inestimable jazz vocalist Miche Braden, who is best for portraying Bessie Smith on stage. So if you ever wondered what might happen if you crossed Bessie with Axl, this cover gives you a clue.

Bradlee continues to crank out an amazing assortment of jazzy takes on modern music, using a variety of singers and players depending on the requirements of the song. In former “American Idol” contestant Haley Reinhart, he found his best possible vocalist. She has the range, power, and nuance to sell songs of all types. Her old-school, sinewy performance of Chris Cornell’s masterpiece is a tour de force that moves from restrained to explosive and reveals new dimensions to a song that was already pretty amazing.

Richard Cheese – “Come Out and Play” (2000) and Dammit” (2024)

Mark Jonathan Davis, the man behind Richard Cheese & Lounge Against the Machine, came at the cover song a bit differently. The others on this list were doing serious – albeit wild – takes on pop songs. Davis was/is a comedian and there was always an element of camp to his lounge lizard, piano-and-snare covers. That’s evident on his debut album Lounge Against the Machine and its adaptation of the Offspring’s seminal pop punk “Come Out and Play.” Cheese even interpolates a bit of “Hava Nagila” into the middle of the song along with some xylophone action.

But the act worked so well that Cheese kept releasing albums and along the way, many of the songs got better. I don’t mean to overstate this, but his wistful cover of Blink 182 in one of their more wistful moments, is actually quite beautiful. It comes from his latest album, Blue No Matter Who, and it features a piano and orchestral strings in support of the surprisingly delicate vocals. It actually reveals a sublimely composed song (one lyric in the second verse notwithstanding). For some reason, Cheese omits the chorus for the most part, but even so, it works amazingly well.

And now, on to the single entries. Some of these artists have multiple cool covers from which to choose, but I am restricting them to one each. We’ll go chronologically for this part of the list.

The Flying Lizards – “Money” (1979)

I’ve told this story before. I’m sure I will do it again. Back in the day, I used to listen to a radio station that would have a showdown between two bands doing the same song. Every night at 10 pm – they’d play both songs and listeners would call in to vote. The Beatles never lost one of these showdowns. There were something like 20 and 0. Then they ran into a bizarre, lo-fi art band from England who put out bizarre covers of “Summertime Blues” and “Money” on their first album.

As you may know, the Beatles' version of "Money" was also a cover of the original Motown R&B love letter to avarice. The Beatles rocked it, but the Lizards, with the singular delivery of Deborah Evans-Strickland out front and backed by instruments you could probably find in your backyard, made the entire experience strangely wonderful. A Dr. Demento classic.

Yellow Magic Orchestra  - “Day Tripper” (1979)

Speaking of the Beatles, a group of Japanese technogeeks thought it might be fun to take their songs and pour all the synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers they could find into a vaguely discoey version and see if anyone liked the result. Purists complained, but plenty of other listeners found the mechanized proto-cyberpunk amazing. Yellow Magic Orchestra got big. Then they broke up. Then they got back together. Rinse, repeat. The song remains a foundational piece of electronic pop, and it's still fun to listen to.

Butthole Surfers – “American Woman” (1986)

The rest of the Butthole Surfers’ second album Rembrandt Pussyhorse, contained originals, but they included this one cover of the Guess Who classic. However, for most of the song, you would be very hard pressed to find the Guess Who song you know and love. The first half is almost entirely made up of drums – when you hear identifiable lyrics, they are declaimed in a militaristic pronouncement and mixed and matched according to Gibby Haynes’ mood at the time.

Throughout, Paul Leary keeps tossing in the iconic guitar riff Randy Bachman played in the original, just to remind you that this was, in fact, “American Woman” you were hearing. The Surfers would work similar magic with other classics – most notably on a spaced-out version of Donovan's psychedelic “Hurdy Gurdy Man.”

Revolting Cocks - “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” (1993)

RevCo put their grinding, industrial rock stamp on Rod Stewart’s silly disco hit and set the world right. They slow it down, deliver the lyrics in a fabulous deadpan, and toss in the most distorted guitar and saxophone riffs possible in 1993. Chris Connelly can’t keep a straight face when he changes Stewart’s “I’m out of milk and coffee” to “I’m out of KY jelly.” They keep his laughter in the final recording – the exact kind of sophomoric deflation this particular song benefitted from.

Misfits – “Rat Fink” (1995)

I find it pretty cool that a major punk band would cover the Weird Al of the ’60s. Allan Sherman was a comic genius who died too early. “Rat Fink” is one of his lesser efforts, but it’s a fun song to sing and play, and the Misfits obviously have fun bruising it up. This is one more in a long line of punk bands drawing on campy pop culture from their youth as the raw material for their reinterpretation.

Plenty of bands (I’ll just mention the Jam for now) performed the theme from the Batman TV show. Husker Du did the theme from the non-campy Mary Tyler Moore Show. The Vandals did “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music (but I steer clear of the Vandals these days, so forget you heard that here), and everybody – I mean EVERYBODY – did a version of “Louie Louie.” Black Flag, Motorhead, Iggy, the Sonics. If you ask your grandma, there’s a chance she’s got a recording of “Louie Louie” in her past.

