All Time Great Cover Versions

People love to malign cover versions of classic songs, but the truth is, a well written song can speak to people in different ways and the more it's covered the better it gets. Sometimes a song is both unrecognizable when covered, and completely reborn. Granted, sometimes it is almost ruined (Tiffany making bubble gum out of Tommy James' somewhat predatory "I Think We're Alone Now", for example). I prefer covers that reinvent or re-explore a classic. I generally hate covers of songs written for one gender but sung by another, because sometimes you just can't change a pronoun and make it work. A classic example of this is the only bad song on Minnie Driver's debut cd "Everything I have in my Pocket" where she sings Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart". No, it doesn't work. But, when Joan Jett belts out Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover", the 60s classic works for the 80s, the ladies and the ages.

Some people were made to cover and personalize others' music. Bette Midler has an incredible range with covers. She makes the Rolling Stones' "Beast of Burden" (from her mid 80s album No Frills) an angry, screaching female anthem of being used and abused by men, but she totally feminizes and matures the Beatles, "In My Life" (From the motion picture "For the Boys"), while making a song originally recorded by Nanci Griffith (but not written by her) "From a Distance" a classic (some would argue an incredibly sappy classic). But, that's to be expected from someone who started out bucking the disco trend in the 1970s by making a hit out of the Andrews' Sisters 1940s classic "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", and followed it up by getting down in the dirt to sing Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" as if singing from the bottom of her last bottle of whiskey.

Not all covers are designed to be quick, recognizable hits for people not otherwise known for their singing (think Shaun Cassidy - "Da Doo Ron Ron", Queen Latifah - "Monday, Monday"), but often are rather daring diversions of otherwise well recognized work (UB40 making techno reggae out of Neil DIamond's pop tune "Red, Red Wine", Red Hot Chili Peppers reworking Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" into guitar rock). People like what they like and sometimes someone loves an original so much they can't ever warm up to a cover. Of course, if that was the rule, we'd never have the incredibly broad expanse of Dylan covers we've had over the last 45 years. If ever anyone stood for how many sides there are to a song, it's Bob Dylan, and moreso than anyone he is testament to a song's durability. I could write all day just about great covers of Dylan tunes, but I'll set those completely aside for this list (come on, The Byrds version of ' "My Back Pages" is marvelous, as is Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians' "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall", and Jimi Hendrix' classic "All Along the Watchtower" - just to name three).

It's hard to think of just 10 really, really great covers - but here goes and here's why they worked:

1. Talking Heads - "Take me to the River" (Al Green) - took an R&B classic and remade it as desperate techno R&B, sending a different message just as techno was edging out disco at the end of the 70s.

2. Tom Jones - "Kiss" (Prince) - The big, flashy white R&B guy whips all the subtlety out of this very sexy song and makes it his own.

3. 4 Non Blondes - "Bless the Beasts and the Children" (Carpenters) - this distortion pedal, guitar droning version puts all the anger that was sublimated in the original out into the open. This is the best song on a tribute album too...

4. Sheryl Crow - "The First Cut is the Deepest" (Cat Stevens, previously covered by Rod Stewart) - she put the folk and pain back into the folk master's early rock and roll hit.

5. Emmylou Harris -Wrecking Ball" (Neil Young) - Neil writes haunting, sad songs but no one sings your pain better than Emmylou. Her breathless take on this work of art tells you how the broken down woman feels wearing "something pretty and white" to the last chance ball for all the fragile survivors of love.

6. Pretenders - "Stop Your Sobbing" (Kinks) - Usually no can do the Kinks justice, but Chrissie Hynde channels the deceptive effervescence of the early 1960s British Invasion the way she recreated it in her own song, "Don't get Me Wrong".

7. Dusty Springfield - "Tupelo Honey" (Van Morrison) - Probably the greatest female R&B singer next to Aretha, British Dusty reworks Irishman Morrison's country love song to show just how sweet a man can be - and you totally believe her.

8. Linda Ronstadt - "Alison" (Elvis Costello) - Somehow Ronstadt's range and emotional tone remake this classic from an old lover's scornful story into a female rival's view as a helpless witness.

9. Richie Havens - "Here comes the Sun" (George Harrison) - Hearing this version always conjures the toothless folk master on stage at Woodstock and where Harrison's version was full of his personal innocence and openness to life, Havens' version is the world weary black man still believing in the light.

10. Cowboy Junkies - "Sweet Jane" (Lou Reed) - The song, slow and morose, almost funereal, just has a different quality when the Cowboy Junkies sing it that makes it less a remake of a Reed classic than an updated interpretation of a downtrodden lament.

Bonus Number 11 - Judy Collins - "Suzanne" (Leonard Cohen) - I dare anyone to listen to Judy Collins sing this song and not get teary eyed. An angel's voice singing deceptively world-weary lyrics makes you want "tea and oranges that come all the way from China" desperately, or if you are of a certain age, to vividly remember a time when you thought that was possible.