Cover versions have had a rough time of it over the past several years. First, The X Factor unleashed a wave of pub singers on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Next came the scourge of the John Lewis Christmas ad, with its stocking full of pop classics receiving the “slowed-down emo-core” treatment.

But don’t be put off by memories of Ellie Goulding strangling Elton John’s “Your Song” in its sleep. A good cover can transcend the original – bringing out qualities not even the tune’s composers realised were there in the first place. Here is a countdown of 20 of the best. And yes, it does include “Hallelujah” – though rest assured, Simon Cowell was not involved.

Please Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want – Gavin Clark

Original by The Smiths

Gavin Clark (pictured in 2010) leaned deeper into the despair and isolation rippling through the original (Photo: C Brandon/Redferns)

Can anyone out-misery Morrissey? Hold my tear-streaked coffee mug, declared previously unheralded singer-songwriter Gavin Clark, who covered the 1984 Smiths single for friend Shane Meadows’ 2006 film This Is England.

A decent cover typically takes a well-known track somewhere new. Clark did the opposite, leaning deeper into the despair and isolation rippling through the Moz original. Clark would die aged just 46 due to complications from alcoholism – and while he never had a career equal to that of Morrissey, with this track, he brought a stripped-down, phantasmagorical chill to The Smiths that surely even the quiffed one himself could never have managed.

Make You Feel My Love – Adele

Original by Bob Dylan

Adele transformed Dylan’s song into a powerhouse ballad (Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBCU/Getty)

When recording her debut album, 19, then-obscure London soul singer Adele was looking for the perfect song to articulate her heartache after the end of a relationship. She then discovered Bob Dylan had already written that very song for his 1997 LP, Time Out of Mind – a bare-bones lament she transformed into a powerhouse piano ballad fuelled by her poignant and expressive voice.

“The lyrics are just amazing and summed up exactly what I’d been trying to say in my songs,” said Adele of “Make You Feel My Love”. “It’s about regretting not being with someone, and it’s beautiful.”

Hurt – Johnny Cash

Original by Nine Inch Nails

Johnny Cash turned ‘Hurt’ into one of the great end-of-life laments (Photo: Harry Langdon/Getty)

The Man in Black was not much impressed with Nine Inch Nails’s lament about the perils of drug addiction when presented with the song by producer Rick Rubin – it was “very noisy, aggressive”, he intimated to his new collaborator.

Undeterred, Rubin talked around the ailing Cash (who would die the following year, a weatherbeaten and worn-down 71). Together, they turned “Hurt” into one of the great end-of-life laments – a song about looking back when you don’t have all that much of a future, and finding peace amid the regrets and missed opportunities. Nine Inch Nails’s Trent Reznor was impressed – if shocked, too.

“I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, and it really, then, wasn’t my song anymore,” said Reznor. “I got a CD in the post. I listened to it and it was very strange. It was this other person inhabiting my most personal song. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive.”

Valerie – Amy Winehouse

Original by The Zutons

Amy Winehouse elevated a quasi-obscure indie song into an enduring hit (Photo: Sean Gallup/MTV /Getty)

Winehouse’s friend and collaborator Mark Ronson has a theory as to why her carefree, almost capricious 2007 do-over of “Valerie” by Merseyside landfill-indie scamps The Zutons is such a favourite with audiences. “Valerie is the one song Amy sings that’s devoid of the pain and torment in her own music, which is why it’s such a beloved piece of her,” he said. “You can forget the sadness and tragedy and just celebrate her voice.”

The Zutons’ original has a perky charm – what it lacks is the irresistible punchiness of Winehouse’s vocal. She recorded the tune largely as a lark – yet such was her talent that she elevated it from indie quasi-obscurity to enduring hit.

I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston

Original by Dolly Parton

In the 1992 film ‘The Bodyguard’ Whitney Houston breathed new life into Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ (Photo: Fotos International/Getty)

Dolly Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” in 1974 as a farewell to her business partner and mentor, Porter Wagoner, after deciding to pursue a solo career. Never would she have imagined it would one day be reimagined as a timeless love song by a shy former gospel singer from New Jersey.

Houston’s version – from the soundtrack to her 1992 movie The Bodyguard – takes the tune far, far away from its origins as a country ballad. It is transformed into a sky-scraping weepy – full of emotion and as vast as a cloud formation. Parton – who had previously nixed a proposed Elvis cover because he wanted too great a share of the royalties – was impressed. “I could not believe how she did that. I mean, how beautiful it was that my little song had turned into that, so that was a major, major thing.”

