No other band/performer should ever try to cover...!

[KOSLOX]

Stuff that's extremely personal like "Tears In Heaven".

[GOLGO 13]

Any Stevie Wonder song. I tend to go into Stevie Wonder covers like 'this could be cool', and I walk away from it going 'what was the point?'

Stevie Ray Vaughan did a version of Superstitious that needs to be heard.

To contribute, no one of any significance has attempted a FULL BAND version of Boston's - More Than A Feeling. To attempt it is to go down in spectacular, full crash N burn failure.

[Kirby101]

[Kirby101]

[The Darknight Detective]

Any Stevie Wonder song. I tend to go into Stevie Wonder covers like 'this could be cool', and I walk away from it going 'what was the point?'

Stevie Ray Vaughn did a memorable cover of Superstition, FWIW.

EDIT: just saw the post above.

[The Darknight Detective]

I don't think any song shouldn't be covered. The original will always exist and you never know what you get. If the cover is bad, no one has to listen to it.

Hendricks' doing Dylan's Watchtower.

Joplin doing Piece of My Heart.

Joe Cocker singing A Little Help From My Friends.

You mention Tina Turner, she covered Proud Mary by CCR and as good as the original is, she made it amazing.

Completely agree, though any cover should have its own unique stamp upon it, IMO.

[Kirby101]

Completely agree, though any cover should have its own unique stamp upon it, IMO.

Yes, trying to just sound like the original won't do.

[TriggerWarning]

Speaking of unique spins: anyone else ever hear the Moby cover of the old New Order song Temptation. By New Order it sounded typical of New Order songs in that it was fast paced, electronic, and easily recognizable as New Order. I like New Order so this isn't a criticism. First time I heard the Moby version, on the Vampire Diaries no less, I didn't even realize what song it was and only figured it out on googling later. Its slowed down into a torchy ballad with a female lead singer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edmtItPSd5s

[TriggerWarning]

Completely agree, though any cover should have its own unique stamp upon it, IMO.

At the same time doing a worthy cover is also great and sometimes you don't want to mess with whats great about the song. I just posted a cover of a New Order song and here is another that Radiohead did. They didn't do anything really unique other than maybe make it slightly more rock but its subtle. Nonetheless its a great cover even if early in the song Thom Yorke is trying a bit too hard to sound like Ian Curtis would have sounded if Joy Division had ever been able to finish the song before his death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF9xO2Tpwzs

[PwrdOn]

If the Annie Lennox version is anything to go by: A Whiter Shade of Pale.

I was once given a short playlist of covers of Don't Fear the Reaper - and all of them seemed pretty pointless compared to The Blue Oyster Cult.

[Spike-X]

Born To Run.

[Spike-X]

A Beastie Boys song.

Oh, you don't think so?

[Spike-X]

I'd call that more of a reproduction than a cover, if you see what I mean.

[Gray Lensman]

For odd covers I always think of A Perfect Circle's cover of Imagine. The tone of voice seems to convey the opposite message from the original lyrics, where instead of saying 'Imagine how great it could be" it says "Imagine having no choice but to be this way", transforming it from something hopeful to something dystopian. I still get the mental image of Babylon 5's Alfred Bester listening to that song with his trademark smug smile whenever I hear it.

[BeastieRunner]

Oh, you don't think so?

That's RATM ... sooo ... ???