I’ve been wanting to post a question in one of the “scientific” forums on SD but don’t know the exact terminology, so maybe someone here can help. I’m trying to get statistics on the one song that has been recorded by the greatest number of different artists or groups - excluding Silent Night and Amazing Grace etc. (IOW, non-religious). I think the term for this is “covered”, but I may be wrong.
BTW, if anyone here can make the play, I’m all ears.
Example of “covered”: Chuck Berry originally released the song “Memphis, Tennessee” about 1960. A few years later, Johnny Rivers released his version of “Memphis, Tennessee”. The J. Rivers song was the “cover”.
As for your question about the most covered song, someone else will have to answer that one! 
I think that the answer is “The girl from Ipanema”
Go check out:
And do a song search. I typed in “Yesterday” and got 508 hits. When you click on the song title, it’ll list the albums that song has appeared on. Note that it hasn’t necessarily been covere 508 times: some of he albums are Beatles compilations, and some may be other songs also called “Yesterday” (although I’d expect that the number of those may be neglibile compared to the actual covers).
Results for “The Girl from Ipanema”: 346.
The top two are reportedly Yesterday and Louie, Louie but the BBC has other ideas.
It’s probably “Louie, Louie”. I read that a radio station once played an entire week of cover versions of this song without repeating.
I think the difference between what the OP is after and what has been discussed is that “covering” a song normally means “remaking” (to use a movie term) a song which has an “original artist” version already recorded. “Silent Night” and “Amazing Grace” do not have this quality, as they were never recorded by an “original artist.” Yes, you could probably track down the first person ever to record those songs, but they would have been recording songs which were already well-known and which had been circulated for years as sheet music.
This is why one does not say that the latest recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is a “cover.”
Actually, I think it’s “Happy Birthday;” most people just don’t bother to record their covers.
Beg pardon. I managed to read right over the word “excluding.”
:o
That’s okay–I skimmed right over the “recorded” part. My bad.
According to the Guinness Book site www.guinnessworldrecords.com/:
One of my all time favorite songs, too.
Dangit, you just beat me to it, photopat.
Since the stats there are almost 17 years old, I wonder what the number is now?
I always thought a really great collection (and really obsessive) would be to own a copy of every cover version of Yesterday.
Yeah, but that site is user driven liken the IMDb. They’re missing several hundered covers of Yesterday and they only have three for Louie, Louie. And what’s with all the different original artists listed for The Girl From Ipanema?
I kinda doubt that. If we say it’s 3 minutes to the song, that would make it 3360 recorded versions.