Few bands in the 20th century had as much of an impact on the evolution of music as the Beatles did. Beatlemania rewrote the cultural norms around what it meant to be a teenage fan, and for a time, the band really was bigger than Jesus. Their evolution from crooning R&B covers in German red-light districts to the pioneers of multi-track recording changed the face of the music industry and paved the way for stylistic and technical concepts that modern musicians like Taylor Swift take for granted.

Appropriately for a band that got their start playing covers, the Beatles are also one of the most widely covered bands of all time. The incredible depth of their catalog means that artists of all genres have tried tackling everything from their biggest hits to the Beatles' most underrated songs. The music of the Beatles is one of the closest things rock and roll has to a universal language, yet the Fab Four were far from perfect, and some particularly inspired musicians over the years have transformed the works of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Ringo Starr into some incredible recordings.

Honorable Mention: The Entire Soundtrack From The 2007 Film "Across The Universe"

Released during one of the waves of jukebox musical motion pictures that occasionally crash across cinema multiplexes, 2007's Across the Universe took a wide selection of Beatles songs from across their entire discography and used them to build a story that was genuinely contemporaneous with their original releases. With characters taken straight from the songs – Jude, Max, Lucy, Sadie, and even dear Prudence – the film follows them as they all find their lives changed by the social unrest of the late 1960s.

On a personal note, I can't recommend the film enough; I cried in the theaters when it came out, and on average have watched it and cried at least once a year in almost two decades since. While one particular song from the film stands out, and will get its due credit at the end of this list, the entire soundtrack is a beautiful, loving tribute to the music of the Fab Four, with some excellent twists and unexpected contributors.

10 Rufus Wainwright – "Across The Universe"

Poses (DreamWorks Records, 2001)

Originally recorded for the soundtrack of I Am Sam – another film full of Beatles covers – Wainwright rerecorded "Across the Universe" and released it as a bonus track on his 2001 sophomore album Poses. While not much of Wainwright's arrangement changes the original song, its indie-jangle-pop guitars and layered harmonies feel like a natural evolution of the track, unlike other covers, such as the painfully bombastic version David Bowie included on his 1975 album Young Americans, or the awkward live ensemble from 2005's 47th Grammy Awards.

"Jai guru deva om," the mantra repeated throughout "Across the Universe," is a Sanskrit phrase that translates to "all glory to Guru Dev"; Guru Dev, or Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, was the Hindu priest who was the mentor of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was the spiritual advisor for the Beatles after they attended his 1967 seminar on transcendental meditation.

9 Kurt Cobain – "And I Love Her"

Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings (Universal Music, 2015)

Documentarian Brett Morgan was approached by Courtney Love and Francis Bean Cobain in 2007 to make the first authorized documentary about Kurt Cobain's brilliant life. The film, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, wasn't released until 2015, as it took Morgan some time to wade through the library of work Cobain had left behind after his tragic 1994 suicide; specifically, there were 108 cassette tapes Cobain had recorded containing various demos and pieces, totaling over 200 hours of audio. Morgan selected a single tape, which Cobain had titled Montage of Heck, as the soundtrack for the documentary.

Montage of Heck is a mix of clips that Cobain recorded between 1986 and 1994; some are rough versions of what would become recognizable Nirvana songs, like "Been a Son" or "Something in the Way," while others are strange clips where Cobain was experimenting with various songs. One particular jewel was a stripped-down, earnest cover of "And I Love Her," from A Hard Day's Night. Cobain's version, recorded some time between 1987 and 1988, is raw and melancholy in a way the Fab Four never were, particularly on their relatively saccharine early-60s releases.

8 Beyoncé – "Blackbiird"

Cowboy Carter (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records, 2024)

Beyoncé's Album of The Year-winning Cowboy Carter shattered expectations and genre preconceptions in dozens of ways, but one of the most interesting was the use of "Blackbiird" – note the extra "i" in the spelling – as the album's second song. The original Beatles version was one of the best songs on 1968's The Beatles (better known as The White Album for its plain white record sleeve), and is still generally considered one of their best songs.

