These 5 Classic Rock Songs Are Even Better A Cappella

It seems obvious that rock music as a genre couldn't exist without guitars. Yet the songs in this list suggest otherwise. A cappella renditions of famous songs are a tradition in themselves. Usually taking place in genres such as folk, country, and soul, they offer the chance for skilled vocalists to take on a song's rich melodies and render them with the use of the human voice alone. The best results typically come from groups, with smaller groups like trios and quartets enough to offer dynamism and cover most of the song's instrumental parts, while full choirs can offer an incredible amount of richness that elevates a song into something transcendent.

But can a cappella work as well for rock classics? It's not an easy task to replicate the stadium-filling sound of many of the genre's biggest tracks — but nevertheless, countless vocalists have attempted to offer their own unique spin on such songs either entirely without the use of traditional instruments, or by offering minimal instrumentation — say, a drum kit and nothing else — with the guitar, bass, and so on of the original recording replaced entirely by vocal parts.. Here are five a cappella versions of famous rock songs which have found an audience in recent years, which some might argue are even better than the originals.

There are few rock classics that automatically get people singing along quite like Queen's 1975 smash hit "Bohemian Rhapsody." An unlikely fusion of opera and hard rock, the single has proven to have an incredible afterlife in the 50 years since its release, with a certain ironic twist being added to fans' enjoyment of the song thanks to its inclusion in the Mike Myers rock comedy "Wayne's World."

The number of times "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been covered by other artists is likely impossible to verify, but it goes without saying that its famous a cappella intro and overblown multi-voice opera passages have long drawn vocal groups to the song. One of the most notable from an a cappella group is the version by the multi-Grammy-Award-winning Texan quintet Pentatonix.

Though arguably more famous for their popular Christmas albums, Pentatonix, who won the third season of NBC's "The Sing-Off" in 2011, has shown itself to be a group capable of reimagining classics from a wide array of genres, including rock. The Pentatonix "Bohemian Rhapsody" arrived in 2017 as the opening track of the group's "PTX, Vol. 4 – Classics" EP, showcasing the incredible range of the group, whose skills include perfect harmonies, uncanny beatboxing, and the use of a megaphone to replicate Queen guitarist Brian May's epic guitar tone. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is considered one of the greatest vocal performances in the whole of rock music, so it is no surprise that it remains a regular fixture of Pentatonix's popular live shows.

The British-Australian soft rock and disco icons The Bee Gees — a trio made up of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, who had an incredible ability when it came to harmonizing — had an astonishing career. The three began performing together as children in the 1950s, and realized pretty soon that they had a gift, especially when singing together. By the 1970s, they had released some of the most era-defining songs of the decade, most notably their string of late-'70s disco hits, including "Stayin' Alive," "You Should Be Dancing," "Tragedy," and "Night Fever."

But at the same time, the Gibb brothers were also melting hearts with some beautiful ballads, such as the 1977 hit "How Deep Is Your Love," a No. 1 hit that was included on the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" but which differs from The Bee Gees' other hits of the time thanks to its fragile melody and ruminative atmosphere. It has become a standard cover song, but perhaps the most revealing version of the song came in the form of an a cappella from the Gibbs brothers themselves, who performed it without accompaniment on "The Des O'Connor Show" on British television in 1998.

Following versions of "Islands in the Stream" and "Guilty," "How Deep Is Your Love" is a showstopper, with the brothers' voices melding together to create a moment that eclipses the daytime television setting it appeared in. Though Robin and Maurice Gibb have died, such a performance serves as a reminder of the trio's raw talent.

Okay, so we know that Metallica is metal and many would balk at the idea of it being lumped in with the classic rock genre, but this a capella version of Metallica's "Battery" is too impressive not to include. The blistering opening track the band's classic 1986 album "Master of Puppets," is often described as one of the best songs of Metallica's long career. It is a regular fixture of Metallica's live shows — that it was one of the tracks chosen for the band's appearance at Black Sabbath's farewell show in July 2025 shows how central it is to Metallica's discography — and is one of the tracks that metalheads gravitate toward when they first pick up the guitar as novices, hoping to replicate the dynamic changes in intensity brought to the performance by James Hetfield, Lars Ullrich, et al.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that a song known for its heaviness has proven to be suitable source material for an a cappella version. The German band Van Canto is a unique heavy metal group made up of just their drummer and five vocalists, who together are able to recreate some of the most iconic songs in the genre using just their mouths. The result is great fun, with the song's title being used as a refrain to mimic the song's pummeling riffs, while the lead vocalist does a great job of replicating Hetfield's iconic roar.

Nothing can prepare you for the opening of this total showstopper: a live version of Toto's "Africa" performed by the vocal group Perpetuum Jazzile from Slovenia. A performance of their song from 2008, which was arranged by Tomaž Kozlevčar and performed at the Vokal Xtravaganzza festival that year, went viral on YouTube and has since attracted nearly 25 million views.

There are a few elements to Perpetuum Jazzile's performance that make it especially entertaining. For a start, Perpetuum Jazzile is an "XXL vocal group," containing around 50 performers who together are able to create some astonishing sounds. Take, for example, the first minute and a half of the performance, which sees the group simply use finger-clicks, leg-pats, and hops on the raised stage to effectively recreate the sound of a thunderstorm that adds a great deal of drama to their pristine version of the Toto classic. Featuring excellent beatboxing, perfect replication of synth lines, and much more, it's one you can't afford to miss, whether you're a fan of the original song or not.

Few musicians would attempt to scale the heights of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," arguably the ultimate stadium rock song and a singalong classic notable for its earworm keyboard riffs and soaring vocals courtesy of singer Steve Perry. But multi-instrumentalist Petra Haden has offered listeners an a cappella version of the song that may just win over even the biggest fans of the original.

The daughter of jazz bassist Charlie Haden, Haden is a singer, instrumentalist, and composer who has worked with various groups down the years, including The Haden Triplets — alongside her real-life triplet sisters — Foo Fighters, and The Decemberists. In 2005, Haden was forced to take a break from touring to recover from a serious automobile accident, during which at the suggestion of a friend, she began recording an a cappella version of The Who's "The Who Sell Out" album on an 8-track recorder. The project was a success, and she has since turned her attention to covering a wide array of rock classics using her voice only — including "Don't Stop Believin'."

Just listen to how Haden recreates those keyboard and guitar parts! It's a thrilling performance by a musician who obviously adores the song and knows it inside and out, and it's so on-point that you could be forgiven for forgetting it's an a cappella now and then.