Any artist has a daunting task trying to do their own rendition of a classic song. The pressure is already on them before they even open their mouth, and once they do, the audience is going to pass judgment on whether they were faithful enough to the original or if they failed to make it their own in any meaningful way. It’s bad enough when doing justice to one artist, but Chris Cornell found a way to cover two songs at the same time and make it sound absolutely seamless.

Because while he does sing the melody of U2’s ‘One’ throughout the tune, the gag of this version is that he looked up the lyrics and accidentally got Metallica’s ‘One’ instead. Considering how little both tunes have in common aside from their name, James Hetfield’s lyrics of a man slowly withering away in his own mind pairs shockingly well with Cornell singing Bono’s melody about staying together.

It’s easy to chalk it up to Cornell being a sonic genius, but it might have more to do with the universal language of music in many respects. After all, how many people could have feasibly claimed to have two songs work together so well when they are about going in opposite emotional directions?

‘Just Like Heaven’ – The Cure

The Cure have always had an uncanny ability to make people feel emotions before Robert Smith even starts singing. From the way that the guitars are played to the brooding synths, they like to set up a certain atmosphere before we know what the song’s about, and by the time that Smith sings some lovelorn lyrics, there isn’t a soul listening who isn’t fawning over everything he’s saying. It would be easy to say that’s all the production handiwork, but given how they sounded on Unplugged, there’s apparently some magic there as well.

Even though this acoustic rendition of ‘Just Like Heaven’ is missing the iconic piano break in the middle of the tune, hearing that delicate guitar riff being played on an acoustic guitar actually makes the song work even more. Since Smith is singing from the perspective of someone swept away by their lover, this rendition actually depicts the desperation of that a lot better, as if every piece of his soul is pouring out every time he sings one of the lines.

Then again, all great love stories are about someone being vulnerable, and when Smith sings this version, it’s not about the kind of overwhelming sounds of the recorded version. It’s the tale of someone who lost the love of their life, and once the music’s over, it’s not clear that he will ever find his other half again. It’s ultimately a tragedy, but he can still revisit it every time he straps on that guitar.

‘Angel Dream’ – Tom Petty

Halfway through making the soundtrack to She’s The One, it was clear that Tom Petty felt that he made a mistake. He was never cut out to make the kind of soundtrack with a ton of guest stars, so the only way for him to make it work would be to do a massive overhaul of the tunes that didn’t work in the context of Wildflowers. That did mean filling out the tracks with a bit of filler, but the fact that ‘Angel Dream’ got two different versions in the final mix was an accidental work of genius.

Although both versions rely primarily on acoustic guitars, the one that’s worth highlighting is the one entitled ‘No.2’, which is Petty making a song that sounds like a glorified demo. There’s a lot more reverb on the percussion in the original, but Petty seems to have more feeling in this version, as he sings about the real-life angel that he had as a wife coming to save him when times were at their worst during his divorce.

Considering rock and roll is known as the devil’s music most of the time, hearing him sing those lyrics in this context actually makes for something far more compelling. It’s clear that the narrator has a lot of sinning left to do, but he’s grateful that he at least has someone to look out for him as he goes through life and tries his best to stay on the straight and narrow.

‘Everlong’ – Foo Fighters

A lot can get lost in the context of an arena rock show. Pink Floyd already called attention to the fact that a group of people that large can repeat back anything as long as it’s comprehensible, and it’s a miracle that no one truly heartless has abused that power and told their fans to cause riots in the streets. But even for a song as forceful as ‘Everlong’, it’s easy to forget that Dave Grohl wrote the tune as a love song.

This was him talking about the euphoria that came with his first wife, and hearing him sing about coming together through the power of music is one of the purest lines he ever wrote. And for as risque as Howard Stern could come across, hearing Grohl play the acoustic version of the tune live in his studio helps people understand it a lot more, basically taking the crux of the track and lowering it an octave to make it sound more conversational.

In that respect, this is the least rock star move Grohl could have made with the song, but it doesn’t matter. This was what helped everyone see the earnest songwriter he was underneath those walls of guitars, and while it did give jokers at open mics a pass to sing this song at the top of their lungs, that shouldn’t deter from the song itself being among the finest quiet moments Grohl ever made.

‘Where Did It All Go Wrong’ – Oasis

By the end of the 1990s, Oasis’s high had finally started to burn itself out. They had been through so much baggage going through the Be Here Now, and while they emerged as rock and roll gods when they got home, everyone was questioning what they were even in the business for at that point. It was time for Noel Gallagher to start re-evaluating his life choices, and ‘Where Did It All Go Wrong’ was the only real time he seemed to pour his heart out and tell fans his real state of mind.

Since this is a man who likes to talk himself up as one of the greatest of all time, hearing him speak so candidly to this unnamed protagonist about where everything fell apart is a much more negative change of pace. While he sounds like he’s chastising the subject of the tune on the loud version on Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, hearing the acoustic version with only Noel playing makes everyone realise who he’s singing about.

After talking about the problems that stick around until the day he dies, it’s not that hard to see most of this song being self-directed, with Noel crying out in pain over how he could let all of his dreams slip through his fingers. Everyone else may have still been on cloud nine, but Noel was on the comedown already, and this was when the lightbulb went off and he realised he was far from as big as he thought.

