Sixty years ago this week, the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” secured the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart. But wait, there’s more. In a feat that has never been matched, the band also held the second (“Twist and Shout”), third (“She Loves You”), fourth (“I Want to Hold Your Hand”), and fifth (“Please Please Me”) spots. It was peak Beatlemania — the band had seven other songs in the Top 100 that week — and fans were screaming for a piece of the Fab Four. But this was no passing fancy; the band has retained its hold on the public’s imagination for 60 years, and on musicians of all stripes. From Ella Fitzgerald singing “Can’t Buy Me Love” in 1964 to Public Enemy sampling “A Day in the Life” in 1990 to Billie Eilish performing “Yesterday” at the 2020
Oscars, countless artists have played the Beatles. “Yesterday” was redone 1,600 times in its first 20 years and is widely considered the most covered song ever, but even “Revolution 9″ has been tackled by artists ranging from Phish to the chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound. Just last week,
Beyoncé dropped her new album, “Cowboy Carter,” featuring a rendition of “Blackbird” adorned by lush harmonies and strings. Advertisement There are multiple movie soundtracks of Beatles songs (including “Across the Universe,” “I Am Sam,” and “Yesterday”), and numerous artists — including Booker T. Jones, Sarah Vaughan, the Smithereens, and the Flaming Lips — have recorded entire albums of Beatles originals. “Every symphony you hear is doing a cover song, and if classical musicians get to do Bach, well, then rock musicians get to do the Beatles,” says Ben Harper, who recorded a reggae “Michelle” for a “Rubber Soul” tribute album and “Strawberry Fields Forever” for the “I Am Sam” soundtrack. There are a handful of renditions famous in their own right, most notably Joe Cocker’s “With a Little Help from My
Friends,” Elton John’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” (the only Beatles cover to top the US charts, in part because it also featured John Lennon), Stevie Wonder’s “We Can Work It Out,” Wilson Pickett’s “Hey Jude” (featuring Duane Allman), Crosby Stills and Nash’s “Blackbird,” and Earth Wind & Fire’s “Got to Get You Into My Life.” Advertisement But there are thousands of others with plenty of gems among them, covering a wide variety of styles. While Aerosmith’s “Come Together” is famous, it’s so similar to the original that it’s less memorable than Gary Clark Jr’s hard-hitting, modernized update. (Michael Jackson falls somewhere in between.) An eclectic playlist of lesser-known covers should include the Black Keys’ “She Said She Said,” Will Lee’s “It’s All Too Much,” Siouxsie and Banshees’ “Dear Prudence,” Michael Buble’s “Can’t Buy Me Love,” Florence & The Machine’s “Oh Darling,” the Fiery Furnaces’ “Norwegian Wood,” and Glenn Tilbrook and Nine Below Zero’s “You Never Give Me Your Money.” Harper loves Pickett’s “Hey Jude” but also calls Lowell Fulson’s “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road,” in which the blues
Singer adds his own lyrics, “one of the greats.” But every musician has a favorite. (Well, not everyone: One artist and Beatles fan who declined to be interviewed for this story said in an email, “I kind of hate all Beatles covers.”) Ian Turnbull of the band Broken Records favors Billy Preston’s instrumental version of “Eight Days a Week.” “I love the Hammond organ, and it’s just wild and incredibly funky,” he says. Liberty DeVitto, Billy Joel’s former drummer, is a fan of the Rebel Kicks’ crisp and dynamic “Please Please Me” because it captures the “energy and joy” of the early Beatles. Advertisement Meanwhile, Rebel Kicks’ singer Anthony Babino cites as favorites a simple piano-and-vocal version of “Real Love” by Regina Spektor as well as Sonic Youth’s “Within You Without You.” (Patti Smith also does a worthy, but very different version of “Within You Without You.”) The Georgia Satellites’ Rick Richards enjoys both Spooky Tooth’s and Oasis’s takes on “I Am the Walrus.” “I like the Spooky Tooth vocals and arrangement, but I like the Oasis guitars.” Steve Earle credits Richie Havens with having “one of the best track records on covering Beatles songs,” pointing to his stripped-down versions of “Lady Madonna” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” saying of the latter, “He doesn’t mess with it at all, he just sings the [expletive] out of it.” But Earle also loves the way Evan Rachel Wood rocks on “Hold Me Tight” and “It Won’t Be Long” on the “Across the Universe” soundtrack. Giacomo Bondi has covered more Beatles songs than most . . . and with the most unusual origin story. Years ago, Bondi, a producer in Rome, saw a flier promoting a local Beatles tribute band, the
