David Bowie's Best Covers Of Other Artist's Songs

Photo: AVRO, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

David Bowie was one of the most original songwriters and recording artists of his generation, but he was also a gifted interpreter of other people’s music. When a song excited him, he rarely treated it as a museum piece. He changed its atmosphere, phrasing, instrumentation, or emotional point of view until the performance belonged naturally inside his own creative world.

Bowie’s enthusiasm for cover songs appeared throughout his career. He performed material by the Velvet Underground, Jacques Brel, Cream, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Simon & Garfunkel, and many others. In 1973, he devoted an entire studio album, Pin Ups, to songs associated with the British music scene of the 1960s.

The supplied countdown began at number nine, so this complete Top 10 adds Bowie’s hit version of “Sorrow” at number ten. The remaining selections preserve the original ranking while examining what Bowie brought to each composition.

# 10 – Sorrow

“Sorrow” is the ideal song to complete this countdown. Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer wrote it, and the McCoys recorded the original version before the Merseys created the arrangement that most directly influenced Bowie.

Bowie released “Sorrow” in October 1973 as the only single from Pin Ups. His version slows the song’s emotional movement and surrounds the vocal with saxophones, strings, piano, and carefully layered backing voices. The result feels glamorous and melancholy at the same time.

The single reached number three in the United Kingdom and remained on the chart for fifteen weeks. Many listeners later assumed the song was a Bowie original, which demonstrates how completely he absorbed it into his own catalog.

# 9 – Let’s Spend the Night Together

David Bowie admired the Rolling Stones and frequently spoke about seeing the group during its early years. In a memorable appearance on the British program Parkinson, Bowie recalled an early Rolling Stones concert and delivered an impressively accurate Mick Jagger impersonation.

Fortunately, Bowie did not merely imitate Jagger when he recorded “Let’s Spend the Night Together” for Aladdin Sane in 1973. He accelerated the song, increased its theatrical energy, and made the arrangement sound like the Rolling Stones had collided with the Spiders from Mars.

Mike Garson’s piano is one of the recording’s essential elements. His playing adds a frantic edge while Mick Ronson’s guitar and the rhythm section push the performance forward. Bowie does not improve or replace the Stones’ original; he reveals how easily the song could survive inside a completely different rock-and-roll personality.

# 8 – It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City

Bruce Springsteen included “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” on his 1973 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. The song may not have been one of Springsteen’s largest early hits, but it attracted Bowie, who recorded his own version during the mid-1970s.

The Bowie recording remained unreleased until it appeared on the 1989 Sound + Vision box set. Although Springsteen’s street poetry remains unmistakable, Bowie places it inside the muscular soul-rock sound associated with his mid-1970s work.

The performance includes strings, guitars, saxophone, and a powerful rhythm section. Bowie distorts and stretches his voice without losing the song’s narrative force. The result sounds like a meeting between the worlds of Bruce Springsteen and the Thin White Duke rather than a straightforward imitation.

Near the end, Bowie allows some of Springsteen’s rough vocal attack to enter the performance, while the arrangement retains the precision associated with Bowie’s studio work. It is one of the most fascinating examples of a major songwriter interpreting another emerging songwriter’s material. For more on Springsteen’s work, visit our ranking of Bruce Springsteen’s albums.

# 7 – God Only Knows

David Bowie covered the Beach Boys classic “God Only Knows” for his 1984 album Tonight. Brian Wilson and Tony Asher wrote the song for the Beach Boys’ 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds.

Bowie’s version is slower and more heavily orchestrated than the original. The arrangement uses strings, horns, synthesizers, and restrained backing vocals rather than attempting to reproduce the Beach Boys’ intricate vocal architecture.

Bowie sounds wounded and unusually exposed, emphasizing the fear of loss inside the lyric. Where the Beach Boys recording feels delicate and transcendent, Bowie’s interpretation feels lonely and ceremonial.

The production is unmistakably rooted in the mid-1980s, which has made the cover divisive among listeners. Even so, it remains a revealing performance because Bowie approaches one of pop music’s most admired songs without trying to conceal his own emotional and stylistic instincts.

# 6 – I Feel Free

David Bowie had performed Cream’s “I Feel Free” during the Ziggy Stardust era, but he did not release a studio version until the 1993 album Black Tie White Noise.

Bowie and producer Nile Rodgers transformed the Cream song through synthesizers, programmed textures, layered vocals, and a rhythm that draws as much from funk and contemporary dance production as from late-1960s blues rock.

Mick Ronson contributes guitar to the recording, creating an important reunion with Bowie shortly before Ronson’s death. His presence adds emotional weight to a cover that Bowie had carried with him for years.

