# Songs you've misattributed. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 23, 2014, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381 "2014-09-23T22:42:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/41 "2014-09-24T05:07:13Z")
The first few times I heard [“Saving Grace”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGFTBNy3Hdk) I mistakingly thought it was by Traffic rather than the Steve Miller Band. Even though I know better, I still think it sounds like a Traffic song. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/42 "2014-09-24T05:25:23Z")
I thought “Modern Love” was Billy Joel instead of David Bowie. And for gender, for a while I thought that “Kiss Me Deadly” was sung by a guy who sounded like a woman. I think someone told me it was a guy, and in the 80’s a feminine sounding male hair metal singer wasn’t that uncommon. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/43 "2014-09-24T05:56:23Z")
When KT Tunstall’s song “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” was first getting airplay, I thought it was a new song by Joan Osborne. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/44 "2014-09-24T06:00:17Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I somehow knew “Horse With No Name” was going to be one of the first listed. That one comes up a lot in these sorts of discussions. Of course, I hope to God Neil Young would never write a lyrics as bad as “cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain” (or whatever it is exactly.) On the other hand, “Horse With No Name” came out around the same time as “Heart of Gold”, which wasn’t exactly a lyrical peak for Neil Young. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/45 "2014-09-24T06:57:54Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Sorry to put the winner so soon in the thread, but I thought “Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number” was by Paper (“The Night Chicago Died”) Lace, instead of Steely Dan. Because of some odd personal connection you made between them? I don’t hear any musical similarity at all… were they on the radio at the same time? ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/46 "2014-09-24T08:23:37Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Interesting bit of trivia, there: _World Without Love_ was the first Lennon-McCartney composition that was originally released by someone other than the Beatles. Not true at all. There were several Lennon-McCartney compositions given to other artists in the UK and released prior to “World Without Love.” In particular, those given to Billy J. Kramer (“From a Window,” “Bad to Me,” “I’ll Keep You Satisfied,” “Do You Want to Know a Secret”) were quite successful. There were others that also made the Top 20, including The Rolling Stones’ version of “I Wanna Be Your Man.” I was going to say your statement is true for the U.S., but that’s not true either, as Del Shannon’s version of “From Me to You” was released here in 1963. It failed to crack the Top 40, but did make it to #77 on the _Billboard_ Hot 100. “World Without Love” was the first recording of a Lennon-McCartney song by someone other than The Beatles to be _successful_ on the U.S. charts…but not the first to be released. ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/47 "2014-09-24T08:33:34Z")
> [@Gray\_Ghost](#): > > I thought “House of the Rising Sun,” was performed by The Doors for the longest time. > [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > That song is by one of the most prolific artists of all time, “Traditional.” Actually, it’s not quite as simple as that. “House of the Rising Sun” is one of two songs I know of that has had an entire book written about it (the other is “Louie Louie”!). Check out [_Chasing the Rising Sun_ by Ted Anthony](http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Rising-Sun-Journey-American/dp/B0046LUM4S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411547511&sr=1-1&keywords=chasing+the+rising+sun) for a fascinating look at the song’s convoluted history. ---
**Author:** ![Art\_Rock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/art_rock/32/525_2.png) [@Art\_Rock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Art_Rock)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/48 "2014-09-24T09:30:24Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > “Long Cool Woman” is so atypical of the Hollies that one would almost have to figure _someone_ else recorded the song. If one remembers the Hollies, most of what one remembers is from when Graham Nash was the guiding spirit of the group, before he left for CS&N. “Long Cool Woman” came a few years later, when the Hollies were only kinda sorta the same group anymore. In the same mood, their 1974 hit [The day that Curly Billy shot down crazy Sam McGee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3LRM9E5ItM). ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/49 "2014-09-24T10:15:26Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > Race and country misattribution: I thought Leo Sayer was a tall, skinny, American Black guy. Yep. ---
**Author:** ![alted315](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/cc9497/32.png) [@alted315](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alted315)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/50 "2014-09-24T10:58:20Z")
For years I thought Dirty work by steely dan was by Neil Young ---
**Author:** ![TheChileanBlob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thechileanblob/32/435_2.png) [@TheChileanBlob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheChileanBlob)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/51 "2014-09-24T11:09:23Z")
Andy Kim has a song “Rock Me Gently” which I thought was by Neil Diamond until I bought a compilation tape featuring it. “Vehicle” by Ides of March sounds just like Blood, Sweat and Tears. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/52 "2014-09-24T12:10:29Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > And here I always thought that song was by Bananarama. > > 😛 [They covered it in the 80s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkcU2_Vs7Xw), which may have led to your confusion. Mine will be a little more obscure than most here, but for the longest time I thought [Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuz94ZIPfJk) was a Yaz song. All those years I was picturing a big-boned, full-throated woman, and it was a tiny little Scottish gay man singing in falsetto. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/53 "2014-09-24T12:41:22Z")