Beyoncé's "Blackbiird" samples the original song – a solo performance by Paul McCartney, who enthusiastically endorsed the cover – while also very much making it Beyoncé's. Guest vocals from Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell, and Tiera Kennedy, all Black women who have made phenomenal breakouts into the country scene in the past few years, make "Blackbiird" a key part of setting Cowboy Carter's tone. The song, and indeed the album as a whole, are a not-so-subtle statement on how Black musicianship – particularly Black women – has always been a foundational part of the American music scene.

7 Johnny Cash – "In My Life"

American IV: The Man Comes Around (American Recordings/Universal Records, 2002)

"In My Life," off of 1965's Rubber Soul, is another of the Beatles' early gems. John Lennon considered it one of his best early songs, with its lyrics reflecting a genuine sense of introspection and gratitude. Mojo magazine even called "In My Life" the best song of all time in their 2000 ranking; Rolling Stone called it the Beatles' fifth-best song overall. There's no question that it's a great song; yet while the Fab Four's recording is sweet and earnest, it took the Man in Black to turn the song on its head.

American IV was Johnny Cash's swan song, although no one knew it when he was recording the album. A combination of cover songs and revisiting songs he'd recorded in the 60s and 70s, the album is best known for his genre-defying cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt," but his version of "In My Life" is equally poignant.

While the Beatles' version is absolutely a genuine and heartwarming song, Cash's version overflows with joy and pain as he sings it from the perspective of a man at the end of his days. Maybe Lennon could have done the same if he had lived long enough, but even if he had, it's still doubtful he would have had half of Cash's gravitas.

6 Joe Cocker – "With A Little Help From My Friends"

With A Little Help From My Friends (Regal Zonophone, 1969)

English blues singer Joe Cocker found himself thrown immediately into the spotlight when his debut album With a Little Help from My Friends and its cover of the Beatles song by the same name were an instant success. The Beatles' original, which was the second track on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had been positively received when that album was released in '67, but Cocker's cover – released as a single just a year and a half later – rocketed to the top of the charts within weeks.

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper was the first rock album to get a trend-defying Album of the Year win in 1968, but Cocker's cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends" was equally beloved, and was finally inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001. Cocker's connection to the Beatles remained a memorable one throughout his career, which is in part why he got a cameo in Across the Universe as the lead singer for the film's slick, sexy version of "Come Together."

5 Our Lady Peace – "Tomorrow Never Knows"

The Craft: Music From The Motion Picture (Columbia Records, 1996)

​​​​​"Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream; it is not dying" was a hard concept for Western audiences to grapple with, but "Tomorrow Never Knows" was one of the most important songs on 1966's Revolver, as the Beatles began working to expand both their own consciousnesses and their musical style. Both its subject matter, John Lennon's initial experiences with hallucinogenics and his reading of Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience, and its recording techniques, a frenzied combination of overdubbed tape loops and reversed guitar, were a major influence on the birth of psychedelic rock.

Our Lady Peace's cover of "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a spiritual refinement of the original song, and yet the Canadian rockers may never have recorded it if not for their contract with Columbia Records, who tapped them to record the cover for the soundtrack of 1996's supernatural horror classic The Craft. OLP's version of "Tomorrow Never Knows" features over the film's opening credits, in a wild and careening sequence as the camera bursts through clouds and flashes of occult symbols.

4 Sonic Youth – "Within You Without You"

Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father (New Musical Express, 1988)

​​​​​Initially released as a part of the 1988 charity compilation Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father, a cover-to-cover remake of the original Sgt. Pepper, Sonic Youth's version of "Within You Without You" is at once both delightfully faithful to the original and also subversively innovative. The nascent noise-rockers, who were at the time evolving away from their origins in New York's no-wave movement, cut loose with the kind of frenzy they've since become legends for.

