Shea: Best Beatles covers

I think we all die a little inside when we hear a tacky remake of “Hello Goodbye” blaring… I think we all die a little inside when we hear a tacky remake of “Hello Goodbye” blaring out of our TVs every time a Target commercial comes on.

Covering songs written by “the band that changed rock ’n’ roll” is a daunting task but has remained a wildly popular phenomenon for the last four decades.

According to secondhandsongs.com, a cover song d atabase, The Beatles are unsurprisingly the No. 1 covered artist of all time.

The site has almost 3,200 covers on file, and there are undoubtedly thousands of lesser known covers scattered across the Internet.

Considering the overwhelming volume of covers out there, there are bound to be some great adaptations as well as some horrific bastardizations of Beatles classics (William Shatner’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is a prime example here.)

“Across the Universe” featured a few solid covers, but there are plenty of others out there.

Thus, after much contemplation, YouTube trolling and mental debating, I’ve come up with my personal top 10 favorite Beatles covers.

10.)Ben Harper

“Strawberry Fields Forever”

Harper recorded this cover for the soundtrack of “I Am Sam,” and it leaked out of theaters onto “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and the radio. I think I like Harper’s version because it’s a bit cleaner, a little jazzier than the original and overall a solid cover of a Beatles favorite.

9.)Sonic Youth

“Within You Without You”

Sonic Youth trades in sitars for synthesizers in its cover of George Harrison’s “Within You Without You.” Despite its fuzz and distortion, the cover manages to keep the Eastern feel of Harrison’s original.

8.) George Benson

“I Want You”

Benson’s cover of the Abbey Road track transplants the song to a new genre and dresses it up with some sexy jazz guitars, brass and Benson’s smooth voice.

7.) Johnny Cash

“In My Life”

Hearing a 70-year-old country legend sing this song brings a whole new depth to The Beatles’ lyrics. It was a beautifully timed act of reflection for Cash, who died just a year after he recorded the track.

6.) Alison Krauss

“I Will”

Bluegrass queen Alison Krauss takes this already sweet and beautiful song and saturates it with twangy guitars and her famously gorgeous voice. She keeps the song’s perfect simplicity and ups its sentimentality.

5.) The Breeders

“Happiness is a Warm Gun”

The Pixies’ Kim Deal and her bandmates take this White Album classic and tweak it without robbing it of its trippy appeal. The lo-fi track drops Deal’s vocals into the background noise and pulls them back up again throughout the song to emphasize the pounding guitars in this short but awesome cover.

4.) The Gaslight Anthem

“Come Together”

The Jersey boys of The Gaslight Anthem, known for its punky Springsteen sound, take an iconic song of the ’60s and really revive it. Brian Fallon’s voice wailing the Lennon/McCartney lyrics reminds listeners what a truly powerful song it is. There’s also a great acoustic version of it floating around the Internet.

3.) She & Him

“I Should’ve Known Better”

M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel dropped this lovely contribution to the catalog of Beatles covers on their first album, appropriately named Volume One, in 2008. The pair turns the upbeat early Beatles song into a slower luau-esque version and, oddly enough, pulls it off. Kudos for creativity.

2.) Fiona Apple

“Across the Universe”

Artists including David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper and Rufus Wainwright have covered “Across the Universe” in the past, but none quite so well as Fiona Apple. Her 1998 cover is on par with the original, and every time she croons, “Jai guru deva om,” in her cool and powerful voice, I get shivers up my spine.

1.) The Black Keys

“She Said, She Said”

Blaring guitars and husky vocals make The Black Keys’ cover my favorite Beatles remake. The song easily draws listeners in with its recognizable lead guitar riff and tempo, but the band takes just the right amount of liberty to make “She Said, She Said” distinctly its own and unmistakably cool.