#TunesTuesday: The Best YouTube Covers Of Your Favorite Songs

This song stays with everyone for a reason. Sam Smith—with his sensitive once-in-a-blue-moon voice—killed it in his original solo cut. That lone voice did it all—no collabos. All him singing his blue song as the piano man shadows. "Guess it's true, I'm no good at a one-night stand. But I still need love 'cause I'm just a man..." A soft confessional—tender as intimate skin—with no strings attached; no hard sell of his soul or music for our applause or money. A spokesman, in funeral-black clothes and cross earrings, with a widow's peak, for every lonely soul in a hook-up culture longing for more. He recorded multiple versions of his own voice for the chorus that sounds like four rows of faithful gospel singers, in a low-attendance church, still singin' their hearts out unto the Lord. Mary J. Blige, queen of emotional hip-hop soul, covers this Sam Smith keeper like she's lived the loneliest hour and used those muscular arms to dig herself up out of darkness when her higher calling (to elevate pain to art) called for her to rise from the dead. And LeAnn Rimes—the Grammy-winning singer still shamed in the tabloids for her affair in the past—beautifully conveys desperation. Both of her hands cling to the mic like it's her man, and not someone else's man bound to leave. Womanly country blues. A country full of blues. No wonder this song rose up the charts.