The 40 Best John Lennon Covers Ever

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20. The Soft Boys — Cold Turkey

Led by Robyn Hitchcock, post-punk cult heroes The Soft Boys slithered and sneered through “Cold Turkey” on their 1979 debut album. Faithful with added riffage and a slathering of sludgy bass, the SB version is oh so dirty-cool. — Hope Silverman

19. The Minus 5 — My Mummy’s Dead

American supergroup-ish collective The Minus 5 take one of Lennon’s briefest and starkest folk songs and transform it into a funereal dirge. They expand it to nearly five times its original length and they add droning feedback of varying intensity. There’s also a tambourine slowly beating out the pulse of a funeral procession. Whereas in the original, Lennon sounds detached and almost kind of incredulous that his mother is dead, Minus 5 lead singer Scott McCaughey’s plaintive vocal and the swirling feedback around it almost sounds like a child experiencing the funeral of his mother. — Riley Haas

18. RDM ft. Jack Johnson — Imagine

There are shedloads of “Imagine” covers. Most are vile, dialing up the already extant schmaltziness level to beyond saccharine. It is hard to avoid—but Jack Johnson takes a novel approach. It helps that the onetime pro surfer already has little character or emotion in his voice, And that’s not a criticism. It is his schtick and a good one, and so his rudimentary guitar and slightly anodyne voice can allow the listener to read what they might into his delivery. This is how he first presented the song, but it was a genius move when Cuban collective Rhythms Del Mundo picked it up for their charity fusion, blending Buena Vista Social Club styles with more orthodox US and UK rock artists. This comes from their second set of such collaborations, and blows in sweet breezes of percussion and brass. The addition makes one of the best “Imagine” covers even better. — Seuras Og

17. Green Day — Working Class Hero

The original is just an angry John and a guitar, sounding very Dylanesque (although he later denied any debt to Dylan), and yet, it took 100 takes before John deemed it ready for inclusion on his first solo album, 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Is it an exaltation of the working class, or a warning against the working class being co-opted and oppressed by the upper class? Is it an honest appraisal of the hardships of Lennon’s childhood, or something conjured by someone brought up in the middle class? Most likely, considering what is known about John Lennon, it is a little bit of all of that, and more. Green Day contributed this cover to aforementioned Amnesty album Instant Karma, and while it starts off like the original, the rest of the band joins in about halfway through, adding more bombast without obscuring the anger. — Jordan Becker

16. Robert Randolph & The Family Band — I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama

Not often considered amongst the best of Lennon’s compositions, “I Don’t Wanna Be A Soldier Mama” earns more plaudits for its sentiments than its somewhat muddy mess of blues tropes. So it takes something special to give it some wings. Robert Randolph is best know as the most prominent provider of so-called sacred steel. This is pedal steel guitar, but played and sounding quite different from the use of the same instrument within a country music setting, predominantly for play in church services. This tends to offer a texture far more akin to slide or bottleneck. Randolph is one of few practitioners who has managed some crossover into secular music. This cover is on Randolph’s 2010 album, We Walk This Road, which mixes gospel fare with songs also by Bob Dylan and Prince. The steel gives flying and fiddle-like textures, which give extra verve to the 12 bar template, with Doyle Bramhall’s guitar and vocal earthing any risk of overexuberance. — Seuras Og

15. Roxy Music — Jealous Guy

Roxy Music’s rendition of “Jealous Guy” hits deep for the simple reason that it’s soaked in the sadness and raw emotion surrounding Lennon’s murder in December 1980. The British art-pop band were touring West Germany at the time of the New York shooting, and swiftly added the iconic 1971 song to their setlist, which they subsequently recorded as a standalone tribute single for release in February 1981. It had it all: a soulful and deeply sensitive vocal from the sartorially elegant Bryan Ferry, a crying guitar solo from Phil Manzanera that’s matched by Andy Mackay’s mournful saxophone, and an extended coda that features the great Manzanera blazing away over an epic synth backing. That’s not to forget some fine, fine whistling from Ferry, too. So no wonder the cover was #1 in the UK for two weeks in March, as an entirely worthy sequel to posthumous Lennon chart-toppers “Imagine” and “Woman”(forgetting the lamentable interjection of Joe Dolce’s “Shaddap You Face,” obviously). — Adam Mason

14. Meshell Ndegeocello — God

In 1968, Lennon sang about “looking through a glass onion.” Two years later, on the climactic cut “God” from John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, he took a sledgehammer to that glass onion, smashing layer after layer of his beliefs until all he had left was himself and his wife. It must have killed producer Phil Spector not to be allowed to score the song to more than piano, bass, and drums, but John was the boss and it stayed spare.

In 2010, at a John Lennon tribute concert in New York City, Meshell Ndegeocello made it even sparer. With only her bass to accompany her, she was still able to enrich the melody, making the song’s great emotional impact a pulse rather than a wave. Too, her careful paring away at the lyrics made them just that much more universal – after all, not many people today don’t believe in Beatles the way John professed not to. By the end, Ndegeocello accomplished the near-impossible, turning “The dream is over” from a dismissal to a coming to peace. — Patrick Robbins

13. Martin L. Gore — Oh My Love

The sweetest and loveliest love song in the Lennon canon, this ode to Yoko surpasses any of the others so written. It seems astonishing that, of all artists, it should have been chosen by Gore, the synth maven (and principal songwriter) of Depeche Mode, for his full length covers set, Counterfeit². Possibly more astonishing still, is the clear belief in the song he brings to it. His voice may not have the booming richness of his bandmate, Dave Gahan, but his lighter and breathier tones are perfect for the abject sentimentality of the song, leaving it with all the emotion intact. The synthesized arrangement is simple, spare and effective. With very little attempt to rejig the setting of the song, it is in the sparseness that it ultimately succeeds. — Seuras Og

12. The Land Below — Merry X-Mas (War Is Over)

In 2018, These Are Not Mine by Swedish songwriter and producer Erik Lindestad who records as The Land Below ranked number three on our Best Cover Albums list. One of the record’s many highlights was this version of Lennon and Ono’s Christmas staple. In Lindestad’s thudding electronic hands, the song becomes not celebratory, but something dark and ominous. The lyrics may say “war is over,” but the sound says “winter is coming.” — Ray Padgett

11. Generation X — Gimme Some Truth

Many of Lennon’s angry solo songs were amenable to punk when it hit in the mid-70s, not least “Gimme Some Truth,” on which the “sick and tired” singer railed against President Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon and his corrupt grip on US politics between 1969 and 1974. The Billy Idol-fronted Generation X demonstrated this perfectly when they recorded the gritty Imagine track for a BBC John Peel session in the punk summer of 1977, which later appeared as the B-side to their big 1979 UK hit “King Rocker.” Not sure Idol took the idea of learning the lyrics entirely seriously (“I’m sick to death of readin’ things by truth-scheming, little punk, punk, punk, punk rockers”?) and it’s definitely more Ramones-style fun than Sex Pistols vitriol, but the unruly energy of the track is infectious. Credit to producer Bob Sargeant, too, for capturing the raucous live spirit of these young upstarts, who cited Lennon as a major influence. — Adam Mason

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