The Best Who Covers Ever

Head back to the beginning.

35. Blur — Substitute

Frankly, the backstory to Blur covering “Substitute” is better than the song. Recorded for the tribute album Who Covers Who, it saw the band hungover, underrehearsed, and grouchy with one another. Drummer Dave Rowntree decided he was going to go faster than everyone else. Damon Albarn messed up some of the lyrics; he calls it Blur’s worst performance on record and doesn’t want a copy in the house. But I happen to like the energy of it, and the reckless sloppiness, from (missed) first note to last. It brings back an era when the Who sounded dangerous and were literally explosive. If this was an early Replacements outtake, people would be calling it genius. – Patrick Robbins

34. W.A.S.P. — The Real Me

In 2010, the hair metal band W.A.S.P. emerged from obscurity when it appeared in The Onion headline: “Recently Single Al Gore Finally Able To Listen To W.A.S.P. Albums.” It was a joke more than two decades in the making. During its heyday in the ‘80s, the band earned a spot on the Tipper Gore-led Parents’ Music Resource Center’s “Filthy 15” for the song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast).” Not every track in the band’s catalog was quite as risqué. The group later included a cover of the Who’s “The Real Me” on their 1989 album The Headless Children. The cover features vocalist Blackie Lawless’ howling vocals, distorted heavy guitars and big drum fills. Though the track has an explicit label on Spotify, it’s actually rather PG. Even the former Mrs. Gore might be able to rock out to this one. – Curtis Zimmermann

33. Those Darn Accordions — Baba O’Riley

Usually thought of just as a gimmick, Those Darn Accordions actually were, sort of. But behind that bluster lurked a set of decent musicians, bonded by a love of squeeze. So, whenever there came a song that could translate well into that medium, job’s a good ‘un. This is a prime example, the love for the song apparent, although the talkie repeats of some of the lyric don’t bear much scrutiny. But, as the meter changes and then gradually accelerates, it becomes almost hypnotic. So much so that the sudden ending is a shock. – Seuras Og

32. Richie Havens — Won’t Get Fooled Again

If there is one iconic Who song, it is “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Many classic rock fans think Roger Daltrey’s scream is the GOAT scream in all of rock music, and of course there’s the incessant synthesized organ that runs through the entire track. Richie Havens is known for his iconoclastic acoustic covers of all sorts of music, but “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is either a song that absolutely, um, screams for his treatment or is the last thing you could imagine.

Havens is abetted by a cello playing the opening organ part, but he soon launches into what you would expect from him: vigorously strummed acoustic guitar and passionate vocals backed by bass and drums. It is very much the Richie Havens cover experience, but still echoes enough of the original, especially in the turnaround. The cello even comes back in at the end. Havens has done the rare feat of taking a song that is explicitly associated both with a particular singer and, more importantly, a particular electronic musical part, and made it work as an acoustic song without its most iconic moment. – Riley Haas

31. The Jam — Much Too Much

The Jam’s lionization of the Mod movement of the ‘60s did much to catalyze the Mod Revival of the late ‘70s. In both periods in the UK there were plenty of jobs available for working class men and women which left spare money to look good in fine threads, purchase R&B records and have enough money and energy left over for an evening (or weekend) of alcohol and Speed to let you enjoy all of those fine things. The Jam’s catalysis of the movement reached its peak with the release of the film Who film and album Quadrophenia in 1979.

When The Jam played “Much Too Much” in 1977, it was just 12 years after “My Generation” and The Who album which contained this song. They were only half a generation apart. The Jam were clearly in awe of their predecessors, and had not gone beyond them. They would later pay further tribute with their covers of “So Sad About Us” and “Disguises,” but this cover of “Much Too Much” shows them at their rawest and hungriest, ready to start their fire.

In the nearly 50 years since its release, Paul Weller has found a range of innovative and profound ways to express his musical, fashion and political beliefs, the vast majority of them not “Mod” as we would have originally understood it. Some of his fans have never forgiven him for expressing those things outside The Jam. This is a marvelous snapshot of a band which was already blossoming and an artist at the cusp of greatness. – Mike Tobyn

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