10 Cover Songs That Shouldn't Have Worked (But Did)

Any Bob Dylan song feels like it's meant to be played on an acoustic guitar and nowhere else. As much as Dylan's work has been poured over by virtually every stripe of rock band since the dawn of time, there's nothing that suits his songs better than just stripping things down and focusing on the lyrics at hand. Then again, if you have the potential to do something else, sometimes you can put even the classic artists to shame.

Taking a liking to All Along the Watchtower when it was released in its acoustic form, Jimi Hendrix gave Dylan's recounting of a Joker and the Thief scenario his own spin by making a psychedelic pastiche of the tune. Going even more grandiose than his Woodstock beginnings, Jimi throws every verse of this song into the stratosphere, sprinkling in bits and pieces of guitar brilliance that seem to tell this story of dread in a way that the lyrics couldn't have on their own.

Even after all this time being heralded as a cultural icon unto himself, Dylan himself has seemed to abandon ownership of the song over time, saying that Hendrix recorded the definitive version of the tune. As much as you might want to flatter the author of the tune, you really had to have knocked it out of the park when even the author is saying you did the better job.