I love cover songs. I love bands that take a good song and make it better. Bands like Cake, Reel Big Fish, Guano Apes, and Rainer von Vielen. Joe Cocker made a whole career of it.
That's why Napster was the best!. Napster had everything, every cover and live version anyone had ever published. Napster would have had this super, mega, uber amazing live version of Hard To Handle by the Black Crows, if Napster had survived until 2005.
(Spotify doesn't.)
Napster would have had this super fun rock version of the Temptations Get Read by Wishbone Ash.
(Spotify doesn't.)
SNAP
I'm always trying to find cover versions of songs. Many times, there are amazing versions out there. And then there's Smokey Robinson's Tracks of My Tears. This song has many, many cover versions available on Spotify. Everyone in music apparently took a shot at it at one time. And they all failed. There's not a single cover version that makes the song better. And please don't go looking for the Bryan Adams recording of it. You're welcome.
It seems to me that in this rare case, the originial is the best there is, and noone can improve upon it.
I challenge everyone to show me that I'm wrong.
(Seriously. I recently started playing in a rock cover band, and I want my first proposal for a new song to be a real good one. A hard-rock version of Tracks Of My Tears would be amazing. I'll add the horn section myself.)
Update Sep 10th, 2020: There is actually a pretty decent cover version, recorded by Boyzone. It does not change the song in any way, but the production is superb, and the horn parts are really well done!