NPR Music - Cover songs that are better than the originals

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Sometimes a cover song is so good, so singular that it completely eclipses the original version.  Think Sinéad O'Connor doing Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Jimmy Hendrix lighting up Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” or, of course, Whitney Houston’s defining take on Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”  On this week’s show, we share some of our picks for cover songs that are better than the originals, talk about why, and what, exactly, a cover song needs to become a classic.NPR Music’s Dora Levite and Lars Gotrich join host Robin Hilton.Leave us a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail](00:00) Intro and the top five G.O.A.T.s (06:06) Al Green: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”(09:58) Björk: “It’s Oh So Quiet”(12:28) Aretha Franklin: “Respect”(16:22) Low: “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me”(19:45) Andrew Paul Woodworth: “Fight For Your Right to Party”(25:10) Yaeji: “Passionfruit”(28:13) Shonen Knife: “Top of the World”(32:06) Wednesday: “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Double)”(34:54) Low: “Fearless”(36:37) Harry Nilsson: “Without You”(39:57) Beyonce: “Before I Let Go (Homecoming Live Bonus Track)”(42:35) Gary Jules: “Mad World”(49:19) Chaka Khan: “I Feel For You”Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from NPR Music, the NPR Music podcast. You're home for the best new albums, best new songs and conversations about whatever else is happening in the world of music. NPR music, also home to Lars Gottrich. That's damn right. You just live here now. This is your home. I have been here 20 years. I've often thought you could just live here in this building and nobody would know. There's a shower.

There's showers. showers. There are two whole floors in this building that aren't being used right now. Nobody even knows what's up there. And Dorlewitt. I also live here. Do you also live here? Yeah, yeah, I live here too. It's hard when you're starting out. Thank God I got a job here. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know where else. Yeah, or else it would have been weird. D.C. is very expensive. It's very expensive. It's nice and quiet, especially in this booth where I sleep. Lars, a few weeks back, you and I did a show where I played a cover of Mitzki, well, it was a cover Mitzky did of the One Direction song Fireproof.

Right, yeah. Yeah, and I think we both agreed that Mitzke's version was infinitely better. I don't think I've even heard the original. Yeah, I have, and trust me, much better than the original. So we decided that we should just do a whole show about cover songs that we think are better than the originals, and that's what we're going to do. this week on the show. I know we all brought some stuff and we can kind of just go around, you know, the room here and share some of our picks and make a case for each of them.

But I think one thing that became very clear as we were each putting our lists together, and we don't know what we're playing. I mean, we don't know what each other's playing. But I think we all realize pretty quickly that there are some covers that are so universally regarded as better than the original and better known, like definitive, that we kind of don't need to spend a whole lot of time talking about. Yeah, we have called them Mount Rushmore plus one. Mount Rushmore plus one, the top five. Yeah.

I feel like these are also the ones where it's like, if you look up covers that are better than the original, there's already four articles and a podcast about these five as well. Right. Yeah. So we don't need to spend a lot of time on these, but we should mention them because otherwise we'll get so many dear idiots letters. How could you not mention these songs? And I rank these on my own.

You may disagree with the ranking here, and you can tell me. But I'll put at number five, I'm going to say, Sheenade O'Connor doing Princes, nothing compares to you. I mean, it's her song. Absolutely. That's her song. Yeah. So I'll put that at number five.

Number four, I'm going to say Johnny Cash doing Hurt by 9-inch Nails. I agree with this one. I do love the original a lot. But what Johnny Cash brings to that version of Hurt in his old weathered voice. in his American series era with Rick Rubin is just he brings so much gravitas and sadness and devastation. That's it. Sadness. So I put that at number four. Number three, I'm going to say Jeff Buckley doing Leonard Cohen's, Hallelujah. I mean, this is a song that everybody's covered. Right. I mean, that's, I think people know the, basically any cover more than they know Leonard Cohen's version of the song. And, you know, if you're a Shrekhead, you know the version by Rufus Rainwhite.

Right. I forgot about that until yesterday. Yeah. I mean, I think that may be the one in pop culture that people think of the most. But I think Jeff Buckley's is the most iconic. But Jeff Buckley, number three, doing Leonard Cohen's, Hallelujah. I'm going to say number two, Jimmy Hendricks doing Bob Dillans all along the Watchtower. Oh, yeah.

