Unearth The Voyage
The Rolling Stones have written some of the greatest rock songs ever recorded, but they don’t always get the last word. Over the decades, artists from every genre have taken these classics and made them their own.
From country heartbreakers to heavy metal ragers, these covers prove just how versatile the Stones’ songbook really is. Get ready to hear some familiar songs in a whole new light.
1. ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ – Devo
Few bands have ever had the nerve to completely dismantle a rock classic and rebuild it from scratch the way Devo did. Their 1978 version of Satisfaction sounds nothing like the original, and that’s exactly the point.
Gone is the bluesy swagger. In its place?
Twitchy synthesizers, robotic rhythms, and a sense of controlled chaos.
Devo treated the song like a science experiment, stripping every ounce of cool from it and replacing it with anxious, mechanical energy. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it absolutely does.
The band saw the song’s frustration as something deeply modern, even dystopian.
Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the greatest covers ever recorded. Mick Jagger himself reportedly loved it.
This version proves that a great song can survive almost any transformation, especially when the artist has a genuine vision behind the madness.
2. ‘Wild Horses’ – The Flying Burrito Brothers
Here’s a wild piece of music trivia: the Flying Burrito Brothers actually recorded Wild Horses before the Rolling Stones released their own version. Gram Parsons, a close friend of Keith Richards, helped shape the song’s country soul, and his band’s 1970 recording captures something raw and unpolished that feels incredibly real.
Where the Stones’ version is lush and cinematic, this one is lean and aching. Parsons sings it like he’s lived every single word, which makes the heartbreak feel completely authentic.
The sparse instrumentation lets the melody breathe in a way that’s quietly devastating.
Country music fans who might never have picked up a Stones album found their way to this song through Parsons and the Burritos. It stands as proof that Wild Horses was always a country song at heart, just waiting for the right voices to find it.
3. ‘Dead Flowers’ – Townes Van Zandt
Townes Van Zandt had a gift for making songs sound like confessions, and his version of Dead Flowers is one of the most haunting recordings in all of American music. Recorded live and stripped down to almost nothing, it sounds less like a cover and more like a song he wrote himself in a dark hotel room somewhere.
The Stones played Dead Flowers with a winking, tongue-in-cheek outlaw attitude. Van Zandt plays it like he means every single word, and that shift in sincerity changes everything.
His voice cracks in all the right places, and the silence between notes carries as much weight as the notes themselves.
Many hardcore fans consider this the definitive version, and it’s hard to argue. When a cover makes you forget the original even exists, something truly special has happened.
Van Zandt’s take on this song does exactly that.
4. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ – Motörhead
Motörhead didn’t cover songs so much as they steamrolled them, and their version of Sympathy for the Devil is a glorious, noisy proof of that. Recorded for the 1995 Interview with the Vampire soundtrack, it cranks the original’s dark theatrics up to a level the Stones probably never imagined.
Lemmy Kilmister’s voice sounds like gravel being dragged across pavement, and somehow that perfectly suits the Devil’s own autobiography. The band keeps the famous “woo-woo” backing vocals but buries them under layers of distorted guitar that feel genuinely threatening.
What makes this cover so effective is that Motörhead doesn’t try to be clever or ironic. They simply play the song as hard and loud as humanly possible, trusting the lyrics to do the rest.
The result is a version that feels dangerous in a way the original, brilliant as it is, never quite managed.
5. ‘Gimme Shelter’ – The Sisters of Mercy
Rain and war, the Stones warned us. The Sisters of Mercy heard that warning and decided it sounded even better wrapped in gothic darkness.
Their cover of Gimme Shelter transforms the original’s desperate urgency into something cold, slow-burning, and genuinely eerie.
Andrew Eldritch’s deep baritone replaces Mick Jagger’s frantic energy with an icy calm that somehow makes the apocalyptic lyrics feel even more threatening. The drum machine pulses like a heartbeat in a haunted house, and the guitars shimmer with menace throughout.
This version strips away the gospel warmth of Merry Clayton’s iconic original screams and replaces it with pure dread. It’s a completely different emotional experience, and it works brilliantly within the gothic rock universe the Sisters of Mercy built for themselves.