‘All Apologies’ – Nirvana

Much of Nirvana’s appearance on MTV Unplugged is incredibly difficult to look back on. No one could have predicted that Kurt Cobain was going to be gone only a few months after the episode was taped, but seeing him surrounded by flowers as he sang every tune made him look like he was a singer at his own funeral. There are already a lot of raw nerves on display throughout the tunes, but the final original of the night is when Cobain really got to show people the singer-songwriter he had under everything.

Granted, ‘All Apologies’ is far from the most tuneful song of the night. It’s clear that the long runtime was getting to Cobain, and you can hear moments where he hits a few bum notes during the course of the tune. But since he was a mountain of depression at this time of his life, hearing him sing that Beatlesque ‘yeah yeah yeah’ during the final chorus was a little bit of light coming back into the equation.

And if this was the final thing that Cobain wanted to give to the world at the time, hearing him and Dave Grohl harmonise on the final mantra is a decent note to go out on. No one could predict the inevitable fallout of everything, but even if Cobain wasn’t sure what fate had in store for him, hearing him break his song down made everyone realise that this wasn’t simply the voice of a generation. This was the answer to The Beatles manifested into one person, and it became too much for him to take.

‘Real Love’ – John Lennon

The entire music world has wanted to milk John Lennon’s material dry for years now. Although he may have been one of the most enigmatic members of The Beatles during the final years of his life, he was more than happy to make music whenever it suited him. Those times may have been few and far between with him having to take care of his son, Sean, but he did have a future Fab classic lying around for a while.

Then again, ‘Real Love’ can’t quite be called a true Beatles tune. The band did dust it off for The Beatles Anthology and turn it into one of their most impressive final bows, but there’s something lost in the Jeff Lynne version. It still sounds great, but the solid wall of production behind everything does rob something from the original version, with Lennon playing it on a slightly out-of-tune guitar and singing some of the lines phonetically like he doesn’t have the words quite yet.

And despite only having a guitar to work with, the chords he’s using also taught everyone that he was far from the amateur that he claimed to be so many times before. He was a musical genius in his own way, but whereas George Harrison and Paul McCartney didn’t have to show off their skills, Lennon’s musical prowess tended to be a bit more tucked away for the true fans to find.

‘American Dream’ – Neil Young

There is no shortage of great pieces of Neil Young lore waiting to be stumbled upon. Everyone had already grown used to him making different versions of the same song if the opportunity presented itself like on ‘Hey Hey My My’, but Eddie Vedder even managed to confirm that there were endless takes of tunes like ‘Powderfinger’ that are enough to overwhelm ol’ Uncle Neil. While Young always releases what he feels is right for the moment, ‘American Dream’ is undoubtedly the one moment he got it wrong on the studio release.

Granted, it’s easy to see American Dream as a bit of a mulligan from Young. It wasn’t clear whether David Crosby would survive the 1980s, but once he got clean, his ability to be good to his word and make a new Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young eviscerated this tune. Because when listening to the final version, Young seems to take a bunch of cheap shots at politicians and televangelists, which should have been low-hanging fruit from the person who had written ‘Ohio’ back in the day.

When listening to the live version that he played on his own, though, a lot of Young’s lyrics are fleshed out more, including some that sound a bit more self-referential than even he was willing to go to. Maybe he changed that to make everyone relive the glory days of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, but since the reunion was about bringing the old values back together, making a song examining their career in American culture would have been far more interesting.

‘Layla’ – Eric Clapton

No bluesman can escape the call of the acoustic guitar. The whole point behind many players these days is about getting down and dirty and cranking the amp as far as it will go, but true artists like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters could have serious mojo without even having to plug in a thing. So for Eric Clapton, his time on Unplugged may as well have been another right of passage for him to become one of the greatest bluesmen of his time.

While a lot of the show centres around him interpreting old standards, the pinnacle is hearing him completely recontextualise ‘Layla’. No one was going to be able to top what Duane Allman did on the original, so hearing him slow it right down and turn it into the heartbroken ballad that it was always meant to be is far more realistic, even if it manages to do away with the epic piano outro.

Because leaving that outro in the mix would have done a disservice to what the tune is really about in this context. Clapton was already screaming out in pain about a lover he lost on the Derek and the Dominos version, but now that time has passed, this is the soundtrack for when that bluesman from way back when grows old and remains as lonely as ever behind the fretboard.

‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ – The Beatles

There are hardly any ways to make a Beatles song sound bad in any context. Although there were a few sessions where the Fab Four weren’t perfect, some of their masterpieces could be played as piano recitals, acoustic ditties, or classical exercises and manage to sound fantastic because the melodies are indeed that great. But, really, where else was ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ going to sound better than on a simple acoustic guitar played by George Harrison?

The song already had a checkered history with The Beatles given the fact that Eric Clapton had to be brought in for everyone to take it seriously, but hearing it with capo on and Harrison singing it one tone down adds to the melancholy of the track. Everything is normally bypassed once Clapton’s solo kicks in, but this is a heavy song about the state of the world, and hearing it with only one guitar and Harrison singing is one of the most spellbinding performances on the Anthology.

It would appear that the band themselves thought more of this version over time, too, since it was the one featured in the Love show with a gorgeous new orchestration added behind everything. The White Album gave us ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ as a fantastic epic, but there was always a frail ballad in the mix waiting to get out all that time.