There are more than a few acoustic covers that stand out for me as being superior to the original recordings, though I have to admit in some cases I wasn’t always a big fan of the originals. Even with those I did like I don’t think it’s sad that another artist can turn a song into something ‘better’, sometimes it’s just a change of sound, electronic to acoustic, or pop to jazz, that really makes the difference.

Here are a few:
Umbrella (Rhianna) – Plain White T’s (duh)
Love Profusion (Madonna) – Regina Spektor
Dancing Queen (Abba) – Whitley (a fantastic slow warp)
Hyperballad (Bjork) – Whitley (superb)
Bitches Ain’t Shit – Ben Folds

walk away renée (the left banke) – billy bragg
rebel rebel (david bowie) – rickie lee jones
mrs. robinson (simon & garfunkel) – the lemonheads (:))

heartbeats (the knife) – jose gonzalez

fabulous song in either way!

I think Ryan Adams cover of Oasis’s Wonderwall is, simply stated, beautiful!

well there are a lot covers which I think are better than the original…for example cat powers cover of “wonderwall” or regina spectors “real love” (Beatles), elliott smiths “blackbird” (Beatles), greg laswells “your ghost” (kristin hersch)….and so on ;)