Sometimes the best covers don’t just interpret a song but reveal a completely different side of it that was hiding all along.
6. ‘Under My Thumb’ – Streetheart
Canada has produced some seriously underrated rock bands, and Streetheart is high on that list. Their 1979 cover of Under My Thumb turned a classic Stones track into a hard-charging arena rock anthem, and Canadian radio absolutely could not get enough of it.
The band pumped up the tempo, added a crunching guitar riff that hits like a freight train, and gave lead singer Kenny Shields room to absolutely wail. It became one of the biggest Canadian rock hits of its era, reaching the top ten nationally and earning the band a much wider audience.
Interestingly, many younger Canadian fans discovered the Stones through this cover rather than the original. Streetheart’s version doesn’t try to reinvent the song’s meaning, it just supercharges the energy until the song practically vibrates off the speakers.
Pure, unfiltered, gloriously loud rock and roll from a band that deserved way more global recognition.
7. ‘Ruby Tuesday’ – Melanie
Melanie Safka had one of the most naturally expressive voices of the early 1970s folk scene, and she used every ounce of it on her gorgeous rendition of Ruby Tuesday. Where the Stones’ original has a melancholic elegance, Melanie’s version feels warm, intimate, and quietly heartbreaking in a completely different way.
She recorded it with a delicate acoustic arrangement that lets her voice carry the emotional weight entirely on its own. There’s no rock swagger here, just pure feeling communicated through melody and breath.
Listening to it feels like sitting across from someone telling you a story they’ve never told anyone before.
Ruby Tuesday is a song about freedom and impermanence, and Melanie’s folk-pop instincts bring those themes to the surface with startling clarity. Her version reminds listeners that great songs don’t need electric guitars and stadium energy to hit hard.
Sometimes a soft voice and an honest melody are more than enough.
8. ‘Play with Fire’ – The Birthday Party
Nick Cave was always going to do something unsettling with a Rolling Stones song. His band The Birthday Party took Play with Fire, already one of the Stones’ darker and more menacing tracks, and transformed it into something that sounds genuinely unhinged.
It’s uncomfortable listening in the best possible way.
The Birthday Party’s version crawls and lurches where the original glides, with jagged guitars and Cave’s sneering, unpredictable vocal delivery turning the song’s class-warfare lyrics into something truly sinister. You get the sense something could go very wrong at any moment, which is exactly what the band intended.
This cover is a masterclass in how punk and post-punk artists approached classic rock material: not with reverence, but with suspicion and creative aggression. The Birthday Party didn’t cover songs to honor them.
They covered songs to break them apart and see what scary things lived inside. This one delivered.
9. ‘Shine a Light’ – Leon Russell
Leon Russell was one of the most soulful piano men in rock history, and his version of Shine a Light turns the Stones’ quietly spiritual ballad into a full-on gospel celebration. Released in the early 1970s, it sounds like a Sunday morning church service crashed by a very talented rock band.
Russell’s piano playing is the star of the show, rolling and cascading through the song with the kind of joyful authority that makes you want to stand up and clap along. His voice, raspy and warm at the same time, adds a lived-in quality that makes the song’s message of redemption feel completely earned.
The Stones wrote Shine a Light as a tender tribute to Brian Jones, and Russell’s version honors that emotional weight while adding layers of musical joy on top. It’s the rare cover that deepens your appreciation of both the cover artist and the original song simultaneously.
10. ‘Out of Time’ – Chris Farlowe
Not many artists can say Mick Jagger personally produced their number one hit, but Chris Farlowe is one of the lucky few. His 1966 recording of Out of Time, produced by Jagger himself, shot straight to the top of the UK charts and remains one of the most successful Rolling Stones covers ever released commercially.
Farlowe had a powerhouse voice built for blue-eyed soul, and he attacked the song with a passion that matched the material perfectly. The orchestral arrangement behind him gives the whole thing a cinematic grandeur that feels almost bigger than the Stones’ own version from the same period.
What makes this story even more interesting is that Jagger handed Farlowe the song knowing it could be a smash, essentially gifting him a chart-topper. That kind of generosity is rare in the music business.
Farlowe repaid the favor by delivering one of the decade’s most memorable vocal performances.