Go West – The Pet Shop Boys

Original by The Village People

When asked to play a Manchester HIV fundraiser by their friend Derek Jarman in 1992, Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant was set against covering an obscure Village People song. His collaborator, Chris Lowe, talked him around by pointing out that “Go West” had the same chord changes as Tennant’s favourite German baroque composition, Pachelbel’s Canon.

As reimagined by the Pet Shop Boys – with the help of an all-male Broadway choir – “Go West” celebrated the freedom San Francisco represented for gay men in the 70s, while also foreshadowing the Aids crisis later to devastate the community. A huge bittersweet hit, it was embraced all over again as a terrace anthem. “Who would have thought that an obscure Village People song covered by Pet Shop Boys would become the song of football?” said Chris Lowe. “It’s fantastic. I think it’s our greatest achievement.”

Torn – Natalie Imbruglia

Original by Anne Preven

Natalie Imbruglia’s 1997 cover of ‘Torn’ has been played on Australia radio an average of 75 times a day (Photo: Margaret Norton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty)

Few Natalia Imbruglia fans will have heard of American singer Anne Preven or her indie band Ednaswap. But it was for Preven that her Ednaswap bandmate Scott Cutler wrote heartbreak-fuelled chugger “Torn”. Their version has a sweet, lo-fi quality – but is no match for the 1997 reimagining by Imbruglia, which benefits from the former Neighbours star’s talent for melodrama. She puts heart and soul into her vocals, selling the song as a slick, indie-adjacent anthem with an undertow of raw hurt. Released in October 1997, just as audiences were starting to cool on Britpop, it was a huge and enduring smash – and since its release has been played on Australian radio an average of 75 times per day.

Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinéad O’Connor

Original by Prince

Sinéad O’Connor (pictured in 1990) put her heart and soul into Prince’s song (Photo: Rob Verhorst /Redferns)

Prince is rumoured to have written the soon-to-be-immortalised dirge for his housekeeper Sandy Scipioi, after she went on a career break following the death of her father – leaving the bereft pop maverick to prepare his own breakfast. However, Sinéad O’Connor took it in an altogether different direction in 1990 – amping up the heartache and ripping off the emotional bandages all over again with a video in which she spontaneously burst into tears when thinking about her late mother.

O’Connor put heart and soul into the recording. Yet she had little inkling of the impact it would have. As Chris Hill, co-director of O’Connor’s label Ensign, told Mojo in 2009: “Fachtna O’Kelly, Sinéad’s manager, brought in a cassette, and when I heard it, I actually started crying. I just sat there with tears in my eyes. Then O’Kelly rang up Sinéad O’Connor and went, ‘Chris is crying.’

“‘Was it that bad?’ Sinéad asked.”

Red Red Wine – UB40

Original by Neil Diamond

The Birmingham reggae institution were fans of an earlier recording of “Red Red Wine” – just not the Neil Diamond original. They had first encountered it via dance-hall artist Tony Tribe, and their version was faithful to his chilled-out cover of the tune. “Even when we saw the writing credit which said ‘N Diamond’, we thought it was a Jamaican artist called Negus Diamond,” co-vocalist Terence “Astro” Wilson would reveal.

Stately and full of yearning, the 1983 UB40 version would soon become definitive – impressing even Diamond, who, alongside Frank Sinatra’s “Sweet Caroline”, named it one of his favourite covers of his work.

Emotion – Destiny’s Child

Original by Samantha Sang

In 1978, the Bee Gees took a breather from single-handedly conquering disco to write the gravity-defying ballad “Emotion” for Samantha Sang. It duly went to number three, and later returned to the charts in 2001 when Destiny’s Child recorded a slowed-down version – with finger clicks and a soaring Beyoncé vocal – that summoned a smouldering power not present in the original.

Fell In Love With A Boy – Joss Stone

Original by The White Stripes

Jack White’s song was turned on its head by Joss Stone (Photo: Theo Wargo/WireImage for Turner)

Aged just 16, husky-voiced soul singer Stone took Jack White’s gut-bucket blues belter “Fell In Love With A Girl” and turned it on its head with a wickedly groovy take, overseen by R&B producer Questlove of The Roots, with backing vocals by blues greats Angie Stone and Bettie Wright. “When I first heard it, I was like, ‘I don’t know how this is going to be soulful,’” Joss said in 2003. “But then Betty put down the scratch vocal, and the Roots kind of messed it up a little bit, which sounded really cool.” How right she was.

At Last – Etta James

Original by Glenn Miller

‘At Last’ was originally written for a romcom. Etta James brought the song a jazzy sophistication (Photo: Afro American Newspapers/Gado /Getty)

Etta James was not impressed to learn that Beyoncé was invited to perform James’s great torch song, “At Last”, for Barack and Michelle Obama for the first dance at their 2009 Presidential inauguration ball. Of course, by that point, James’s defining musical moment already had a long and surprise-strewn history. It started as a throwaway number hashed out by Glenn Miller and his orchestra for a 1941 romcom, Sun Valley Serenade. James got her hands on it in 1960 and brought a jazzy sophistication – a quality with which “At Last” is synonymous to this day.