The finished track does not attempt to recreate Cream’s power-trio arrangement. Bowie treats the song as material for reinvention, turning its direct rock energy into something smooth, electronic, and deliberately strange.

# 5 – Pablo Picasso

“Pablo Picasso” fits so naturally within Bowie’s catalog that some listeners have mistakenly assumed he wrote it. The actual songwriter was Jonathan Richman, who recorded the song with the Modern Lovers.

David Bowie included his version on the 2003 album Reality. The song’s humorous portrait of an intimidating artist and his effect on women aligns easily with Bowie’s long-standing interest in artists, outsiders, performance, and the unstable relationship between public image and private identity.

Bowie gives the track a heavier, more aggressive arrangement than the Modern Lovers’ original. Guitars grind beneath a vocal that moves between amusement, admiration, and mockery.

The cover became a regular part of the Reality touring period. It demonstrates how Bowie could recognize a song whose personality already resembled his own work and still find a new way to frame it.

# 4 – White Light/White Heat

David Bowie was one of the earliest and most important British champions of the Velvet Underground. His admiration eventually led him and Mick Ronson to produce Lou Reed’s landmark 1972 album Transformer.

“White Light/White Heat” is not about childhood electroshock treatment. Lou Reed wrote it about the rush and physical intensity associated with amphetamine use. The Velvet Underground’s original recording is fast, distorted, repetitive, and intentionally overwhelming.

The song became a regular part of Bowie’s performances during the Ziggy Stardust period. His versions often increased the theatrical tension while retaining the raw drive of the original. A 1972 BBC performance was later released on Bowie at the Beeb, while the 1973 Hammersmith performance appeared on Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture.

Bowie continued changing the arrangement during later tours, sometimes making it faster and harder. The supplied 1990s performance captures a more abrasive version that fits the industrial edge of that period. The song also remained part of Bowie’s musical relationship with Reed, including their performances together. Read more about Bowie’s heavier band work in our Tin Machine song list.

# 3 – America

David Bowie opened the Concert for New York City on October 20, 2001, with a quiet performance of the Simon & Garfunkel classic “America.”

The benefit took place at Madison Square Garden after the September 11 attacks. Bowie sat cross-legged on the stage and performed with minimal accompaniment, allowing Paul Simon’s portrait of searching, travel, disappointment, and national identity to carry the full emotional weight of the moment.

The performance contains no large backing choir and no attempt to turn grief into spectacle. Bowie’s voice sounds fragile but controlled, while the small keyboard part creates an almost music-box atmosphere.

Bowie followed “America” with “Heroes,” creating a two-song statement that moved from uncertainty to resilience. He never made the song part of a conventional studio album, but this single live performance remains one of the most meaningful covers of his career.

# 2 – Wild Is the Wind

Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington wrote “Wild Is the Wind” for the 1957 film of the same name. Johnny Mathis introduced it in the movie, but Nina Simone’s later interpretation inspired Bowie to record the song.

Bowie included “Wild Is the Wind” on the 1976 album Station to Station. His version removes the lush Hollywood treatment associated with the original film recording and builds slowly around guitar, bass, drums, piano, and a vocal that becomes increasingly intense.

Bowie begins with extraordinary restraint. Each return to the melody adds urgency until the performance feels almost physically overwhelmed by desire. The band follows that progression without crowding him.

The result is not simply a stronger or weaker version of the song. It is a complete reinterpretation that places romantic devotion inside the cold, controlled world of the Thin White Duke. That transformation earns it the number-two position on our list of covers David Bowie recorded.

# 1 – I’m Waiting for the Man

We close our list with a song that connected Bowie to the Velvet Underground for nearly his entire career. David Bowie encountered an advance copy of the Velvet Underground’s debut before the album was widely available and recorded an early version of “I’m Waiting for the Man” in 1966.

The song became part of Bowie’s live repertoire during the 1970s. Unlike the Velvet Underground’s original, whose rough repetition feels like sound escaping from a rehearsal room, Bowie’s arrangements often became tighter, larger, and more theatrical.

Bowie never removed the song’s tension. The narrator is waiting to buy drugs, and the repetitive structure makes that wait feel anxious and ritualistic. Lou Reed’s detached delivery and Bowie’s more dramatic approach reveal different possibilities inside the same lyric.

At Bowie’s fiftieth-birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1997, Lou Reed joined him for “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “White Light/White Heat,” “Queen Bitch,” and “Dirty Boulevard.” The shared performance below captures two artists whose mutual influence had shaped decades of rock music.

Updated August 3, 2026.

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