By admin 
Few singers can all but erase Prince from a song he wrote himself, but Sinéad O’Connor can. “Nothing Compares 2 U” was originally an obscure deep cut on the only studio album by The Family, Prince’s short-lived funk band. In O’Connor’s hands it became a slow, deliberate ballad, which grew into an irresistible hit with her magnetic voice. There are some better examples of seeing potential in a forgotten song and then breaking it wide open.
“Walk This Way” – Run-DMC, Aerosmith
Technically, this is only half a cover, as Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were featured on Run-DMC’s cover of their 1975 hit. The genre mashup – nascent hip hop meets old-school rock ‘n’ roll – was discussed in the video, which sees the two acts perform in adjacent studios before the wall between them is literally torn down. But the song is more than a gimmick: the guitar riff and raspy chorus from the original fit perfectly with drum machines and rap verses.
“When the dike breaks” – Led Zeppelin
The original version of this was recorded in 1929 by the blues singers Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy. Stepping up to the Led Zeppelin version, with its heavily sampled, earth-shattering drums, is like the difference between the smoothest disco and the hardest techno. The basics of the song are there, but everything else is ramped up to a fever pitch: guitars and harmonicas squealing and Robert Plant going crazy on the mic.
“Smells like teenage spirit” – Robert Glasper
Without the title, you might not know this is a cover of one of the most famous songs in the world – until a voice starts singing the lyrics through a vocoder. This fits completely into the cover-as-transformation model: Nirvana’s grunge giant is stretched into a loose jazz song, with light piano sounds taking the place of the thick guitar of the original. And if the original grabbed you with sheer brute force, this is more subtle, but no less powerful.