Covering someone else's song can either be the kiss of death for your musical career or it can propel you to new heights. No matter how you look at it releasing a recorded version of someone else's song is a gamble. There's always a good chance that fans of the original are going to hate you if they don't like your version which means they will never give your other material a chance. There's also a chance that you could present the song to an entirely new generation who otherwise never even would have known the song existed. You might see a few songs on this list that you didn't even know were cover songs. The fact of the matter is some of the artists on this list managed to make these songs their own in such a way that people actually think that they are theirs. It's tough work making a cover song your own and if you manage to succeed then it is certainly something to be proud of. Let's take a look at 10 cover songs that outshine the original.
10. The Ataris - Boys Of Summer
The original song by Don Henley was pretty well received back in 1984. When Henley released the song it managed to climb the charts in many countries all over the world as well as dominate the radio. The song was a surefire hit and when you listen back to the recorded version it has that certain 80's charm that was only captured by recordings that were made in that era. In 2003 pop-punk heavyweights The Ataris released their album So Long Astoria which featured a cover of Don Henley's Boys of Summer. The Ataris never had any intention of releasing this song as a single and it became popular almost completely by accident after a few radio stations across the country began to play it. In no time at all this cover gained major momentum and started to dominate the radio and MTV. The Ataris cover of Boys Of Summer managed to place number 2 on Billboard's rock charts and got the band a lot of mainstream attention that they had never managed to get before. When you play these two versions back to back it's easy to hear the difference. Henley presents us with a great laid back memorable song but it sounds pretty dated when you look back on it today. The Ataris manage to maintain all of the integrity of the original but also manage to make the song much more emotional and intense. It's a lot easier to take this song seriously when you play back The Ataris version and even though it's only 10 years old it has managed to age a lot better than Henley's. Speeding the song up and making it a lot more guitar based is exactly what is missing from the original. I suppose this is all a bit of a moot point considering Kris Roe singer of The Ataris openly admits he hates this cover and refuses to play it live, but hey recordings last forever.