I didn’t know until recently that Guns ‘N Roses’ “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was a remake of a Bob Dylan song.
GNR did it better.
“I Think We’re Alone Now”: Tommy James and the Shondells recorded it in the 60s. Remade by Tiffany in the 80s. I grew up with the Tiffany version and only heard the Tommy James version a couple of months ago. I think the original is much better.
Maybe I missed it, but I’m surprised nobody mentioned that “Unchained Melody” has apparently been covered and re-covered more often than my bed. I suppose the version by The Righteous Brothers is so well-known that all of the previous ones are completely forgotten.
One more from They Might Be Giants, New York City was originally done by a Vancouver trio called Cub. I saw them live (opening for TMBG, in fact) a few months before they broke up, and they rocked. Kinda like Sleater-Kinney, but cuddlier.
New York City, by Cub.
A young Portugese/Hawaiian fella named Glenn Madeiros won a radio-sponsored talent show for high schoolers called “Brown Bags to Stardom” back in the mid-80s. It was kind of a proto American Idol show. I didn’t follow the competition, but his winning performance of Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You instantly became inescapable to anyone in Hawaii who listened to the radio. The record soon went to nationwide airplay, and his career got enough early buzz that Aretha Franklin recorded I Knew You Were Waitin’ with him a few months later.
I was always a little annoyed that NO ONE ever pointed out that his winning performance and its subsequent hit single was merely a karaoke rendering of the same track from the still-reasonably-current George Benson album 20/20.
And that he sang the words “how much I love you” as “wow much I love you.”
Rage Against the Machine covered Renegades of Funk, which was originally done by Afrika Bambaataa. I thought the song was typical RATM pedagoguery without the “rage” element, then found out later about its origin.
In probably the weirdest coincidence in rock history, the very next week after Tiffany took a Tommy James cover to #1, Billy Idol’s cover of “Mony, Mony” went to #1.
“Love Hurts”. Big hit for Nazareth. Done by…the Everly Brothers?
That’s news to George Michael.
Redone by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris as well:
And Roy Orbison.
Another somewhat odd one: “Me and Bobby McGee”, as made famous by Janis Joplin, was written by Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster and was originally performed by Roger Miller.
When I first heard Led Zeppelin I, I thought Pagey had written the entire album…boy was I wrong.
The Jacksons’ 1978 hit “Blame It On The Boogie” is amazingly a cover… performed by Michael (Mick) Jackson. He was a relatively unknown British musician but his version did chart in the UK. Of course, the album had M. Jackson listed as the writer so I grew up thinking MJ penned it until a few years ago. The Mick Jackson version is very different, much quainter. It’s also pronounced the English way “Boo-gie.”
Also Spoon covered “Don’t You Evah.” I don’t recall the name of the original performers but the remake is a vast improvement…
I didn’t even recognize the Bambaataa version as the same song until the last two minutes. Then I watch the RATMvideo and they have a clip of the original starting at 1:03.
I can think of several songs I orignally heard performed by Santana that I didn’t find out were covers until years later.
“Oye Como Va” was actually a cover of an old tune by Puerto Rican bandleader Tito Puente.
“Black Magic Woman” was a cover of an old song by the bluesy, Sixties edition of Fleetwood Mac.
Cass Elliot’s biggest hit Dream A Little Dream of Me was written in 1931, with music by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt and lyrics by Gus Kahn, and was first recorded in February 1931 by Ozzie Nelson.
Yikes! How did I misidentify THAT? :eek:
No doubt at all about that in my mind. There must be a hundred - possibly even a thousand - really good singers for every really good songwriter.
Passed out? Why?
Connie Francis’s “Who’s Sorry Now” was an old standard from 1923 when she sang it.
“Beyond the Sea,” popularized by Bobby Darin was originally an older French song. (Musically, at least - I believe the lyrics are very different.)
The George Harrison hit “I’ve Got My Mind Set On You” was originally recorded in 1963 by James Ray.
The Blondie and Atomic Kitten song “The Tide is High” was originally by the Paragons in the '60s.