The 40 best covers of The Beatles: “I was very honoured”
Most covers of The Beatles are good for one thing: reminding you how great the original was.
The Fab Four got the songs right the first time around. That is their crowning triumph. Their back catalogue is a wild and varied beast, but it is united by the sense that each song is the way it was intended. How do you even go about altering a track like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’? Do you even bloody bother?
For the most part, you don’t. Although the band might have the most ubiquitous repertoire in music history, and ‘Yesterday’ does, indeed, take the crown for the most covered track ever written, but by and large, there are fewer prominent Beatles covers out there than you might imagine.
The reason for this is two-fold: tackling them is a trickier proposition than you might think, and then there’s the even trickier proposition of bringing something new to them. You don’t want to sully sanctified ground. Even their early days, which should, by rights, be easy to replicate because of the simple four-piece constitution of the songs, are often left unfulfilled when a local covers act tackles one.
The nuance and depth that George Harrison ladled into them are missing. As is the punky bite of John Lennon. The playfulness of Paul McCartney. And the dead-on nature of the trusty Labrador at the back, Ringo Starr.
As Bob Dylan explained regarding their mystically complex simplicity, “They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid.” This mix of freshness, craftsmanship, and cohesion was the crux of what made them the biggest band in history. That’s a daunting thing for any artist to casually ‘take a stab at’.
Nevertheless, a few brave souls attempted the treacherous trip and came out of the other side triumphant. As Paul McCartney highlights, “The earliest one that really caught my ear was by Esther Phillips, R&B singer. She did a female version of ‘And I Love Her’ called ‘And I Love Him’, which is really great. I love it”.
He added, “I was lucky when I came up with ‘Yesterday’. Because that’s got covered like about 3000 times. And I think 3000 people, maybe over that have recorded that. So I was always amazed, ‘3000, wow. That is so great.’ But I thought, ‘Who are these people?’ So I said to one of our guys ‘Johnny, can you get me like the top 10? Just give me the sort of top ten best ones’. So I listened to all of them.”
He continued, “They were great. It was like Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Marvin Gaye – very cool, Ray Charles, and the list went on. Amazing people, amazing versions.” It’s perhaps as miraculous as the deliverance of The Beatles themselves that somehow Macca has managed to remain as humble as he is.
It didn’t stop there, either. The great Ella Fitzgerald, someone the Fab Four had grown up listening to, even clambered aboard The Beatles bandwagon in fitting style. “‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is my attempt to write a bluesy mode,” McCartney once explained. “The idea behind it was that all these material possessions are all very well but they won’t buy me what I really want. It was a very hooky song. Ella Fitzgerald later did a version of it, which I was very honoured.”
But that still isn’t his favourite. During an online Q&A in 2014, McCartney explained to his fans, “There are so many that I love it’s difficult to say, but Esther Phillips’ version of ‘And I love HIM’ comes to mind.” Additionally, during a discussion with Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in 2018, McCartney reaffirmed this choice, “The earliest one that really caught my ear was by Esther Phillips, R&B Singer. She did a female version of ‘And I Love Her’ called ‘And I Love Him’, which is really great. I love it.”
A couple of these classics, as well as some off-kilter conquests, make up our considered list of the greatest Beatles covers of all time. So, with a rule of no repeating tracks enforced (with the exception of the cleverly tweaked ‘And I Love Him), enjoy a playlist of the 40 best Beatles covers below.
The 40 best covers of The Beatles:
- ‘Here Comes the Sun’ – Nina Simone
- ‘Across the Universe’ – Rufus Wainwright
- ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ – Joe Cocker
- ‘Hard Day’s Night’ – Otis Redding
- ‘She’s Leaving Home’ – Harry Nilsson
- ‘A Day In The Life’ – Gábor Szabó, The California Dreamers
- ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ – Sparks
- ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ – Milton Nascimento, Beto Guedes
- ‘Blackbird’ – Sony Wonder
- ‘Let It Be’ – Bill Withers
- ‘Hello, Goodbye’ – The Cure and James McCartney
- ‘In My Life’ – Johnny Cash
- ‘Helter Skelter’ – Siouxsie and the Banshees
- ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ – Jimi Hendrix
- ‘Within You Without You’ – Sonic Youth
- ‘Help!’ – The Damned
- ‘Hey Jude’ – Wilson Pickett
- ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’ – The 5th Dimension
- ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ – Al Green
- ‘Because’ – Elliott Smith
- ‘It’s Only Love’ – Bryan Ferry
- ‘Get Back’ – Ike and Tina Turner
- ‘Misery’ – Flamin’ Groovies
- ‘The Fool On The Hill – Bobbie Gentry
- ‘And I Love Her’ – Kurt Cobain
- ‘And I Love Him’ – Esther Phillips
- ‘Yesterday’ – Ray Charles
- ‘The Inner Light’ – Anoushka Shankar
- ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide’ – The Feelies
- ‘Back in the USSR’ – Dead Kennedys
- ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ – Elton John
- ‘We Can Work It Out’ – Stevie Wonder
- ‘Please Please Me’ – The Score
- ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ – Junior Parker
- ‘Lady Madonna’ – Fats Dominos
- ‘Hey Bulldog’ – Fanny
- ‘She Said, She Said’ – The Black Keys
- ‘Love Me Do’ – Sandie Shaw
- ‘Eleanor Rigby’ – Pomplamoose
- ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ – Dillard & Clark
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