No, pull DOWN the covers!

Now, I know I've made it no secret that I'm a huge fan of covers - namely the latest craze with Radio1 redos of tunes released mere seconds before their respective covers have begun rotating around the blogosphere. What really makes a good cover is the fresh perspective an artist can bring to an already established song in order to vamp the song into something all his/her/their own. But, sometimes, this handover/renewed ownership can backfire and the public will start to think these covers are the work of the reinterpreteur. Well, I'm here to give the limelight back to its due owner(s):

"This Woman's Work" - Kate Bush
...this might be the best example of a cover overshadowing the original work. Ever since Maxwell first covered this during his MTV Unplugged special... and then Love and Basketball used it for THAT scene... and then it was used for every other contemporary girl solo during every SYTYCD episode known to man, I'd venture to guess that all of YOU even thought it was a Maxwell original (not that any of you remember who Maxwell is anymore).
** I'd also like to include this song as homage to be paid the late, great John Hughes. Hear, hear, She's Having a Baby. **



"Hurt" - Nine Inch Nails
...Johnny Cash's NIN cover is a little harder to spot, because it seemed that he finally began accepting his old age, when he recorded this rendition, and took out various no-no words. Everyone knows that "crown of shit" is the signature Trent Reznor tell!

"Hallelujah" - Leonard Cohen
...It's a toss up as to which version of this 3948394x-covered is the one people always mistake for the original: Rufus Wainright or Jeff Buckley's, but the fact remains that few realize who crooned this originally borderline spoken word tune.

"Knocked Up" - Kings of Leon
...I mostly put this up as a yolk with S, since some poor, misguided soul seemed to think that KoL was DOING A COVER of Lykke Li, during the former's set at Lollapalooza. Y'know... because Lykke would obviously be the one to pen a song about a pregnant lover. Ah, to misguided youths...