COIL
‘TAINTED LOVE’
(1985)

A cover of a cover. Although ‘Tainted Love’ originated as a 1965 northern soul burner recorded by Gloria Jones, it was completely overshadowed by Soft Cell’s yearning ’81 version: one of the all-time great pop songs, and a jukebox, radio and dancefloor staple to this day. In Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson and Jhon Balance’s hands, ‘Tainted Love’ became something else entirely – a queasy meditation on AIDS and mortality – with Soft Cell’s Marc Almond making a cameo in the unforgettable video.

FOUR TET
‘IRON MAN’
(2005)

Kieran Hebden’s fey, sparse take on Black Sabbath’s jam-band staple doesn’t get the pulse racing, but it remains a charming and unexpected curio nonetheless. In a parallel universe, Ozzy and co. are slow-riffing their way through ‘Hilarious Movie Of The 90s’.

D’EON
‘WHAT’S MY AGE AGAIN’
(2012)

“No one should take themselves so seriously,” sang pop-punk gullies Blink 182. d’Eon’s ‘cover version’ – a fifteen track song-suite made up of solo piano variations on ‘What’s My Age Again?’ – suggests that he got the memo.

TINCHY STRIDER & WILEY
‘UPTOWN GIRL’
(2009)

Yes, when people talk about grime’s golden era the focus is usually on raw, cold beats and pirate radio-style MCing, but the genre always had a sense of humour and a knack for a Summer hit. Even more so than Mercston’s ‘Summertime’ and Roll Deep’s ‘Avenue’, Tinchy and Wiley’s cover of ‘Uptown Girl’ combined the two perfectly. In retrospect, it’s nothing short of amazing what Ruff Sqwad got away with: at the group’s peak they sampled Phil Collins, Cutting Crew and Billy Joel and still sounded on the vanguard.

MIKA VAINIO
‘OPEN UP AND BLEED’
(2011)

There aren’t many artists out there who could cover Iggy and The Stooges’ ‘Open Up And Bleed’ and make it sound more full of menace and self-loathing than the original. But this is Mika Vainio, a man who in his younger days reportedly used to spend hours at a time in a steel chamber, subjecting himself to extreme, vomit-inducing sonic frequencies, just for fun.

COOLY G
‘TROUBLE’
(2012)

‘Trouble’ belongs to the Schneider ™ formula of unlikely covers (indie + glitch = instant wistfulness), but Cooly’s sombre reworking of the Coldplay number gets bonus points for audacity: 25 minutes into Playin’ Me, who expected this?

THE SOFT PINK TRUTH
‘DO THEY OWE US A LIVING?’
(2004)

Do You Want New Wave Of Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?,  an album by Matmos’s Drew Daniel of transformative covers of hardcore and post-punk tunes from the 70s and 80s, is an out-and-out classic. Its most inspired track is a reimagining of Crass’s ‘Do They Owe Us A Living?’ as a stripped-down, svelte electro-stepper, with brilliant “am I bovvered?” vocals by Vicki ‘People Like Us’ Bennett.

SPIRITUALIZED
‘ANY WAY THAT YOU WANT ME’
(1990)

Spiritualized’s debut single was a doped-out but surprisingly straight cover of The Troggs’ imploring 1966 classic ‘Any Way That You Want Me’, which incidentally has more or less exactly the same riff as their more famous ‘Wild Thing’.

SPELL
‘BIG RED BALLOON’
(1993)

In 1993, industrial noise terrorist Boyd Rice teamed up with gothic pop princess Rose McDowall (of Strawberry Switchblade) to record a covers album, Seasons in The Sun. Despite a few mischievous amendments to lyrics, their versions of golden oldies like ‘Johnny Remember Me’ and ‘Terry’ are generally sweet and faithful; particularly charming is their take on Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s sardonic back-and-forth duet ‘Big Red Balloon’. Was released as a single, promoted with one of the best videos ever – look out for handlebar-moustachioed Boyd wistfully surveying a family of ducks.

KILLER MIKE
‘THAT’S LIFE’
(2006)

Alright, calling ‘That’s Life’ a cover is pushing it – it’s far from the first rap song to heavily sample another hit, after all – but there’s something about the way Atlanta’s Killer Mike uses Frank Sinatra as a jump off point that takes this song to another level. Honestly, one of the heaviest-hitting hip-hop songs of the past decade, if not ever, with Mike avoiding easy targets like George Bush to focus on rich black public figures instead (“Where the education’s poor and the children growing dumb … where Mr. Cosby and Mrs. Winfrey won’t come”; “Hell yeah, I said it / ‘Cause Oprah won’t say it”). A cold, hard dose of brutal truth, rapped over a loop from one of the most iconic American songs of all time – itself, in fact, a cover.