Top 5 Genre-Crossing Cover Songs

If you dig into the history of some of your favorite songs, you may be surprised to find that the artist with whom you typically associate a particular tune is not the writer, and in many cases, not even the original recording artist. Examples abound in today's musical landscape, where American Idol has inspired a generation of copycat artists. More unusual, though, is the case in which a song attains some success within a particular genre of music and then is successfully covered and released by a singer or group with a distinctly different musical style. Here are five famous songs that fit the bill.

I Will Always Love You: Originally written and recorded by Dolly Parton, this song climbed to the top of the Country charts in 1973. Nineteen years later, Whitney Houston recorded a soulful version of the tune for the Bodyguard soundtrack and reached the top spot on many music charts around the world.

All Along The Watchtower: Just the mention of this song title evokes thoughts of Jimi Hendrix's apocalyptic version (1968), featuring those haunting guitar chords emanating from the bowels of Hell. In truth, the original was a creation of folk legend Bob Dylan, just two years earlier.

Layla: When Eric Clapton released this song with his group, Derek and the Dominos, late in 1970, it was a hard-driving rock love song that floundered on the charts but has since gained critical acclaim and become an iconic rock classic. In 1993, fatherhood and the passing years had mellowed Clapton's style somewhat, and the acoustic version of "Layla"became an instant hit among the blues and adult contemporary sets.

Can't Help Falling In Love: This song has been recorded by various artists but was first brought to mainstream music by Elvis Presley's soulful ballad in the movie Blue Hawaii (1961). In 1993 UB40 released a techno-pop version that became a chart-topper around the world.

Hurt: This was initially released by Nine Inch Nails in 1994 as part of their album, The Downward Spiral. In an enormous act of genre-bending, Johnny Cash covered "Hurt" in 2002 and garnered critical and commercial success.

Re-making popular songs has been a common practice in the music industry for decades. When artists pull tunes across new genres, the whole exercise can become much more interesting. Enjoy these examples, and be on the lookout for others that you might like.