10 Songs Adele Really Oughta Cover

One of Foo Fighters' best '00s anthems would sound great as a ‘Times Like These (Adele Remix),’ featuring just the root chords played on an upright piano and bowed bass. No drums. You know Adele would just shred the penultimate and final choruses. She’d make it a hit all over again.

Now, we realize that on some level, U2's pint-sized frontman Bono is a major diva himself. But this track, which was probably the best part of an awful Batman movie, is tailor-made to be sung by a female lead. We suggest Adele wearing full Poison Ivy garb while singing it. Take that, Uma Thurman. (We’re fully aware that Poison Ivy wasn’t even in this Batman movie; we’re just here to suggest.)

We admit it: We’re giant Jason Isbell fans, and we think if Adele’s people got their hands on one of his records, she would be too. And ‘Go It Alone’ is the perfect place to start. All she’d need to do is add a little diva juice to the verses and go crazy on the choruses, and this could be Adele’s crossover country moment. We can imagine Adele absolutely slaughtering Nashville audiences with the song's memorable chorus. Hell, she could even perform it on the ‘Nashville’ TV show.

We picture this Wilco tune arranged for a single piano, but with a finely brushed snare. A cover of ‘Heart’ could accomplish two valuable things: It could introduce yet another generation to one of the best albums of the '00s and put a British spin on a great American song. We suggest she change the opening line -- "I am an American aquarium drinker" -- to "I ain’t an American aquarium drinker."

It was a real toss-up between this song and the title track, but in the end, we relented and went with the slower, prettier ‘Hannah.’ Plus, it mentions a bottle of wine, and we all know how much Brits love to imbibe. LaMontagne has diva-esque pipes of his own, so it would not be difficult to transpose it for Adele. And what would be better than having Ray himself guest on the late chorus lines, since, in his original version, a female vocalist joins him.

We can smell U.K. No. 1 single a mile away with Adele’s version of this tune from Nada Surf’s ‘Let Go.’ When the band plays it live, they ask the audience to shift from side to side to the beat -- something we can imagine a sell-out crowd doing at Wembley Stadium, as Adele reimagines the song diva-style.

The last song on Ben Folds Five’s first album, ‘Boxing’ features Ben Folds at his film noir-style songwriting best. The song has a Woody-Allen-movie quality to it, complete with old-timey character names (Howard) and a waltz-like verse. We imagine Folds playing the piano on this while Adele belts. And when the song reaches its climax, that’s when the curtain comes up on the full orchestra and big band, and Adele just brings the house down.

Now, we realize we’re sort of in dream mode at this point, because there’s absolutely no way in hell that the publicity/management machine behind Adele would ever let her sing a song that includes lines like ‘I raped your mother today’ or ‘I killed a baby today.’ But it goes without saying that ‘Last Caress’ is one of the finest examples of the anti-diva diva song ever written. Plus, every kid, at some point, should discover the Misfits. (Forgive us in advance for the video below; it’s the only actual recording on YouTube not played poorly by Metallica.)

This acoustic number from the bestselling 2005 Death Cab for Cutie album ‘Plans’ is a remarkably simple song -- something Adele would have zero problem stretching into the stratosphere or just leaving be (whichever diva showed up that day, we guess). Just imagine how dope her take on that late-verse phrase "blackest of roooommmms" would sound.

Adele, love: Did you notice we picked a bunch of piano songs for you? Well, this one is practically signed, sealed and delivered. If you give Adam Duritz enough money, he’ll sit this one out, and the other guys in the Counting Crows will back you up. The "na-na-NAAAAH-na" part at the end? Hell yeah, the ‘na-na-NAAAAH-na’ part at the end! You'd kill it.