The Sonic Youth cover of "Within You Without You" is easily one of the greatest covers of the Beatles' work. This is because it translates the original's heavily Indian instrumentation (based by George Harrison on a recording by sitar master Ravi Shankar) flawlessly into the heavily distorted guitar style that is one of Sonic Youth's hallmarks. They make it their own while still honoring what came before.

3 Aerosmith – "Helter Skelter"

Pandora's Box (Columbia Records, 1991)

Arena-rockers Aerosmith have released multiple Beatles covers over the years, such as "I'm Down" on 1987's Permanent Vacation, or their version of "Come Together," which was one of the only decent parts of the otherwise-atrocious 1978 jukebox musical film Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Yet before recording either of those, they laid down a high-octane, rip-roaring cut of "Helter Skelter" during the recording sessions for what was arguably their best album, 1975's Toys in the Attic.

For whatever reason, "Helter Skelter" didn't make the cut for Toys, and instead sat in a box with other neglected recordings until the compilation of 1991's Pandora's Box, a collection of B-sides, outtakes, remixes, and live cuts that was put together in order to capitalize on the band's return to popularity in the early 90s. Released as the second single off Pandora's Box (the first was a reissue of "Sweet Emotion"), "Helter Skelter" hit #21 on the US Rock charts.

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2 Toad The Wet Sprocket – "Hey Bulldog"

I Know What You Did Last Summer: The Album (Columbia Records, 1997)

While Beatles enthusiasts are strongly divided on what, if any, good points the 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine had, the decades since its release have at least been kind to "Hey Bulldog," one of the new songs the Beatles contributed to the film out of contractual obligation. The uptempo, piano-driven number was considered forgettable by the band, yet contains some of the most clever musicality the Fab Four would put together in their later years.

That uptempo energy was turned up to 11 when California alt-rockers Toad the Wet Sprocket covered "Hey Bulldog" for the soundtrack of the 1997 slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (where they were ed by their fellow Columbia Records contributor, the aforementioned Our Lady Peace). Toad's version of "Hey Bulldog" pulls away from the original's honky-tonk piano sound, replacing it with a guitar almost as distorted as the vocals, resulting in a version of the song that feels a little more intentionally frenzied and less genuinely chaotic than the original.

1 Carol Woods & Timothy T. Mitchum – "Let It Be"

Across The Universe: Music From The Motion Picture (Interscope Records, 2007)

Sometimes musicians come along and perform a song they didn't write, but in doing so completely make it their own. That's absolutely the case with this version of "Let It Be," which features in a prominent and heart-wrenchingly powerful scene in 2007's Across the Universe. While the original song is certainly beautiful, written by Paul McCartney about a dream featuring his deceased mother, and was a widely successful song critically and commercially as the Beatles' final single before the band dissolved, the one thing the original definitively isn't is heartbreaking.

While Across the Universe was a commercial failure as a film, its version of "Let It Be" was performed by Carol Woods and Timothy Mitchum at the 50th Grammy Awards. Unfortunately, no clips of this performance, which was met by a standing ovation across the Staples Center, exist online due to overzealous corporate claims.

Rearranged in the style of a classic American gospel hymn, with lead vocals sung by Carol Woods (Matron "Mama" Morton in the first national touring cast of Chicago) and Timothy T. Mitchum (who played Young Simba in the Broadway run of The Lion King in 2003), this version of "Let It Be" is full of little musical details that demonstrate why Across the Universe was woefully underappreciated by critics when it was released.

Yet all of those details combined can't encapsulate the heartbreak and power in Woods' voice, or the crystal-clear youthful optimism in Mitchum's. Juxtaposing gospel faith with depictions of the raw brutality of the 1967 Detroit Riots, particularly the rampant abuse visited on Detroit's Black citizens by police officers and National Guardsmen, the subtext of this version of "Let It Be" remains painfully relevant in today's political climate. I've cried every time I've heard this song since I first saw the film, and I know I'll cry every time I hear it again for the rest of my life.