I mean, as soon as Jimmy came out with his version, I think Bob Dylan even said, no, this is Jimmy's song. So number two, Jimmy Hendricks doing Bob Dillans, all along the Watchtower. That leaves at number one, what? I mean, it's got to be Whitney Houston's version of Dolly Parton's, I will always love you, right? Yeah, 100%. I mean, it has to be. I mean, do you think it's better, like, hands down, better than Dolly Parton's? All right, so here's what I'll say.

Dolly Parton has written hundreds of great songs. You know, and in this. case, give Whitney this one you're saying. I think in this case, Whitney's performance of this song just underscores just how desperate the character in the story is for that love. For a while, I was like, yeah, obviously this is the number one cover, but last night I was listening to Dolly Parton's version. And the sadness and subtlety in her voice really struck me in a new way where I was thinking,

is this a song that is absolutely better as a cover, or is it part of the camp of I had no idea this was a cover? The reason I think it's because it checks so many different boxes of all the different things we're going to talk about here as we go through some of our other picks, which is it is now Whitney's song. To your point, like I don't even, there's so many people who don't even know that it was a cover song.

She's so completely transformed it. Just every possible way that I could think of that you can take someone else's song and make it your own. That's what she does with, I will always love you. All right, so that's the top five. And, you know, we could debate for hours about the order and whether or not something should fall off in favor of something else. But we're going to just get those five out of the way.

Let's get to some of our other picks who wants to go first. I'll go. Go for you. So the way we discussed that we're going to do the show, we're going to play a little bit of the original. Sure. Right? And then we're going to play the cover.

So I'm going to go to a class. I want to hold your hand by the Beatles. All right, so not so hot take. I actually prefer teeny bopper beetles to like experimental beetles. That's the kind of hot take. I mean, because this... Really? Yeah, I do not.

And I worship the Beatles. But yeah, this era of the Beatles is not my favorite. But then I heard, many years ago, I heard this cover by Al Green from 1969, and I was like, oh, this is what the song was always supposed to be. I literally got goosebumps. Oh, my God. I can't believe I haven't heard this before. So I do love the original version. And like I said, I do love teeny popper pebbles.

But that song, the original is so sickly sweet. It sounds like puppy love, basically. But Al Green, he does something to the song with the horn arrangements, with the groove, with his, and more importantly, his vocal performance, it feels so desperate. It feels so, that is what I want out of a great cover, something that picks out the thing that was in the song, but that was not made explicit. To your point, Lars, he brings out so much joy to it. Like you said, the Beatles version is sickly sweet and it is so much wrapped in desire. And Al Green here is just... He's a grown-ass man who has found a new love that makes him feel like a little kid. This is interesting because one of the questions I had, as I was thinking about all this, was whether or not there are some bands or artists or songs that are untouchable. And I kind of took the Beatles for a spin around the block a couple times, kind of thinking about, can you really successfully cover Beatles song?

Like, I don't know, are they untouchable? And then I hear this. Well, there is a whole cottage industry, especially in the 60s and 70s of Black R&B and soul artists who covered the Beatles. There is this amazing, you know, the reggae label Trojan Records. They have a three-volume set of like Jamaican artists covering Beatles songs. Every single one is amazing. Yeah. I mean, and then there's Joe Cocker's version. I get by the, I mean, arguably better than the original version.

Dora, what do you got? I want to do another one that is just, to me, on the Mount Rushmore maybe, plus two now list of. It's going to be a very, very big. Yeah. It's like we take another mountain and we start building there. which is Bjork's cover of a 1951 song by the singer Betty Hutton called It's O So Quiet. And when I was doing a little bit of research, I found out that's actually a cover of an old German song made a few years earlier in 1948. So let's hear the Betty Hutton version.

Shh. It's oh, so quiet. It's oh so still. And where Betty Hutton approaches the song with the volume of the volume shifts as kind of an act of rebellious cheekiness, Bjork turns it to be a haunted dollhouse type of air, which is what she's so good at. Yeah.

