Update: As people probably know,Madonna’s new single “Hung Up”, is her singing new lyrics over the instrimentals from Abba’s Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).
How to have a hit song with as little effort as possible: “Come and Get It” by Badfinger, which is a note-for-note remake of Paul McCartney’s demo of the song (which is available on one of those Beatley anthology thingies, I think).
Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” which is Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” with different lyrics. I prefer Stevie’s version from the epic album “Songs in the Key of Life.” It’s a great album.
And The Sex Pistols’ “Sub-Mission.”
That ridiculous hip-hop rappy song with “Caribbean Queen” in the background. Thanks a lot for reminding me. 
Quite possibly the worst song I’ve ever heard.
For those of you who don’t get this, this is Vanilla Ice said how the beat for Ice, Ice Baby was not the same as the one for Under Pressure.
Take the original Tom Tom Club song “Genius of Love”,
eliminate Tina Weymouth’s genuinely cool, funky, witty lyrics,
substitute Mariah Carey’s squeaky, Lo-Cal, diet R&B-lite warblings
and wotta ya got? A much less interesting ditty called “Fantasy.”
Bolding mine. Oh dear. Hope you brought your KY and abestos. Rap isn’t my cup of tea either, but “ignorant thug lyrics?” Limber up and bend over. Its’ gonna be a looong night.
Marley23, I want to say that that is one of Tupac’s last songs. Well, last not including all the “new” stuff they keep digging up. I swear, that is one hard working dead man…
Well, “Roses,” off Kanye West’s recent album, borrows heavily from Bill Withers’ “Rosie,” at least the instrumentals from same…
And then, Heart’s “Barracuda” is really a much tighter version of Led Zeppelin’s “Achilles’ Last Stand,” with reworked vocal melodies and no solos. Enough that I can still confuse the two if I’m not listening closely.
In 1965, the song “Gumnaam” from the movie Gumnaam lifted its melody note for note exactly from Henry Mancini’s hit 1963 song “Charade.” The only difference is, “Charade” is in 3/4 time and Naushad, the “composer” of Gumnaam, switched it to 4/4 time.
The melody of Yoko Ono’s song “I’m Your Angel” matched the melody of “Makin’ Whoopee” rather closely. Especially when she changed her mind about playing it in 3/4 time and switched it to 4/4, matching the original. She settled with the copyright holder out of court. But “Gumnaam” was a much more blatant ripoff and Henry Mancini just let Bollywood get away with it.
The instrumental “Soulful Strut” by Young-Holt Unlimited (#3 in 1969) apparently uses the same backing track as Barbara Acklin’s “Am I the Same Girl” (#79, 1968), with the vocal replaced by piano. (Which would mean that Young and Holt themselves, who were a rhythm section, didn’t actually play on their biggest hit).
The B-side of the Who’s “Substitute” was “Waltz for a Pig,” credited to The Who Orchestra. No members of the Who played on the track, which was actually recorded by the Graham Bond Organisation.
Pearl Jam’s Given to Fly has been identified as "highly similar to Led Zeppelin’s Going to California. At a benfit at the House of Blues this year they shared the stage with Robert Plant and played both songs back-to-back to open an encore set (scroll to bottom of linked page).
After the Fire took Falco’s song “Der Kommissar”, translated it to English, and hit it big as their only hit.
There’s also a more modern example of thievery regarding this song: a gentleman who calls himself Akon sings a practically unlistenable (imho!) version of this song, retitled “Lonely”, which basically consists of the following:
- Take Bobby Vinton’s vocals and tinkly piano and speed it up, Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks style.
- Add drumbeat.
- Add Akon talk-singing somewhat inane lyrics.
It really has to be heard to be believed, and was actually quite popular this past summer.
The example I came in here to post is Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West”, which is a rather pointless song done with the beat from Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish”. Oh, Will Smith, how could you have the hubris to imagine you could surpass such immortal lyrics as, “Looking back on when I was a little nappy-headed boy”? For shame, Will! For shame.
“Wooden Ships” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash was originally credited to Crosby and Stills, even though Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane also wrote parts of it. The Airplane did their own version on their “Volunteers” album with Kantner properly credited.
I read once that Tracey Ullman’s version of “They Don’t Know” uses the exact same backing track as the original version by Kirsty MacColl. (Listening to it, it sounds as though the Ullman version is slightly sped up with a few extra elements added, like bells.) In addition, the high-pitched “Baby!” after the bridge in Ullman’s version is actually Kirsty MacColl singing.