Home Music Music Lists

The 80 Greatest Dylan Covers of All Time

From Hendrix, Baez, and the Byrds to Cher, Adele, and the Roots, our list of the 80 greatest covers of Bob Dylan’s songs

Photographs in illustration by Bruce Fleming/AP; Yui Mok/PA Wire/AP; H. Thompson/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; David Corio/Redferns/Getty Images;

Jason DeCrow/AP

For Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday we’ve compiled our list of the 80 greatest covers of his songs — a collective gift back to him to say thank you for everything he’s given us. The list has songs recorded by his folk peers nearly 60 years ago, and others from as recently as last year. Getting down to 80 wasn’t easy. As the greatest songwriter of all time, Dylan has inspired thousands of covers of his songs by artists from every corner of music. Our picks include everyone from Hendrix, Baez, and the Byrds to Cher, Adele, and the Roots.

Dylan at 80 | Interviews, Reviews, Photos, Archives

Dylan loved the ides of other people doing his songs, and it’s amazing how many songs here were recorded many times by other artists before the man himself ever released his own versions; often, they lived whole other lives, evolving and changing over the years, with his idea of the song as only a blueprint. And because there are so many kinds of Dylan songs, there’s a vast array of different kinds of Dylan covers: R&B singers love relaxing into the contours of “Lay Lady Lay”; country singers like his rootsy stuff; indie-rockers key into his sad side; heroic rock singers love scaling the peaks of open-ended classics — like “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” or “Like a Rolling Stone” — finding their own way to make new meanings amidst the intersecting, and often contradictory, emotions and ideas that can roil around within one Dylan song. Even weird, tossed-off or straight-up bad Dylan songs can make for great covers.

Upon reading this, true fans will immediately think of their own favorite covers that didn’t make the list. And that’s part of the fun. This story leads in a million directions. The road always ends wherever you’re at right now.

From Rolling Stone US

48

Grateful Dead, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” ( 9/26/72)

The Dead started playing their favorite Dylan tune in their early days, and never stopped. Of all their many Dylan covers, “Baby Blue” was the one they played most often, right up to the year Jerry Garcia died. There’s a fine 1981 performance on Postcards of the Hanging, but their toughest “Baby Blue” comes from their legendary Jersey City run, the night of September 26th, 1972. (The following night was released as Dick’s Picks Volume 11.) Garcia puts on the chill with his voice and guitar, as if he sees all the song’s dire prophecies coming true. R.S.

49

Siouxsie and the Banshees, “This Wheel’s on Fire ” (1987)

If anyone could translate Dylan into goth, it had to be Siouxsie. The Eighties icon rode this Basement Tapes classic from Big Pink to the Batcave. Siouxsie and the Banshees took pride in reworking Sixties classics for the black-lipstick crowd; they had a U.K. Top Ten hit with the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence,” one of the few goth hits about enjoying sunshine. On their 1987 album Through The Looking Glass, they covered Iggy (“The Passenger”), the Doors (“You’re Lost Little Girl”), and Dylan. Siouxsie did a trippy performance of “This Wheel’s on Fire” on Top of the Pops, vamping in her purple catsuit, doing an awesome version of the goth cobweb-gathering dance. R.S.

50

Rick Nelson & the Stone Canyon Band, “She Belongs to Me” (1969)

A TV star and teen heartthrob in the 1950s, Ricky Nelson had been trying to move away from his bubblegum image throughout the Sixties, signaling his new phase by dropping the “y” from his first name. By the end of the decade, he hadn’t a hit for a while, but his version of Dylan’s caustically elegiac ballad eased him back into the Top 40 with a strikingly lovely country-rock treatment in step with the Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers, featuring a steel guitar player borrowed from Buck Owens’ backing band and including future Eagle Randy Meisner on bass. J.D.