I don’t know how many examples are out there, but I can’t stop listening to this version of Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen.
Thanks to **Freejooky **who posted it in this thread.
You can mention live performances that are a lot better than the recording.
Wilco does** Outta Mind (Outta Sight)** and Outtasight (Outta Mind) on their cd Being There, which are versions of each other, one more rocky, the other more (forgive me) acousticy.
Yeah, I could tell you which is which, but what’s the fun in that?
Todd Rundgren had three very different versions of his hit song Hello It’s Me.
The first was with the group The Nazz, and was a hit on Philadelphia radio, but never charted nationally.
The second was on his solo album Something/Anything, and is the version that is played on the radio.
The third, is a twisted bossa-nova version from his album With A Twist.
Phil Collins did Behind the Lines with Genesis and then recorded a completely different version of the song on his *Face Value *solo album.
When I was doing my radio show (Esoteric Adventures on KPFT in Houston, Texas) I once played every version I could find of Frank Zappa’s “The Torture Never Stops” back to back, it took well over an hour and a half!
Unclviny (FZ fan)
There are two versions of You Can Crawl Out Your Window by Dylan. There is one with the Band that is on Biograph, but there is a much better one with the Highway 61 band which I have on an old bootleg, and which never appears to have been officially released.
On Matthew Sweet’s Altered Beast album, he recorded both “The Ugly Truth” and “Ugly Truth Rock.” The former, which features a bluegrass fiddler, is fun enough, but I like the latter version more.
The most famous one probably is “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” by Neil Sedaka. The upbeat pop version hit #1 in August, 1962. Sedaka rerecorded it as a ballad in 1975 and it reached #8 in February, 1976. It was only the second time an artist had two versions of the same song reach the top 10.
Bruce Springsteen originally recorded “Born In the U.S.A.” as an acoustic ballad in Springsteen’s home in 1982 as part of the session for the Nebraska album. However, Jon Landau felt it did not fit in with the other songs, so it was reworked as the title track for the self-titled album in 1984. The original recording was later released on the album “Tracks” in 1998.
“Layla” by Eric Clapton’s group, Derek and the Dominoes, reached #10 in the U.S. and #7 in Great Britain in 1972. In 1992, he performed an acoustic version for his 1992 MTV Unplugged album. It reached #12 in the U.S. and won a Grammy for Best Rock Song.
Of course, there’s the Beatles’ Revolution and Revolution 1.
Manu Chao recorded Bongo Bong which is essentially a laid back version of Mano Negra’s King of Bongo, on which he sang. Manu Chao then used Bongo Bong’s music on two other songs: Mr. Bobby and Homens.
Nightmares on Wax’ Smoker’s Delight album opened with a track title Nights Introlude. The following album, Carboot soul, started with Les Nuits. They’re the same piece, note-for-note.
Tricky’s Overcome is more or less the same song as Massive Attack’s Karmacomma, on which he rapped.
Neil Young has done this a couple of times. On Rust Never Sleeps he recorded “My My Hey Hey” both in acoustic and electric versions. He repeated this with “Rockin’ in the Free World” off Freedom.
On George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass he released two modestly different versions of “Isn’t It A Pity”.
The Allman Brothers cut “Midnight Rider” on one of their early albums. On his first solo album, Greg Allman cut a new version that differed mainly by the adding of orchestration.
John Coltrane is probably the champ in this department. He recorded “My Favorite Things” as a 14-minute studio recording in 1960 from the album of the same name. I remember reading there have been 44(!) different live versions of the song released over the year, running from seven minutes to an hour. And the scary thing is they’re usually highly different.
Of course there’s the two versions of “Lost” from the new Coldplay album.
My favorite example though is the Indigo Girls “Touch Me Fall” which later morphed into “Problem Child” which later morphed into “Go”.
The “B” side of Don McLean’s 1972 hit “Vincent” was an upbeat version of “Castles in the Air” that received enough airplay to be listed for seven weeks in the record’s entry on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. In 1981 McLean released a slower version of “Castles in the Air” that reached #36 on the Hot 100 chart.
Cheap Trick recorded a whole new version of the In Color album in 2002 or so, although I don’t think it’s been released. You can find bootleg copies floating around, and it blows away the original.
I once – once! – heard Elvis Costello do a slower, more meditative version of “(What’s So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” as part of the soundtrack to TV drama. I have never been able to find a source for this – if anyone knows where it came from, let me know!
One of my favorite examples of this is Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” Of course, there’s the monster hit from 1961 everyone knows. But in 1986, he reworked the song to make it the theme for the underappreciated Michael Mann series “Crime Story.” By changing just a few key words, the song was transformed from a story of teen-age heartbreak, to the perfect backdrop for a police drama set in early 60’s Chicago. For instance, changing “wishing you were here by me/to share this misery” to “watching all the trains go by/ some live and others die.” It kicks major-league ass!
Check it out. 1961 original here.
1986 remake here.
Wow. Thanks for linking to that. It’s gonna be a good day.
Bruce also does a downbeat version of Born in the USA which is completely different from the original. (ETA: found here.)
Spencer Krug of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade does this quite a bit.
I believe there are at least three different versions of his songs “Snakes Got A Leg”, “Three Colours”, and “The Mending Of The Gown”.
All version of all songs are wonderful.
Do foreign languages count? The Beatles recorded German versions of She Loves and I Want to Hold Your Hand.
ABBA recorded Waterloo in English, Swedish, German & French, and Swedish versions of Ring, Ring and Honey, Honey. Fernando was originally done by Frida in Swedish, and later by the group in English. Agnetha did a Swedish version of SOS. They also did two albums with Spanish versions of their songs.