10 Greatest Rock Music Cover Songs Of The 2000s

4. Feeling Good - Muse

Penned by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley for the 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, Feeling Good really captured the public’s imagination when Nina Simone covered it one year later.

Since then, it has been laid down by anyone who’s anyone, including Sammy Davis Jr., Lauryn Hill, Avicii, and John Coltrane. Then, in 2001, it fell at the feet of Muse, who gave it a serious boot up the backside.

Combining all the bodaciousness of the original stage performance with modern rock production and a plinky keyboard motif, Muse breathed new life into the ageing standard, transforming its classic horn riff into a thunderous guitar part and bursting several people’s eardrums in the process.

This wasn’t the Feeling Good your granny knew; this was a rougher, tougher version for a new millennium, and people went mad for it. It consistently appears in “Best Covers” lists and polls, with readers of the NME voting it the greatest cover of all time in 2010.

And you should know by now not to mess with the New Musical Express.

Contributor
Contributor

Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.