All right, full disclosure. I love Bjork's version of this song. I did not know it was a cover. Because it didn't feel completely out of character to me when she dropped this song. Yeah. I mean, this wasn't that long before she did the movie, Dancer in the Dark. Right. Which had, you know, as a musical and it had a lot of songs in this kind of spirit.

So I don't know. I guess when she did the songs in Dancer in the Dark, I thought, oh, this is just kind of a continuation of the space that she's in. It feels like she is, especially in this song, she's cosplaying this type of, like, big band. jazz sound with, like I said before, an air of sadness and depression and, like, singing through your pain, which is the same way the music functions in Dance Room in the Dark. And the original singer plays it a little safe. What Bjork does with this is just uninhibited. Well, I want to do one that I think very easily could go on the original Rushmore. We don't have to, I don't know, I don't know what we'd bump.

Maybe, maybe Shanaid, I'm not sure. But it is Aretha Franklin doing respect. Yeah. This was a song that was originally written and recorded by Otis Redding in 1965. Here's his version. I mean, this is one of those cases where, like you were talking about with the Dolly's song. It's like, is it really better? Yes, it is.

Is this version amazing by Otis Redding? 100%. Yes. Incredible version. In fact, I think there is only one person who could do it any better, and it is Aretha. I mean, sometimes the cover of a song completely eclipses the original, and that's what happened in this case for sure. I mean, it became one of the defining songs of her career. Rolling Stone magazine, when they did their 500 greatest songs of all time, they reconfigured the list.

They did an update a few years ago. and they put this as the number one song of all time. Oh, wow. Aretha's version of this song. And talk about changing the meaning of it. When Otis Redding did the song, it was a man comes home at the end of the day. He's worked hard for his money.

He just wants a little respect at home. In her hands, it becomes the ultimate anthem of empowerment for women. Yeah. And when you consider the error that the song was written in, It is just this declaration of self-worth. And man, when she spells out R-E-S-P-E-C-T, which was, that was her choice to do that, like, let me spell it out for you.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. The whole spelling out is not in the original. I mean, she just owns this song. I love, I think, the best covers for me, definitely bring out a meaning. or bring into Stark relief, something that I was completely missing in the song. And it's also just about entry points,

finding ways into songs that I otherwise don't like or artists I otherwise don't like. I mean, there was, I used to not like Dylan. I couldn't listen to Dylan. I just couldn't get past his voice. And then I heard in the movie Natural Born Killers, there's a scene where on the radio or something or stereo in the background is Bob Dylan doing a version of,

You Belong to Me, which is this old 50s song. And his voice was just so perfect for it. And it was so spare and just him and his guitar was just perfect. And that was an entry point for me to start getting more into his catalog. Who wants to go next? Lars, I guess we're back to you. This one might be controversial, at least if you are a fan of the Smiths. So Strangeways, Here We Come, was their last album in 1987.

And there's a song on that album called Last Night I Dremend. that somebody loved me. So one of my favorite bands of all time is low, the Duluth, Minnesota duo of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker. And in the year 2001, they released a CD single that I bought. And the A-Side was their cover of Last Night a Dream. that somebody loved me. Johnny Marr has said that last night I dream somebody

of love me is one of his best songs. I don't disagree with him, but I've always found the arrangement of that song so busy. And that's what Johnny Marr does with his guitar. He makes his one guitar sound like five. What I love about Lowe's version is it strips away all the art of his. His story is all

I go It mirrors the song about loneliness And makes it lonely I was never a big Smith fan But this is a great example Of take a song by a band And if I don't really care much for the band I probably never even found my way to the song

And then you hear this And you love it so much It makes you, at least makes me want to go back And like, all right, maybe I should be given the Smith another chance here. Well, the Smiths are one of those bands where all foreign members contribute equally to the band. I don't think the Smiths is just Morrissey. But if you have a problem with Morrissey, which a lot of people do, a great way in is a great cover like this one. I think the production has a really big impact on me and how I can receive a song. And the 80s,

that was just the whole decade was about excess. And I think you, you know, just everything was so over the top. And I think you really heard that in just the way music was produced with all. It was super sterilized and, you know, digital reverb, the Yamaha DX7, the sense, the electric drums. Everything just got so big and kind of gaudy in my mind. And it made it hard for me to hear a lot of the songs that came out. I've heard covers of Cindy Lopper song that I didn't like when I heard the original and then I heard the cover. I'm like, wow, that's actually an extraordinary song. I have one from 1986, and this is the original song. I'm really curious what the cover is going to be.

