As a spinoff of the “songs that had a male and female version” thread, how about a song you didn’t know was a remake?
The first example that comes to mind for me is “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” which was a big hit in the early 1950s, and a lesser hit with a clever video ca. 1990 by They Might Be Giants.
I didn’t know “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” by Great White was a remake. It was my introduction to Ian Hunter.
I think quite a few folks, myself included, thought “I Will Always Love You” was Whitney Houston’s song for that Bodyguard movie.
I learned in the mid-90’s it was a Dolly Parton song. She wrote it, too, so I assume she was thrilled a song of hers ended up bringing in big-time residuals once Houston covered it.
I was familiar with Manfred Mann’s version of “Blinded by the Light” for probably a couple of decades before finding out it was originally a Springsteen song. Usually I’m on top of this sort of stuff.
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band also covered Spirit in the Night and For You, and released them as singles too. I guess they really liked Springsteen’s first album.
Smoke Two Joints, the Toyes (covered by Sublime).
Good Lovin, the Olympics (covered by the Young Rascals)
“It’s My Party” was originally released in 1963 by Helen Shapiro, but the Lesley Gore cover released weeks later was the big hit.
That’s what I first thought of when I saw the thread. Another is “Why Does the Sun Shine?”, which was originally by Tom Glazer in 1959. I found out the two songs were covers at the same time.
ETA: “Tainted Love” is a big one. A lot of people assume the Soft Cell version is the original, but that honour goes to Gloria Jones’ version from 1965.
For the longest time I thought my buddy & Pittsburgh music icon Norman Nardini wrote it. Here he is circa 1977 singing it.one of his signature works!
That’s Norman Nardini with Whitey Clyde Cooper on drums, and Harry Bottoms on bass. Good times.
Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” was originally recorded by The Arrows, something I didn’t know for years.
“My Girl Sloopy,” by the Vibrations charted in 1964, the year before the McCoys covered it as “Hang on Sloopy.” I didn’t know that until today!
Heat Wave by Linda Ronstadt. It must of been 10 years before I learned it was a remake.
CCR did several that I didn’t know were covers. Midnight Special, Susie Q are two just off the top of my head.
Another CCR cover, I Heard It Through the Grapevine fooled a lot of my friends. I was into Motown and knew it was a Marvin Gaye cover.
We didn’t have the Internet to find out about music. If you didn’t hear the original then you never recognized a cover song.
Which Gaye did a year after Martha and the Vandellas, who did it a year after Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Motown did this all the time.
I never liked Martha and the Vandellas. They were one of Phil Spector’s many cookie cutter girl groups.
Anyway none of that music played on my hometown radio in the 70’s. CCR and Linda Ronstadt had the current hits then. We did hear Ottis Redding, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye in the 70’s radio. Temptations and 5th Dimension too.
I didn’t know David Bowie’s china girl was a cover of Iggy Pop until I was in middle school. I bopped to it incessantly in childhood.
Ellie Goulding’s hanging on is an Active Child original.
What about songs you didn’t know were samples? Sometimes only a riff is looped. I’m slow on picking this up in hip hop.
I had no idea. Apparently they co-wrote it, but Iggy’s version was first.
This is the second time in a week or so where Iggy Pop has been mentioned, and the more I look into him, the more I like him. He’s never been on my playlist before. I need to further investigate. He’s compared with Alice Cooper and Jim Morrison from time to time. That should be enough to spark my interest.
I was unaware that Laura Branigan’s “Self Control” was a cover - the original was by Italian pop star Raf (a man).
Frankie Knuckles’ version of “Your Love” was actually a remix of an original by Jamie Principle. I have to say that for a house classic the drums are rubbish; the snare drum is too big and there’s no variation, it’s just kick-snare-kick-snare for nine minutes.
I had always assumed that “Nothing Compares 2 U” was written for Sinead O’Connor by Prince, but it was actually released five years earlier by The Family:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LBc7-v5exY
Sinead’s version is better. Who would have thought that Charles Manson’s followers would have ended up working with Prince. And yet I can imagine Prince as a cult leader.
Er, Natalie Imbru… Imbro… Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” was actually a cover of an original by a band called Ednaswap, which came out a couple of years earlier and why the hell did they pick the name Ednaswap? According to Wikipedia Imbruglia’s version wasn’t even the first cover of the original, there was an almost identical rendition by Trine Rein in between:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47Z2AiQqsD8
Rein goes for a more Bonnie Tyler-esque big voice-style performance. Trine Rein sounds like it should be Norweigian for “third reich”, but apparently it’s just her name. Does anybody remember Natalie Imbruglia nowadays? She went the way of Louise (Nurding); all over the place in the late 1999s, then nowhere. I assumed that Nelly Furtado would go the same way, but she was obviously made of tougher stuff.
Naked Eyes’ Always Something There to Remind Me was originally recorded by Dionne Warwick as a demo, charted in a version by Lou Johnson, and then again in another version by Warwick.
I only recently learned that the intro to House of Pain’s Jump Around comes from Bob & Earl’s Harlem Shuffle, and the sax sting comes from Junior Walker & the All Stars’ Shoot Your Shot.
As a child of the 80’s, I wasn’t aware for a LONG time that “Cum On Feel the Noize” wasn’t originally by Quiet Riot. Ditto “Smokin’ In the Boys Room” and Motley Crue.
It crushed me when I found out Kermit didn’t write Rainbow Connection (Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher did). :eek:
While looking it up, I was astonished to find this cover of Kermit’s signature song: