Neil March brings us a fully remixed and remastered article about favourite covers.

WE GOT IT COVERED (THE UPDATE)
Back in 2018, I wrote a fun piece for Fresh on the Net entitled We Got It Covered in which I rated my top ten cover versions of all time and invited others to talk about great covers they loved too. It got great engagement and was a thoroughly enjoyable exercise. Now, in 2026, encouraged by our leader Del, I have returned to the same subject with further benefit of hindsight. And we want to know what everyone else thinks about this subject too.

There have, of course, been countless great covers over the decades. There have also been great songs written for others that are not really ‘covers’. Examples include David Bowie writing All The Young Dudes for Mott The Hoople, Stevie Wonder writing Until You Come Back To Me for Aretha Franklin or the many songs The Bee Gees wrote and produced for others including Al Green, Yvonne Elliman, Tavares, Samantha Sang and many more.

In choosing my favourites, there have been certain criteria. Originality is the number one consideration. A cover that is just a Karaoke version of the original with the benefit of more modern production values might be good for scoring a hit (ask Shola Ama, Cleopatra and others) but a ‘great’ cover is one that takes the original somewhere entirely new. Another consideration has been whether the cover broke ground or did a great job of demolishing demarcation lines. So, with all that in mind, here are my ten picks. But please do respond with picks of your own and tell us why you have chosen them.

1. EARTH WIND & FIRE – Got To Get You Into My Life
Unequivocally the king of cover versions. The incredible US Funksters took Paul McCartney’s Beatles classic and transformed it into a sophisticated slice of Soul-Funk packed with ideas – syncopated stabs, big call and response harmonies and breathtaking musicianship. The unison intro underlines why their horn section was generally deemed to be the best on the planet for so many years. They introduce additional melodic content, again punctuated by goose-bumping staccato horn riffs. It is built on the funkiest of foundations via a world class rhythm section and staggering instrumental prowess. But the icing on this delicious cake is the contrast between Mo White’s distinctive lower register vocal twang and Philip Bailey’s huge heavenly falsetto. The song was part of the dismal Sergeant Pepper Movie which flopped as a film but produced success as a soundtrack album. Here is why.

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2. CHAKA KHAN – I Feel For You
It is a popular myth that Prince wrote this song for Chaka Khan. On the contrary, it appeared on his lesser known debut album 5 years earlier. But what an extravaganza this proved to be. Opened by Grandmaster Melle Mel (of the Furious Five) rapping before Stevie Wonder rides in with his virtuosic harmonica play, it features a line-up of top musicians. Chaka Khan’s effortlessly powerful and dexterous voice soars above a superb mix that was state-of-the-art at the time. If you are familiar with the Prince original, which is lovely by the way, you will know that this version is nothing like it. Arif Mardin, one of the truly legendary producers, worked his magic but that must have felt that bit easier with such a brilliant cast. Deservedly a massive international hit and one of the top selling singles in the UK in 1984. The 12-inch version is the definitive one.

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3. ROBERT WYATT – Shipbuilding
It is no accident that the top three covers in this list were written by three of the greatest songwriters of all time too – Paul McCartney, Prince and, in this case, Elvis Costello. It is, as I noted in the 2018 version of this article, arguable as to whether this is exactly a ‘cover’ given that Elvis Costello played guitar and sang BVs on it but he did release his own brilliant version of it too which brought the house down when I saw him perform it live in 1985. All the same, it is this version with Mark Bedford’s sliding double bass and Steve Nieve’s stunning piano accompanying Robert Wyatt’s perfectly fractured and haunting tenor voice that gives me the shivers. It was written in response to the launch of the Falklands War when the then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ignored intelligence and allowed a desperate Argentinian government to invade an obscure British island in the Pacific so she could wage an easily winnable war. She let 1000 young people (mostly teenage Argentinian conscipts but including about 250 young British troops) die to ensure her poll ratings recovered ahead of the following year’s elections. When Robert Wyatt sings ‘With all the will in the world’ for the last time and the chord underneath changes, it is one of the most chillingly beautiful moments in an incredible song. Costello’s ability to place a strong political statement in the context of everyday working class lives is pure genius.

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4. ARETHA FRANKLIN – Say A Little Prayer
Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote so many unique songs that became standards, many of which, including this one, were originally penned for Dionne Warwick. Her version is truly lovely but Aretha’s transformation of it into this scorched Soul classic underlines why she was dubbed ‘The Queen Of Soul’. The jazz-tinged piano chords and gospel-infused backing vocals set the scene but Aretha’s dynamic vocal performance, her spine-tingling ad libs against the grain of the chorus and the way she utilises so many elements of her incredible voice not only remind us that she was a singer of such exceptional talent but that she was also an outstanding musician. In 1987, NME journalists voted this No 1 in their all-time singles (singles, not covers!). It was not difficult to see why.

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5. ELVIS PRESLEY – Blue Suede Shoes
There is always the potential for controversy when placing Elvis high in a list like this as there is rightly a lot of anger amongst pop historians at the way he got to own the ‘King Of Rock And Roll’ tag as the cleancut presentable white boy on mainstream TV while pioneers like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino didn’t get their true recognition. Nevertheless, as transformational covers go, Elvis took Carl Perkins’ Rockabilly original and reinvented it as an uptempo, energy-driven Rock and Roll classic, the perfect personification of his persona complete with shaking hips and curled down lip. Perkins often expressed some resentment for the way Elvis had such greater success than he did with the song although I doubt whether he complained about the publishing royalties! But the truth is Elvis’s version is the definitive one and Perkins’s fantasy that he might have been the bigger star with the right looks and a better manager is something of a nonsense!

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6. THE TEARDROP EXPLODES – Better Scream/Make That Move Right Now
Incredibly, this song only ever appeared in an obscure session on the Richard Skinner Show in 1981, the show that preceded the John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1 in those days. Luckily I was listening and taped it at the time. To put this into context, Better Scream had been the debut single by fellow Liverpool Post-Punk band Wah! Heat (who became Wah!). Julian Cope, singer and bassist with the Teardrops and Pete Wylie, singer and guitarist with Wah! were best friends and one-time bandmates in the legendary Crucial Three along with Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCullough. Cope had also had a year to consider what he might do with Wylie’s brilliant original, hence coming up with this extraordinary cover with mind-spinning keyboards by Dave Balfe, Alan Gill’s intense bursts of Punk-Funk guitar and Cope’s expanded lyrics plus the decision to mash it with Make That Move Right Now. I’m sure Wylie approved. The session was fantastic, making it all the more puzzling that two of the tracks they played did not appear on the bitterly disappointing Wilder album that came out later the same year and the one that did was a vastly inferior version. Go figure!

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7. THE HAPPY MONDAYS – Step On
Few people remember John Kongos’s early 1970s hit He’s Gonna Step On You Again but the reworking of it by the Happy Mondays is a masterpiece. No band better encapsulated the Madchester wave than Shaun Ryder, Bez and co. Not least because they were ravers and Hacienda regulars who formed a rock and roll band and somehow did it better than anyone else. Helped by Paul Oakenfold’s club-oriented production, the Mondays turned the Kongos original into a cool Indie-Dance classic with that repeating piano riff, irresistible groove, Ryder’s brilliantly lazy vocals and Mark Day’s funk-edged guitar. The random shouts of phrases synonymous with the E culture add an additional edge. ‘You’re twisting my melon man!’. Erm, quite!

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8. SUGAR MINOTT – Never My Love
The silky-voiced London-based Jamaican had to wait a long time for a hit before Good Thing Going took him to high in the UK singles chart. This was the follow-up, a super smooth sweet Lovers’-style cover of an obscure Smokey Robinson song that originally appeared as part of a medley in Smokey’s experimental phase. It is criminal that this lovely track got virtually no airplay despite the success of its predecessor, robbing Sugar Minott of a well-deserved second hit and UK audiences of the chance to hear it. Luckily, I bought it and have never got tired of hearing it four and a half decades later.

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9. MARK RONSON ft. AMY WINEHOUSE – Valerie
I struggled to find that many truly great covers from the 21st Century but this one is an obvious stand-out. Two exceptional talents Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse took the slower but appealing Zutons original and transformed it into a hybrid of Soul, Jazz and Pop, helped by Ronson’s brilliant instrumental arrangement and Amy’s goose-bumping vocals. I will never be able to think about her death at 27 years old and not feel profound sadness. Her own material was even better of course but, however over-exposed this may have been on radio, it is a great cover.

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10. MADNESS – It Must Be Love
Madness pulled a surprise with this cover of a Labi Siffre song, infusing it with Mike Barson’s bouncy piano chords and the band’s trademark sounds, including Suggs’s deadpan voice, Lee Thompson’s scorching sax and lovely interplay between Chris Foreman, Mark Bedford and Woody. The video is a work of genius right from the opening sequence with Suggs singing ‘I never thought I’d miss you half as much as I do’ into a grave! It also features Labi himself on violin and eventually vocals in the video which is a lovely touch.

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11. JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE – All Along The Watchtower
Jimi Hendrix was such a big Bob Dylan fan that he turned up for the Electric Ladyland album recording sessions with a copy of a Dylan songbook. But his version knocks the original out of the park. The vocal part seems tailor-made for his gruff bluesy tones and he fills it with the energy of his band and his own incredible guitar playing which so many have tried and failed to imitate. In my previous article, in 2018, I talked about how his extraordinary timing and ability to create a controlled cacophony and produce so much quality and virtuosity in the process was like a musician dancing on the edge of a volcano. Lest we should forget he was a brilliant composer and arranger as well as arguably the greatest guitarist of them all but this track shows he could also produce a stunning cover.

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Others that deserve much more than an honourable mention include, in no specific order, Ike & Tina Turner’s cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary; The Clash’s version of Willie Williams’s Armagideon Time; The Specials’ rendition of A Message To You Rudy (with original trombonist Rico Rodriguez on it); Ken Boothe’s gorgeous reggae cover of Bread’s Everything I Own; Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ faster and better version of Jimmy James & The Vagabonds’ Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache; Johnny Cash’s extraordinary cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt; Sinead O’Connor’s emotion shredding rendition of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U; The Raincoats’ brave and interesting cover of Sly & The Family Stone’s classic Runnin’ Away; Vanilla Fudge’s mind-spinning Psychedelic Rock slowdown of Diana Ross & The Supremes’ Holland/Dozier/Holland classic You Keep Me Hangin’ On with spine-tingling vocal harmonies and kitchen sink production!

Also must mention The Stranglers’ highly original and surprisingly good version of the Bacharach & David song Walk On By. I could go on and on but let’s see what others come up with. I know I am going to have overlooked some great ones. Over to you.