Dynamite Hack – “Boyz-n’-the-Hood” (2000)

I suspect this will be one of the artifacts that will last. If the world is still around a couple hundred years from now, scholars will be trying to interpret what this means. When it first appeared, this was a hilarious homage to one of Eazy-E’s classic tales of urban life in the late ‘90s. A bunch of clean-cut suburban white boys rapping about “jockin' the b******, slappin’ the hoes” could be equal parts transgressive and insulting.

And they did it so gently as if the Plain White T’s got tired of waiting for Delilah to graduate and turn gangsta. This was both an early comic takedown of both a style of music and the suburban kids who got into it, as well as a pretty blatant cash grab by those same white boys and in the intervening years, its significance has tended to morph with the climate. I still find it outrageously funny.

Kittie – “Run Like Hell” (2001)

A Canadian metal band comprised of women doing Pink Floyd? What could go wrong? Absolutely nothing. The crunching bass of Talena Atfield threatens to become ponderous throughout the song, but Morgan Lander’s alternating between melodious singing and guttural screaming on the “You better run” warning fits Roger Waters’ nightmare perfectly.

This is from Kittie's second album, Oracle, recorded at a time of transition. Founding guitarist Fallon Bowman had just left and Atfield would soon follow her out the door. The album itself is uneven, and not everyone liked a bunch of women reworking the beloved Pink Floyd. I’m one of the people who did love it.

Scissors Sisters – “Comfortably Numb” (2003)

And speaking of Pink Floyd, what was it about The Wall that inspired so many covers? No clue. I suppose Roger Waters writes good songs that are open to multiple interpretations. So the Scissor Sisters, in their debut album, took one of The Wall’s best-known songs and turned it into nu-disco, with Ana Matronic giving a bit of fey soul swag to the lyrics, and dance beats pulsing throughout.

Waters and David Gilmour gave their stamp of approval and the Scissor Sisters developed a cult following. After hit-and-miss success over the next decade, they appeared to disband. But just a few weeks ago, the Sisters were back, announcing a reunion tour for 2025 with about half of the original members on board.

Children of Bodom – “Oops I Did It Again” (2009)

They put out the intriguing Skeletons in the Closet in 2009, showcasing a bunch of cover songs that had been in their back catalog over the years. The album featured various rockers, from the likes of Pat Benatar, Billy Idol, and Iron Maiden. It seems like obvious territory for a Finnish death metal band, right?

Even the hyper-speed version of the CCR classic “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” fits perfectly well with its slight hillbilly twang. But Britney? Could that possibly work? Yep. Alexi Laiho screams out the lyrics and guest vocalist Jonna Kosonen provides just enough pop sensibility to recall the original. There is a blazing guitar solo before the final bridge, and then all the elements crash into each other for the finale.

Hugo – “99 Problems” (2011)

No way this could work. Jay-Z and bluegrass. But Hugo isn’t your standard bluegrass player. He rewrites almost all the original lyrics but keeps the iconic chorus, and barely holds onto the original melodic elements. It’s a slow-jam bluegrass tempo that recalls Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road” with that accordion/banjo attack. From Hugo’s debut album, Old Tyme Religion, released by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation. One listen convinces you that Hugo could probably cover anything and make it sound fairly cool.

Marilyn Manson – “You’re So Vain” (2012)

Marilyn Manson had been around for a long time when Born Villain came out in 2012. The band had a lot of success covering well-known songs before – songs like “Personal Jesus,” “I Put a Spell on You,” and “Sweet Dreams.” So they tried it again with a Carly Simon pop staple. Manson sings it with a gothic flair, and the track blends a grinding industrial metal sound with just enough of the song’s more melodious core to keep it recognizable.

The album featured the new and relatively short-lived rhythm section of Fred Sablan and Chris Vrenna. And since everyone knew this song was written about famous movie star Warren Beatty, why not get famous movie star Johnny Depp to show up on guitar.

Elton John, Pink and Logic – “Bennie and the Jets” (2018)

OK, this is the last entry, and it requires a tiny bit of backstory. I knew I was going to include this 1973 Elton John classic because I listened to it when I was a kid and I loved it. Still do. But initially, I was planning on writing about the magnificently out-of-tune and slovenly cover that Biz Markie and the Beastie Boys did back in the late 1990s. Because, you know, that’s probably the way we all sound when we try to sing songs like this.

But then I decided I should offer at least one example where the original artist actually had a hand in the cover, though it was largely the work of others. This was nearly true of Jay-Z and Hugo’s “99 Problems,” but it was even more obvious here. Plus, this album, Revamp, and its companion, Restoration, make up one of the very best covers projects ever.

That’s not to say all the songs work. Some decidedly do not. But across the pop Revamp and the country Restoration, Elton and Bernie Taupin gathered a remarkable collection of artists to put a different spin on many of their old songs. “Bennie and the Jets” uses modern pop, rap, and dance production techniques along with Elton’s original vocals to create something new.

If you like the original, you may not like the liberties they took. Just a warning. And if it turns out you don’t like it, then keep far away from the Miley Cyrus so-bad-it’s-good hoedown version of “The Bitch is Back” from Restoration.

You know what – forget that advice. Give both albums a spin, whether you like the prospect or not. You’ll find a couple of things you will love.

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