These are all great! thanks everyone for your links. I appreciate it!
Nobody could improve on the original, it’s Kate, after all. She’s my main musical goddess. Still, it was nice to hear the song done live by my 2nd favorite musical goddess. I’ve known her since 1988, I tracked her down when I first became a fan and wanted to play her music on my radio show. This was many years before she became a world-wide cult artist. In the first link she says “This is for Vickie” in a mock stern voice because I’d been after her for years to cover Kate. She finally did, and it made me so giddy.
I didn’t like the list much, some of the original artists did far better versions IMO. In that spirit here’s some covers that may upset other music fans:
Gillian Welch - Black Star (Radiohead)
irongoddesstea - Right in Two (Tool)
Coil - Tainted Love (Gloria Jones)
First one I thought of was Galaxie 500’s cover of Ceremony (Joy Division/New Order) but couldn’t find the studio version and can’t be arsed to rip the vinyl.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy does an excellent cover of R. Kelly’s already excellent song “The World’s Greatest”. His cover of PJ Harvey’s "Sweeter Than Anything is also worth listening to.
Tripod is a nerdy Australian comedy band, I’m guessing not particularly well known outside of the country. They occasionally do something a bit less comic, though, like this cover of Paranoid Android (by Radiohead).
On a completely different note from my earlier contributions…
Oingo Boingo covering I Am the Walrus…it’s similar enough to the original to be instantly recognizable, but it’s also entirely Oingo Boingo.
Bonnie Raitt’s cover of John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery,” and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” are two of my faves.
A cover so good that after the Hendrix version Dylan changed the way he sung it to be more like Hendrix.
Since I recently mentioned Nazareth in another thread, I’ll have to say that their cover of Love Hurts and Joni Mitchell’s This Flight Tonight are superior to the originals. This may be the product of my youthful reminiscence and rock heresy, but I still believe it.
“All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix was better than Dylan’s original.
Not many people upstaged The Beatles, but Joe Cocker’s Version of I Get By (With a Little Help From My Friends) is a classic.
And after you’ve seen that, you just have to watch John Belushi’s version.
Eric Clapton’s early career was built on superior covers of JJ Cale songs (Cocaine, After Midnight)
ZZ Top did a better version of “I Thank You” than Sam and Dave did.
The White Stripes blew the doors off of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. The link is to a live performance that’s just awesome.
Janis Joplin’s version of “Me and Bobby McGee” is far better than Kris Kristofferson’s original.
Speaking of The White Stripes, Joss Stone remade “Fell In Love with a Girl” (changing it to “Fell in Love with a Boy”), and knocked it out of the friggin’ ballpark.
Dylan is too easy. Great writer, meh singer. The first thing I thought of when I saw this thread was “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Janis Joplin’s version of “Me and Bobby McGee” is a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s original version:
If the list in the Wikipedia entry is accurate, Kris Kristofferson’s version of the song (which he co-wrote) is the fifth version to be released and the Janis Joplin version is the eighth. At that point Kristofferson still thought of himself as a songwriter who supplied songs for a variety of singers, occasionally including himself. The Joplin version might be the best version, but I don’t know what you would call the original version. It isn’t clear that any of the early versions of the song were done because the singer heard an earlier version on a record or on the radio. The song was just passing around singers in recording studios and some of them decided to record it.