Oh, my God, I hated this song so much when it came out. 1986 on the album Licensed Still, it was the Beastie Boys debut album Fight for Your Right. It was the quintessential party rock anthem for anyone in high school at the time. And maybe it's partly because I just wasn't a party kid. But it was just hard for me to get past how over the top it is. You know, the vocals to me were kind of nasally and out of tune. The lyrics super juvenile. I mean, it's Louis, Louis.

That's what it is. Yeah, I hear. I mean, that's the spirit of it. Yeah. It's dumb, it's fun. You don't have to think too hard about it. It was just so obnoxious to me. But then in the early 2000s, I came across the solo acoustic version of this.

song. I'm already nervous. Me too. By the singer Andrew Paul Woodworth. Wake of late for school, man, you don't want to go. You ask your mom, please, but she still says no. Miss two classes and no homework. Should we get to the chorus? You got to hear, right.

Did you know the song had a chorus? Yeah. You want to fight. That's a refrain. Right. To party. You're going to fight. To part.

Yeah, yeah, you got to fight. This was a thing for a while. Oh, my God. This was very much a thing. And I think we even discussed offline at some point. I was just like my hatred of acoustic covers of rap songs. Oh, come on, man. Listen.

So in this case. In this case, he takes this, Andrew Paul Woodworth, who's doing this cover, he takes that song, which to me was just so obnoxious. He turns it into this song that's just so sad and full of loneliness. And it's like world weary. You know, like, wake up late for school, man, you don't want to go. And, you know, you ask your mom, please. And she still says no.

Maybe it just captures better for me what the experience of going to school was like. For me, which was, it was just like, I was just. sad all the time. Yeah, Robin just wants to be sad. And when I hear the original, like, I didn't even know there were chords. I didn't know there was a chord progression. You know, it's like how he teased this whole melody and all of this emotion out of the song to me is extraordinary.

I don't know if I hear this one as much as you. I think the Beastie Boys song just rips so hard, but I do completely see what you're saying of this song does pull out a different aspect of their intention here. Again, like I was saying earlier, that I love it when an artist can find that thing that's in the song that you were completely missing. And in this case, see, it becomes almost a dirge, like an analogy to lost youth.

Like, it is. It's like you just, you've got to fight. If you want to hold on to your youth and all that energy, and every, you've got to fight for your right to party. Yeah, you've really do. Oh, really? You have to work in sweat. Oh, my gosh.

And cry. You do. I think you've got some baggage, and maybe we can talk off line. Yeah, you just got done saying a minute ago. You don't like it. You got sick of artists doing these quiet acoustic covers of rock songs or electronic songs. What do you think of Jose Gonzalez doing heartbeats? Oh, that one's great.

Because that's taking this electro-synth pop song, basically, and turning by the knife and turning it into a quiet acoustic song. I don't think it's necessarily better than the original. I was going to say the same. Because that's not better to me. The bar is high. Okay. So you're just saying that it's not better than the original Beastie Boys version, or are you saying you're just not putting that on at all?

I'm both. I also maybe it would be both. I have another controversial one that I think. Okay. Oh, good. All right. Lars, you said that that Smith's cover makes it easier to listen to a song if you find Morrissey hard to love. Yeah, if you have a problematic fave. One of my favorite

covers is of another artist who is a problematic fave and an artist who I do love a lot, which is Drake, especially I love Drake's earliest stuff, which is, I think, pretty widely agreed upon that that's some of his best. And this cover is of his 2017 song, Passion Fruit from the album More Life. I know what you're going to do. So this is the original? This is the original Passion Fruit. So the cover ritualistic, cleansing my soul of addiction for now, because I'm falling apart. Yep. So the cover that I think is better is from the DJ and electronic musician Yeji.

