Gary Jules

Gary Jules (b. 1969) is an American singer-songwriter who sang the stripped-down ‘Mad World’ that his friend Michael Andrews arranged for Donnie Darko. Their voice-and-piano version is so different in mood from the 1982 record — and so tied to a film a younger audience grew up with — that many listeners never realise it is a cover at all. The version is genuinely theirs; the only error is thinking it came first.