10 Greatest Covers Of Beatles Songs

4. Stevie Wonder - We Can Work It Out

By 1965, The Beatles had moved beyond the R&B of their first phase and into more deft and layered pop songwriting. “We Can Work It Out” is a particular highlight of this era, cleverly composed to illustrate one of the band’s great skills: swiftly switching between moods, with bouncy happy choruses giving away for a time signature-shifting minor key chorus.

Stevie Wonder takes all of this and adds his maximalist approach and totally distinctive instrumentation. Wonder’s cut takes The Beatles’ jangling guitars and replaces them with a stomping bass, some of the hardest drums in the singer-songwriter’s canon, and the trademark otherworldly synthesisers that typified his ‘7os albums.

Wonder himself is on top form as a singer, skipping over the beat at will and multi-tracking himself (ala Macca on the original) to throw in ad libs and vocal fills. Instead of the quasi-psych middle eight, Wonder shifts into something soulful and emotive, as though giving dancers a quick breather before diving back into the hard funk of the verses.