And it's from the same year, 2017, and also called Passion Fruit. plans in my soul of addiction for now because I'm falling apart mention between us just like picket fences you got issues that I won't mention for now because we're falling. So this one isn't exactly night and day to me. What is it that Ye G's doing here that is better for you?

So the song is broadly about loving from a distance and yearning for someone. And the way that Yeji turns it into this atmospheric, dreamy trance, and she takes the hook passionate from miles away and turns it into a portmanteau, basically, of passion way. And I think that shortening of that hook gets at the thesis of the song in such a beautifully effective way and just pulls me right in. I guess one thing this song brings up is,

is that you don't have to completely blow up the original to... No. No. Yeah. You can make a subtle tweak. And this kind of gets at, like, when a cover song is better than the original, because the person covering it realized that there was something wrong with the original. Yeah, yeah.

She softens the edges of the song. Yes. Yeah. She takes these grand, undying proclamations of love that, honestly, Drake does a lot and spins it into a different light of what it can look like when it's, more private when it's more daydreaming. I thought you were going to say the problem with the original was that it was done by Drake. There's also that.

There's also that. So Yeji doing Drake's passion fruit, both came out in 2017. The great thing about a great cover song is that sometimes it can take a song that you hate or not even hate, but like, just find annoying. and fight fighting right. I mean, you're making my case for it. Keep going. So this is absolutely no shade to the carpenters

because I do actually enjoy the carpenters. That does not surprise me. But top of the world is such an annoying song. I'm on the top of the world looking down on creation and the only explanation I can find is the love that I've found. ever since you've been around your love's put me at the top of the world.

Robin, you and I, our formative years, were in the 90s. And in the 90s, a lot of major of labels who are like, we need to extend the life of our catalog, basically. So there are a lot of, to this day. To this kind of like, so there are a lot of tribute compilations that came out in the 90s. So like Neil Young to the Walt Disney,

animated films and they're all done by like Tom Waits doing like a Disney song, stuff like that. Lion King. Yeah. No, I love those are great. But there is a compilation in 1994 called If I Were a Carpenter and it features Sonic Youth and the cranberries and dish walla and Cheryl Crow and four non-blondes all doing covers. Oh my God that band. Yeah. Yeah, they're all doing covers of Carpenter songs.

But there's one on it that I just find so unbelievably charming. And it's Shonenife, the Japanese rock band, doing Top of the World. Oh, I have heard this cover. It's appeared in movies. Yes. Yeah. It's from the parent trap. Yes.

It just came to you. With the help of my computer. Yes, right. Night and day. Night and day. Love this song. Love it now. I love it.

I'm not going back to the Carpenter's. But, you know, one of the things that happens, too, is when, especially with compilations like this, is you take an artist that maybe you don't care much for, and then you start looking at all the other artists who covered. Cranberries, Cheryl Crow, Babes and Toy Cracker, Matthew Sweet. I mean, yes, this is all very 90s. Very 90s. And they're all these artists you do love, and then you start thinking, well, if they love the carpenters enough that they're... Maybe I should.

Maybe I should. Yeah. Well, what I love about this cover is that it's sort of in the tradition of punk covers of popular songs. Not punk goes pop. I can't stand that series of compilations. I'm talking about, like, when the raincoats did Lola by the Kings, or when the slits did, I heard it through the grapevine originally by Gladys Knight and the Pips. They strip everything down. They take, like, especially Shonen knife, they take a little curlicue of a melody, and they

make it a repeating figure throughout the song that you kind of come back to in a way that doesn't necessarily make it cutesy. It's a completely different arrangement of a song you've heard probably a billion times over your lifetime and then suddenly have this version. It adds a youthful spark to one of the most overplayed songs ever. Yeah, it injects a whole new life into it. Completely. Yeah. Do you have something good that would come out of that?

Mine are real. I do. Do you have anything good? Can you please play something good? How about, yeah. How about something good? Yeah, if you're going to do the show, here's a clever little suggestion for you. Make it good. Let's do a good song next, please.

