Oh, another one that really shocked me: finding out that “You & Your Sister” wasn’t written by This Mortal Coil. This surprise was followed by discovering that This Mortal Coil wasn’t really a band, the song was sung by the vocalists of The Breeders, and the woman on the album cover is just a model.
I remember the first time I heard Big Star play the theme song for That 70s Show.
“I think we’re alone now”
Also UB40 song: “Here I am”
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but for years I thought Quiet Riot was the first with Cum On Feel the Noize. The Original
Time After Time was written in 1947, but I like Lauper’s version a lot. A lot of the 50s/60s songs that I liked were covers of much older songs, much to my later surprise. The Beatles did several, as I recall. Spanky and Our Gang did a nice cover of Stardust, which was written by Hoagy Carmichael in 1927. The Righteous Brothers covered Summertime, a 1934 Gershwin song, and had a hit with Unchained Melody, written in 1955.
When Whitney Houston sang I Will Always Love You, I thought it was written for her. I didn’t realize Dolly Parton was the one responsible and that it had already been well known by some. I was pretty surprised.
Add me to any number that did not know that Nothing Compares 2 U was not originally a Sinead O’Connor song.
Wait. What? Am I being whooshed?
But here’s the thing- if a artist puts their own original stamp on it, *who cares *if it’s a 'cover"?
Different time. Different place. Different writers. The 1947 version was by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne.
The Marcels’ doo-wop “Blue Moon” really was written by Richard Rogers in 1934, though.
Zillions of reasons to care. Wanting to know musical history. Wanting to find out whether the stamp is original or not. Wanting to hear different versions for the pleasure of them. Wanting to learn more about the songwriter. Wanting to know about different genres of music.
None of them are mandatory. You don’t have to care. But you can’t dismiss those who do, for any reason at all.
None of those matter if a song is a cover or not. You can learn how many people have recorded a song without thinking the the first was somehow special.
And unless you write all your own stuff, everything you do is a cover.
I came here to say this too. But, BUT, the weirdest part of the story is how I found out…the original version is played on the oldies channel in grand theft auto:vice city. So embarrassing:smack:
When Them (featuring Van Morrison) recorded Gloria in 1964, it didn’t get U.S. airplay. Allegedly, it was because the song had a line about a girl coming into the singer’s room “just about midnight.” A garage band from Chicago, the Shadows of Knight, re-recorded (you could barely call it a cover) the song, changed the line so the girl stayed outside, and hit the top 10 with it.
Amen. If you don’t mind a time-consuming addiction, MusicProf78’s YouTube collection of “First Recording of the Song” is here. My confession (are you listening?)…
[ul]
[li]I thought for years that The Yardbirds were the first to do “Train Kept a Rollin’” (here), or “Let’s call it ‘Stroll On’!” (here).[/li][li]Then one day a colleague mentioned Aerosmith (here).[/li][li]I was in my early 30s and realized, shockingly, that my time had already passed.[/li][li]I was rejuvenated when I heard Imelda May perform it (here).[/li][li]She credits Johnny Burnette (here, hi Bettie!).[/li][li]Then I discovered Tiny Bradshaw (here).[/li][/ul]
A moral, perhaps?: If it’s good, then it’s good enough. (Or, read the label for the credits.)
Somewhat surprisingly, Matchstick Men is not the only hit song that directly references the painter L.S. Lowry. There is also Matchstalk Men & Matchstalk Cats and Dogs, which went to number 1 in the UK in 1978.
Madonna’s Ray of Light is a reworking of Sepheryn by the obscure British group Curtiss Maldoon. (I learned this in the book Rough Notes by Bruce Thomas.)
Led Zeppelin’s Dazed And Confused is likewise a reworking, if not a straight-up “cover”, of the original song of the same name by Jake Holmes. Not an American bluesman but another obscure Brit who opened for the Yardbirds in 1967, when Jimmy Page heard the song that he would “borrow.”
Once upon a time, while playing around on YouTube, I learned that in 1957, Robert Mitchum (yes, the actor) recorded an album of calypso songs called Calypso — Is Like So . . .!
One of the songs was titled “From a Logical Point of View”. Listening to it, I thought, “Wait a minute. That is Jimmy Soul’s ‘If You Wanna Be Happy’.” :eek:
On further research, it turned out that both were covers of “Ugly Woman” first recorded in 1934 by a Trinidadian singer named Roaring Lion. :eek:
This is a slightly different take; more of a case of not recognizing a reworking of a song that I actually knew.
When Alien Ant Farm came out with their version of Smooth Criminal, I didn’t realize it was a cover of the Michael Jackson song. How I completely forgot about the MJ version, I don’t know. Hell, we used to sing it as “Annie is you walkin’ ?” so I definitely had a conscious knowledge of it.
Anyway, I really dug AA’s recording and never put the two together until I heard the original again for the first time in about 20 years. A real :smack: moment, that.
Slight hijack: I once read a book on Babra Streisand that said while her version of Memory from CATS wasn’t a hit, Elaine Paige’s cover of it hit the British charts.
How did such a mistake get into print? Methinks the author should have checked who covered whom?
I once had a boss ask me to get the lyrics for Whitney Houston’s “I Will always Love You.” She objected when I got her the Dolly Parton version. “I asked for Whitney, not Dolly.” Uh, she recorded it first. And she wrote the song."
The look on the woman’s face was priceless.
When Marilyn Manson first became famous, I would usually change channels whenever one of their songs came on. One day, I was away from the remote, and I let the song play out. I suddenly realized "Wow! That is “Sweet Dreams!” Their version is not bad. (Although Annie Lennox looked much better in a suit than Manson does in a dress.)