Yes, you can strip a song right back, add breathy vocals and put it to a John Lewis Christmas advert. You can even wear a band t-shirt for your appearance on Jools Holland. But what about those artists who go a step further to honour their idols, the ones who name-check their favourite musicians in one of their tracks or name the band after a pet song?
We thought they deserved recognition of their own, so we picked some of our favourite artist references and put them together in this rather dashing infographic.