Yeah, because I think mine are a total vibe shift, which is fine, but you go out. What do you got? Yeah. I have another song that adds a youthful perspective and glow to an old classic. and the original song is by Gary Stewart from 1975 called She's Acting Single, I'm Drinking Double. Oh, I know what you're doing. You know all my tricks, Lars.

Can we just say how great country music is? Country music is right. I mean, always the best lyrics. Best stories. So the original by Gary Stewart, she's acting single. I'm drinking doubles. And the cover that just absolutely rips is by the Alt Country Band Wednesday. It's like she's drunk in this moment, right?

Because it suddenly slows down and it gets so sludgy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Gary Stewart, Country Guy Con, is hard to match and is hard to best. But the way that lead singer Carly Hartzman builds on this like, woozy atmosphere with the slide guitar that's just kind of like aching and the screeching guitar that just blows this into oblivion she completely takes that drunken woozy air to a new level and brings the intention of this song completely up this whole covers album is pretty front to back pretty great i think that was actually when i fell in love with wednesday because like

I got to see Carly Hartzman's influences flipped upside down. She does a great version of the Chestnut song. She does some Smashing Pumpkins. Well, okay, Robin, you asked earlier what song, what artists are uncoverable. And I would have said Smashing Pumpkins because Billy Corkin's voice is so intrinsically tied to those songs. Yeah. But then their Wednesday's version of Perfect is actually pretty great.

Yeah. I mean, I think that in terms of like what's, untouchable. Sometimes it's like Pink Floyd. I've never heard a single good Pink Floyd cover. It's like that music just kind of exists in that universe. It's like none of that music was ever meant to be covered. It's so orchestrated for a Prague rock band. You know, I've never heard a great cover of. Oh, do I have a low cover for you? Oh. Is it a wish you were here? Because that's the one everyone does. It's because they're not really songs like that. They're these epic space jams or whatever, you know. I don't know. They do an amazing version.

Lowe does an amazing version of Fearless that I would highly recommend. Well, okay, so yeah, that, now that is a pretty great song. Here's the thing about Lowe. I made a playlist this past week of all of their covers, and they have like 20 of them. they're all great. They've done like the Bee Gees. They've done Joy Division. They've done Rihanna. Oh man, now I just want to go back and listen to Metal. But okay, fine. They're not an untouchable band. This is a great cover. I love this. But yeah, I know. I derailed the conversation there. I don't know where we were going. I don't remember either. We were talking. Gary Stewart. We were talking, why? Wednesday. We were talking Wednesday. Wednesday. Hey, Wednesday's pretty great. Yeah, I like Wednesday.

Favorite band, if I do say so myself. Well, I've got one that I think is one of those songs that a lot of people don't realize is a cover, and it's the song Without You. Harry Nielsen, I think he probably has the best known version of the song Without You, but is actually a song by the band Bad Finger. So not bad, but it's almost too breezy. And the way he kind of clips the notes, you know, this chorus is kind of, kind of choppy. It kind of skips along and it's just a totally different vibe from what I think

most people came to know in this version by Harry Nielsen. I can't live if living is without you. I can't live. I can't give anymore. You just realize how incredible the melody is in this song in Harry Nielsen's hands. He really brings into focus just how much heartache is in it, how gut-wrenching those. this song actually is. It's like in the original, when I hear bad finger do it, it's almost like they don't care that it's over. You know, it's like, I can't live.

If living is without you. I mean, it's just, it's so clipped. And then, and his, it's just like all passion. Harry Nelson makes you realize that the thing that was missing with this song was that it's supposed to be a ballad. It's supposed to be a completely heart-wrenching ballad about truly not living without you. And the best way to tell that story is,

a huge, huge ballad like Whitney Houston and why that cover of I Will Always Love You work so well because it's just an undying ballad. Well, this Harry Nielsen version, yeah, this is a song, yeah, that has been covered so many times, but I think like so many great covers has now recognized more as a Harry Nielsen song than a badfinger. And it's so interesting because Harry Nielsen himself was such an incredible songwriter. Yeah. And his stuff was covered by other artists as well.

By several people, but he also knew the value of interpretation. He did a whole record of Rainy Newman songs that's incredible. Yeah. In fact, his song won. I was going to play Amy Mann's version of one that was featured in the movie Magnolia because I actually think it's better than his version. All right. I think we all have one more pick that we're going to do.

