The Mountain Goats covering "The Boys Are Back In Town" kicks the shit out of the original.

So does Johnny Cash singing "Personal Jesus."

The Ghost Of Tom Joad - Rage Against The Machine (Bruce Springsteen)

About half the songs on Yo La Tengo's Fakebook.

two covers that demand mention (maybe they have already, i admittedly didn't read the whole thread )

red house painters covering the cars' "all mixed up"
rebekah del rio covering roy orbison's "crying" a capella

i dunno if any cover can be considered objectively better than the original, but personally, i love it when musicians take a completely different approach to the original version. line up that RHP version next to the cars - they barely sound like the same song! that is cool!

"Sleeping Annaleah" by Nick Cave.
"Knockin' on Heavens Door" done by the Sisters of Mercy.
"We Gotta Get Outta This Place"- Jello Biafra w/ DOA. I'm all for the ethical treatment of the Animals, but this cover does it for me.

"Nights in White Satin" by the Dickies used to really piss my dad off. His make-out anthem soiled and all. Both versions are sorta crappy.

Sverige wrote:thin lizzy- whisky in the jar (old folk tune?)

Are we allowed to disagree on this thread.

The Dubliners version is by far the best of this.

However the pogues version of waltzing matilda is slightly better than the original.

not sure if anyone said this yet but the lemonheads/dando cover of the misfits 'skulls' is pretty great. not to mention the nkotb 'step by step' cover.

Anybody come up with

Husker Du's 8 Miles High ????

Ray Charles covered the following on a single album

"Livin' For The City" (Stevie Wonder)
"It's Not Too Easy Being Green" (don't know who wrote this one...)
"Sail Away" (Randy Newman)

The Stevie tune has a cool rap in the middle of it that's much better than the drug bagman thing that happens in the original.

"Sail Away" seems like an odd choice coming from a person of African decent, though I'm sure Ray knew what it was about.

Also, I'm partial to the the Buritto Bros. version of "Wild Horses" and the Killbilly "Maybelline"

djimbe wrote:"It's Not Too Easy Being Green" (don't know who wrote this one...)

If it wasn't Jim Henson, perhaps it was Joe Raposo?