Don't know if anyone has heard Paul Anka's (yes, Paul Anka, I'm so young and you're so old, etc) latest album but I've heard a few tracks from it and I have to say I'm quite taken with it. The concept behind it is that he takes famous songs from the past twenty or so years, gives them a jazz arrangement, and sings them with a complete big band. Some of the songs included are True (Spandau Ballet), Hello (Lionel Richie), Everybody Hurts (REM), Jump (Van Halen) and, perhaps most interstingly of all, Smells Like Teen Spirit. While this sounds like a complete recipe for disaster, I feel it works really well. I think that if you are going to cover somone else's song then you should come up with your own arrangement as there's little point in just copying something, especially with such an iconic song as this. Now I'm not going to say that Anka's version is better that Nirvana's (as that would probably produce a thread that would flame until Kingdom Come) but I do think it's very good indeed and a brave move and he deserves a lot of credit for it.
Listen to samples here :-
http://www.paulanka.com/html/music_videos/index.php#
(The browser doesn't play automatically, you need to click on the play button)