The other day I complained on Twitter about the cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that Lincoln is using in their commercials for the MKS. This elicited a response from a friend of mine whom I’m guessing is a fan of Chan Marshall – who for some reason calls herself “Cat Power” on stage, and is responsible for the aforementioned abominable cover – coming to her defense. He included the question, “Besides, since when are covers ever good?”

The truth there is that there are many, many examples of very well-done covers in the music world. I listed off a handful of them for him. Since then I’ve been thinking about which are the truly great covers in the history of music, and decided to come up with a list of what I consider to be the 5 best covers (in the spirit of the John Cusack/Jack Black movie “Hi-Fidelity”). These are only from the ones I’m currently able to recall off the top of my head, and is with a couple of exceptions really more a list of my favorites than what might be called “great”. No doubt later on I’ll think of 10 more that should have made my list (I really wanted to include Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”, Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”, and Dynamite Hack’s cover of Eazy-E’s “Boyz-n-the-Hood”). Right now, though, my 5 are these:

• 5. Pearl Jam, Love Reign O’er Me (The Who)
• 4. Garbage, Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones)
• 3. The Lemonheads, Mrs. Robinson (Simon and Garfunkel)
• 2. Jimmy Cliff, I Can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash)
• 1. Jimi Hendrix, All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan)

Raise your hand if you didn’t know my #1 cover even was a cover until just now. It was born of the genius of Bob Dylan, who wrote it and recorded it in 1967. But Jimi made it famous by recording his unforgettable version of it in 1968.

What are your 5?