Dora, we'll start with you. This is one that I'm surprised we haven't talked about already. It also could be on our Rushmore. I would put this on the original mountain rather than the extra mountain. Oh, really? So what would you have knocked off then? I... Oh, yeah.

What did you knock off? It's the thing. I mean, it's... Dora. Sheneade? Is it Cash? You keep knocking off Shaneh. Cash, do it?

Well, I just don't know what else you would do. I would knock off hallelujah. What? Really? I think that's fair. I'm kind of tired of that song. I would knock off hallelujah. It's so iconic.

Okay. All right, well, lay it on me. What I'm replacing it with is the cover of frame. is the cover of Frankie Beverly and Maze's 1981 song Before I Let Go. This is the original. I can't wait to hear of this. It's Beyonce,

before I let go, from the Homecoming Live album. Yeah. I mean, talk about production of a cover, just skyrocketing it. I mean, the thing that they do with this song, adding the marching band horns and Beyonce's adlibs and her vocalization, it just makes it one of Beyonce's best songs, in my humble opinion, and makes you forget it to cover altogether. I mean, that whole performance was just such a revelation for Beyonce's career. It really felt like she's the kind of person who just kind of like finds new capstones. Yeah. And that was like, that one felt like this is my career up to now.

I'm going to completely reimagine it and celebrate it with this marching band at this big space at this huge event. And it makes so much sense to me that she would pull in like her favorite songs to cover. It's a love letter, which is. is another reason I love cover songs is because they're their love letters oftentimes to the song that came before it. And it's here. It's a love letter to black music history as well. The marching band, the it's really incredible. And you can really see all of her influences, like you said, tracked throughout the song. Well, I don't want to bring everyone down, but I've got to what do you mean? It's just.

We're on the beyond. I don't say hi. I know. This is, could not be more starkly different than the Beyonce song. It's Mad World. Gary Jules' cover of the Tears for Fear song, Mad World. Here's the original. I mean, this could be at Mount Rushmore. The song is so 80s, the drums, the sense, everything about it. I love the original. Do you? Oh, I do. I do. I could have spent my entire life. And I love Tears for Fears. They're big songs that everyone knows them for, shout, head over heels, everybody wants to rule the world. I could have spent my entire life never knowing that this song even existed.

Wow. Well, I'm serious. I mean that quite literally. I don't mean that like, I could go my whole life. I just mean like I never would have even come across this song had it not been for the 2001 movie Donnie Darko that had the Gary Jules version of Mad World that is completely different. I would I'm familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces,

bright and early for that daily races. I would argue that it does the same thing that the Beastie Boys cover does, and not just because it takes this over-the-top song and turns it into a quiet acoustic sad song. It's because it finds that sad part in the song. It finds that part that's actually full of loneliness and grief and like mourning, you know,

grieving a lost world or a lost life that you once had. And your faith in whatever that world was or what you thought that world was, it's gone. And he really, Gary Jules, really pulls that out. Also the fact that he finds this melody in it that I didn't even know existed. And that piano, that dun da da da da da da da da da da da da da

like that's not in the original but he took the chord progression and picked the notes apart to come up with could not be a more perfect melody. I think the thing that like sets this apart from your Beastie Boys acoustic cover is the arrangement. That's the thing that always drew me to

this particular cover because it is so pretty and mournful and it picks at it picks out the sadness that's in the original song that I've always heard. I love a happy-sounding song that is sad. But this one understands that that sadness is not the end.

It is like a through line. And I think that's what's most successful about this cover. What strikes me in this cover is the frailty in his voice. And something we talked about earlier is with covers that feel untouchable, often it is because the voice is so distinct. But here he brings that uniqueness of his voice into the cover, which is why it becomes better. And stripping it back, too, getting rid of all of that production that I found, I think, what was the one you were talking about, Lars, that was the Smith songs? It's just busy.

You said, yeah, I feel like that a lot with a lot of 80 songs that they didn't know when to stop. They just kept adding stuff and it just became too cluttered. Now when you hear anyone cover this song, they're not covering the Tears for Fear song. People cover Gary Jules' version of the song. Yeah. Well, I think we all had a hard time winnowing our list of cover songs. Oh, my gosh, and I have a hard time. So many.

