I've long been fascinated by unusual or weird covers--many of which are better than (or at least notably different) from the originals. Sometimes a cover becomes more famous that the original; at others, it can revive the popularity of a song that has faded into obscurity. There are many examples, of course, of covers that became more popular than the original (this list from the AV Club has a couple of my favorites, including Ike & Tina Turner's "Proud Mary," which blew the doors off the original Creedence Clearwater Revival number).
Recently, ABC's "Glee" featured dreamboat Puck wooing a fellow glee club member with a heartfelt and, dare I say it, cheesy rendition of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline." (Kids Today either have much less finely tuned irony detectors than we did in the '80s, or they have far surpassed their parents.) Hits for the clip on YouTube soared and Neil is no doubt appreciating the boost. I wondered who else had covered this song, which seems to have a bulletproof niceness. I searched the MusicBrainz database using HT//SQL, an HTTP-to-SQL conversion tool from Prometheus Research, and here are the results (filtered to remove the man himself, Mr. Diamond).
Perhaps the most surprising name on the list is U2. I suppose when you've played together that long, you get around to everything, eventually.