“I was no longer a teenager. I was 22 and sophisticated. Or at least I wanted to be sophisticated,” she said of the process of recording the song. “Because of the way I phrased it, some people started calling me a jazz singer.”

“Fields of Gold” – Eva Cassidy

Original by Sting

Rock god Sting had enjoyed moderate success with his gravel-voiced original recording of “Fields of Gold”. But Maryland folk singer Cassidy delivered what is considered by many a definitive reading as a feature on her 1997 posthumous LP, Eva by Heart, released a year after her death from cancer. Listeners were floored by her haunting vocals – Sting among them.

“I heard this voice, and it was so beautiful, so pure,” said Sting. “And the next thing I hear, it’s almost a year later, and Terry Wogan is playing it on Radio 2. Then, lo and behold, it’s number one in England and I’m happy for her.”

Lilac Wine – Miley Cyrus

Original by Hope Foye

Cyrus’s 2012 cover of ‘Lilac Wine’ when she was 19 showed a maturity beyond her years (Photo: Michael Kovac/City of Hope/Getty)

James Shelton’s 1950 ode to the intoxicating ache of love originally featured in the (otherwise forgotten) Broadway musical Dance Me a Song, and was performed by Hope Foye. Cyrus was just 19 and still associated with teen stardom and her Hannah Montana alter-ego when she covered it in 2012, stunning fans new and old by tackling the track with an ache and maturity beyond her years.

All Along The Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix

Original by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan saw Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of the song as an improvement on his own (Photo: Michael Putland/Getty)

Even Bob Dylan preferred Hendrix’s plugged-in do-over of his mystical ballad – propelled, as it is, by one of the guitar hero’s most scintillating riffs. “I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this and ever since he died, I’ve been doing it that way,” said Dylan. “Strange how, when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”

Tainted Love – Soft Cell

Original by Gloria Jones

“Tainted Love” started life as a 1964 B-side written by songwriter Ed Cobb and performed by Gloria Jones, an Ohio-born soul singer largely unheard of in the US, but feted in the UK as “Queen of Northern Soul”. Recorded with the help of a £400 loan from keyboardist David Ball’s mother, the Soft Cell version gave it an ominous disco makeover – though it’s Marc Almond’s mannered yet tortured vocals that seal the deal.

“I loved the title and the opening line, ‘Sometimes I feel I’ve got to run away.’ It summed up how I felt,” said Almond. “It was 1981 and I was 21, already feeling world-weary after some love affairs. I adored the sneering, curled-lip aspect of the song.”

Song to the Siren – This Mortal Coil

Original by Tim Buckley

Cocteau Twins singer Liz Frazer was one of several indie luminaries roped into the This Mortal Coil project by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the band’s label, 4AD. A sort of goth super-group – think The Traveling Wilburys, with more eyeliner and fewer hats – their 1984 debut album It’ll End in Tears was misery on a stick. Amidst all the melancholy, a cover of Tim Buckley’s 1970 lament “Song to the Siren” – as illuminated by Frazer’s haunting vocals – was an immediate classic, as David Lynch would acknowledge when putting it on the soundtrack to 1997’s Lost Highway.

Smells Like Teen Spirit – Tori Amos

Original by Nirvana

There are no guitars on Amos’s tingling take on the grunge anthem. Instead, she summons layers of pain and claustrophobia, while her repetition of the refrain “a denial, a denial” has an almost nightmarish intensity that – some might argue – surpasses the blunt force of the original.

Running Up That Hill – Chromatics

Original by Kate Bush

It doesn’t hurt me to proclaim that retro-disco kingpins Chromatics’ 2007 take on the Kate Bush classic is the superior version. Chromatics producer Johnny Jewel is renowned for his neon-lit soundscapes – and those very qualities bring a phantasmagorical chill to “Running Up That Hill”. Ruth Radelet’s banshee-having-existential-crisis vocals only add to the drama.

Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley

Original by Leonard Cohen

Jeff Buckley brought lashings of dude-angst to the much covered song (Photo: Gie Knaeps/Getty)

There are dozens of versions of Cohen’s great meditation on the meaning of it all – with everyone from Rufus Wainwright to Alexandra Burke having a go. But the definitive rendition is surely that of Jeff Buckley (son of “Song to the Siren” composer Tim Buckley), who upgrades the melancholic Cohen version with lashings of 90s dude-angst. As Simon Cowell might have remarked, Buckley “made it his own”.