So we'll create a playlist. I don't know what we'll call it yet. Maybe just cover songs. But if people search for cover songs and NPR music, they'll find it in Spotify or Apple. We'll put all of these picks in it so people can hear full versions. And we'll go through a list. Add a bunch of other songs. We'll add a bunch to it.

Well, we're on some of your short lists. Oh, man, here we go. All right. All right, go, Lars. Celtic Frost's version of the Wall of Voodoo song, Mexican Radio. Meridian Brothers, the Colombian group, they do a really funny version of a son of a preacherman. And they call Columbia del Pichemen. I would call that song almost untouch.

It's a great and fun and weird cover. All right, we'll put it on the list. And another one, because I just got to shout it out, Hart, their song, their cover of Alone. It's one of those ones people don't realize is a cover. I didn't know that was a cover. But it is a cover. And it comes from a period in Hart's career where they did not want to play other people's songs. And then our producer is like, hey, we need you to make money.

So we're going to pair you up with some producers and songwriters. And then Alone became like their signature song. I had one that I was surprised wasn't brought up today, which is Leanne La Havas covering Weird Fishes by Radiohead. So good. good. One part of the canon of this country song, but is my personal favorite, is A.G. Cook's Crimson and Clover. Tysa Galls, everyone's a winner. It's really great. Sea of Love by Cat Power, which I didn't know was a cover at first. Oh, wow. She's got a whole catalog of Korean covers. I mean, that's what put her on the map in the first place. Yeah. Erica Badu covers a Drake song.

Covers Hotline Bling, but calls it cellular device. It's really great. I was wondering if you can cover your own work. Do you think you can cover your own work? So Brian Ferry has done this several times. He's very good at it. Well, then I would go with Colin Hay's cover of the song Overkill that Minutwork did. I think he did a solo acoustic version of that song that made me actually love it. Sort of in that spirit, do you all watch Schitts Creek? Did you ever watch that TV show?

There's this great moment where David's boyfriend does a version of Tina Turner simply the best. It is such a tearjerker. I mean, takes that 80s power pop song and just turns it into just the, the most beautiful love song. Oh, for you, Lars, Doobie Brothers, doing What a Fool believes. Did you know that's a Kenny Loggins song? Yeah, I did. Yes, I did, but I forgot. And I love What a Fool Believes. By the way, there's this British band called Self, who does a version of What a Fool believes on toy instruments, and it's one of the greatest things you will ever hear in your entire life. So we'll put all those in a playlist, but Lars, you're going to

take us out with your last pick. We talk so much about Schneider O'Connor, Prince cover, I thought we should end with a Prince cover. So here's the original, I Feel for You, by Prince from 1979. And then just a few years later, this was common at the time for Prince. He wrote just a ridiculous amount of songs, and he would put them into different bands, or he would give, he would gift them to singers that he really liked. And one of those singers was shock at I was going to say, Shaka Khan. So it begins to Chaka Khan. Chaka Khan.

Chaka Khan. Shaka Khan. Let me rock. Shaka Khan. That's all I want to do. Shaka Khan. Let me rock. Jacka Khan.

Let me rock. It begins with the rap from Mel Mill from Grand Master Flash. And then it has that absolutely iconic Stevie Wonder harmonica line. Right. And it's just like, Shaka Khan, like, structurally, the song, is not that much different than the original. But there's just that extra oomph, there's that extra sparkle.

There's somebody threw a firework in that studio. Right. And everything just exploded. It is such a high energy performance. And especially just like effusive vocal delivery from Shaka Khan, all the elements are there. It's a perfect song. This is completely her song.

She owns this song, another one on the Rushmore. mountain scape that we have. We have like 72 songs on the mountain now. We've taken over the Apple. We've taken over our mountain range at this point. All right, but we'll go out on this. Lars Gottsrich, Doral Levitt.

Thanks as always. This was fun. Yeah, this was so fun. Let's do terrible cover songs next. Oh, do I have a list. All right, it's all songs considered from Inpefew. music.