Apple Pies. Sight unseen he invited them to his studio hoping to concoct some unique reimaginings of his favorite band. But the Pies were adamant about meticulously re-creating the originals. “If the Beatles sang into the same microphone on a song, they wanted to do that even if it was not as good,” he recalls. “On one song, John had played bass because Paul played piano so they wanted to do that even though their ‘Paul’ was a better bass player. They were sticklers for these details.” Advertisement Bondi says the Pies were so note-perfect that while seeking a record label for them, he got a letter from Beatles lawyers, who thought he was peddling the originals as something new. Later, Bondi added strings, organ, feedback, and digital effects to produce intriguing new takes on “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Julia,” “Doctor Robert,” “Sun King,” and others. Babino says the less familiar slices of the oeuvre are easier to attempt. And DeVitto, who played drums on Billy Joel’s cover of “I’ll Cry Instead,” said they chose that song partly because it is rarely done. (Only Joe Cocker had previously offered a take.) DeVitto says tunes sung by Ringo Starr often make for better covers because the vocals can be improved on, and because “the simplicity of his songs” gives artists more freedom to be creative. Among the better Ringo covers are Sufjan Stevens’s “What Goes On,” which layers banjo, woodwinds, new rhythms and melody lines, and the Georgia Satellites’ “Don’t Pass Me By.” Richards says their rendition was spontaneous the first time the band played it. Advertisement “We had a Monday night club gig and never had a setlist. One night I just played that opening riff and then started singing ‘Don’t Pass Me By.’ The band was looking around, and I just said, ‘Trust me.’ We started rocking, and it became a staple for us. It was a fortuitous accident.” Broken Records’ “Oh Darling” also resulted from a touch of luck, says Turnbull. The band was recruited for an “Abbey Road” tribute album, but the timing was tight; the band was touring and then filming a TV performance on their day off. Their only time to work out an arrangement was when their electric instruments were elsewhere. “We just had acoustic guitars, a violin, and cello, and our drummer was just hitting the accordion case,” Turnbull says. “Our frontman, Jamie Sutherland, wanted to make the lyrics sound twisted and sinister rather than pleading, so it ends up sounded like a Gothic murder ballad.” Turnbull says no cover version will please every Beatles fan. “We offended the purists, which got us quite a few comments on
Twitter about us committing sacrilege,” he says. While covering the Beatles is irresistible for musicians, it’s also daunting. Earle “nearly bailed” on recording “I’m Looking Through You” at the last minute before giving in to his bandmates’ cajoling. “It’s tough and scary to cover the Beatles,” he says. Harper concurs about “the intimidation factor.” He recorded “Strawberry Fields Forever” for “I Am Sam” because the film’s director told him no one else was willing to take it on. Though he quickly said yes, “it was the most challenging cover I’ve ever done.” By contrast, “Michelle” was “just begging to be turned on its ear and done reggae style, and we were excited to do it.” Musicians can’t clearly define what makes a good Beatles cover. “You have to be true to the core of the song but then embellish it with whatever you think is good,” says Richards. “I’m having a hard time explaining it.” “You don’t want to overdo the changes or underdo them,” adds Harper. And, in the end, Babino says, “The Beatles have already done the definitive versions with the ultimate arrangements that are so ingrained in the cultural consciousness. So you can’t be too close to the original because then people would just listen to the Beatles. But you still have to be respectful of the original.”