Just “Cover Songs” would be fine. The comparative value judgement in the title is kind of offputting to me.
Edit: For posterity, the thread used to be called “Covers better than the original”.
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“Notable Cover Songs”
If a cover song isn’t notable, why would anyone post about it?
IMO a good thread title has some audacity and flavor. Like “Cover Songs That Have No Right Being This Awesome” or something.
I was making a joke based on “Celebrity Deaths”
Being renamed as “Notable Deaths”
I do not like this turn of events, Sam I am.
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IMO there’s three levels of depth with cover songs. Level one is a cover that mixes up how you hear the song but doesn’t add any meaning. Most video game music covers fall into this. Level two is re-contextualizing the song to add meaning. The Gourds’ Jin and Juice is a good example of this, highlighting thematic common tones between rap and country. The third level is completely changing the meaning of the song, like how Johnny Cash’s Hurt turns a song about a young man struggling with addiction into a song about an old man confronting mortality.
I present one of those rare third level of meaning covers.
Worth noting that a major motif of the broader work of Brian Fallon (this band’s front man, better known for Gaslight Anthem) is trying and failing to reclaim a lost youth. I don’t know how important that is to understanding the new meaning 'cause I’ve been into Gaslight Anthem for so long.
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This might be a BS take, but my first thought is that in some ways “old-person sings song made by a young person” is almost like cheating their way to that third-class cover. The heavy lifting of the recontextualization is nearly automatic and inherent, it’s an almost instinctual level. It doesn’t really require a lot of work on the part of the artist or the listener to come to that emotional payoff. It just is. Like Say we existed in a timeline where we got David Bowie to cover Wheatus’ Teenage Dirtbag before he passed and it would unlock untold layers of meaning, irony, etc that would just exist because David Bowie.
Not to take away the skill of just performing a good cover, or the internal work the artist would have to do to put their appropriate context into the work, but I’d say it might be more compelling of a feat to have one artist take a track from one of their peers, do their own cover, and yet have it produced and performed in a way that the fundamental meaning shifts.
But again I might be underselling it a bit.
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I think there is an art in giving the right song to the right narrator. Getting the singer to match the song isn’t always obvious (I don’t think very many people would think to have a rockabilly/country star from the 60s cover an industrial song), so I still think there’s some amount of craft there. It’s definitely a quick foot in the door, though.
Another Johnny Cash one but one that isn’t age based is his cover of Southern Accents by Tom Petty. The Petty original comes across as an obnoxious Southern white boy trying to justify flying the Confederate Flag. The Cash version works much better because of his long standing advocacy for a variety of marginalized groups. Having The Man In Black cover that song gives all the right caveats for it to actually be about the bullshit ways people get looked down upon for how they talk. Probably doesn’t come across well if you’re not familiar with Cash’s image but everyone buying those Rick Rubin albums definitely were.
Another one that completely changes the meaning of the song without the narrator being relevant is Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower. By shifting the arrangement from a more meditative groove into a frenetic and bombastic arrangement transforms it from a feeling of futility into a feeling of aggressive defiance.
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I’m reminded of the jump of Bruce Hornsby and the Range’s “The Way It Is” speaking to the middle class being hollowed out by the rich and powerful and Tupac’s cover of it, (cover? rewrite? sampled?) “Changes”.
It’s the same song, but who it’s coming from changes, heh, everything about the song.
Still on my Brass Against kick. This has been my recent favorite.
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I suggest seeing them live, I caught them before the pandemic, it was glorious.
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I can’t believe I’m posting a Hootie and the Blowfish song, but since I’m in a Led Zeppelin cover mood, this is a surprisingly decent version of a somewhat lesser known Zeppelin classic:
If we’re gonna talk Zep covers we have to talk about Ike and Tina’s version of Whole Lotta Love.
And, yknow, Zep’s actual discography 
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A little too much funk for me, but Tina Turner’s voice is always amazing.
It is admittedly the Zeppelin cover for people who don’t like Zeppelin lol
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I never realized before. Whole Lotta Love is supposed to be a slow song.
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