My experience with the Hollies is pretty much the opposite of the OP. I think “Long Cool Woman” was the first song I associated with the Hollies, so when I later started hearing songs like “Bus Stop” I had a hard time believing it was the same band that did the rockin’ “LCW”. Back in college I worked in a pizza place where we would crank the radio up while cleaning up after closing. I was back in the kitchen with the store manager cleaning up one night when Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” came on. MGR: Hey, turn it up! I love this song. Is this Mick Jagger? Me: No, it’s David Bowie. MGR: Oh man, I hate that #$%&@! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/54 "2014-09-24T12:50:45Z")
> [@DChord568](#): > > Except for replacing Graham Nash’s guitar and high harmonies with Terry Sylvester’s, The Hollies were the almost exactly the same group in 1972 as they were in 1964. (Well, we could talk about them changing non-singing bass players in 1966, but let’s not get too esoteric.) > > What threads like this bring home to me is the considerable difference between the casual music fan and the music freak. I was the latter, so I wasn’t subject to any of these misperceptions. Well, thank you for bestowing the benefit of your music-freak expertise on us casual music fans. But really, you shouldn’t have bothered. Your expertise has only enabled you to fail to see the forest for the trees. While Graham Nash was with the Hollies, they had a pretty homogeneous cluster of pop hits: “Bus Stop,” “Look Through Any Window,” “I Can’t Let Go”, “Stop Stop Stop”, “Carrie Anne”, “Jennifer Eccles,” and the like. (Aside from “King Midas In Reverse,” Nash’s attempt to nudge the group into deeper waters, more a precursor of songs like “Chicago” that he’d perform with CSN/CSNY.) After Nash left, the flavor of their few hits is vastly different. Take “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Good song, but nobody would confuse it with a Graham Nash song. And that’s even more true of “Long Cool Woman.” You can say it’s practically the same group, but their music says that’s nonsense. Nash’s departure was a big deal that fundamentally changed the group’s sound. ---
**Author:** ![campp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@campp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/campp)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/55 "2014-09-24T12:51:47Z")
The first few times I heard **Dire Strait’s** _Sultans of Swing_ on the radio, I thought it was a new **Bob Dylan** track. Wow, go Bob go!!! ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/56 "2014-09-24T13:28:44Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > My experience with the Hollies is pretty much the opposite of the OP. I think “Long Cool Woman” was the first song I associated with the Hollies, so when I later started hearing songs like “Bus Stop” I had a hard time believing it was the same band that did the rockin’ “LCW”. Same here, and that actually leads me to another misattribution I made for a long time. I associated the Hollies first with “Long Cool Woman,” so when I heard “The Air That I Breathe,” I thought it was Air Supply. :smack: Oh, one more: for much of my adult life, I would hear Nazareth’s “Love Hurts,” and think “man, this is the worst Heart song ever.” :mad: 😛 ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/57 "2014-09-24T13:47:28Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > Because of some odd personal connection you made between them? I don’t hear any musical similarity at all… were they on the radio at the same time? I think they both were on radio close to the same time but, IIRC, some DJ conflated the two groups or made some mush-mouth reference. I wasn’t familiar with Steely Dan at the time, but thought PL had made a quantum leap with “their second hit.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/58 "2014-09-24T13:50:55Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Well, thank you for bestowing the benefit of your music-freak expertise on us casual music fans. > > But really, you shouldn’t have bothered. Your expertise has only enabled you to fail to see the forest for the trees. > > While Graham Nash was with the Hollies, they had a pretty homogeneous cluster of pop hits: “Bus Stop,” “Look Through Any Window,” “I Can’t Let Go”, “Stop Stop Stop”, “Carrie Anne”, “Jennifer Eccles,” and the like. (Aside from “King Midas In Reverse,” Nash’s attempt to nudge the group into deeper waters, more a precursor of songs like “Chicago” that he’d perform with CSN/CSNY.) > > After Nash left, the flavor of their few hits is vastly different. Take “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Good song, but nobody would confuse it with a Graham Nash song. And that’s even more true of “Long Cool Woman.” > > You can say it’s practically the same group, but their music says that’s nonsense. Nash’s departure was a big deal that fundamentally changed the group’s sound. Trust me when I say there is nothing you can tell me about The Hollies that I don’t already know. When I pointed out they were “the same group” except for one member replacing another, I was referring to their _personnel_, not the nature of their music. Now, on to your commentary: first of all, Nash didn’t write the first three songs on your list. Second of all, of the last three that he did, “Jennifer Eccles” is cheesier and more pop twee than any of the hits the post-Nash Hollies scored. “He Ain’t Heavy” is far from my favorite Hollies song, but even it has more weight (no pun intended) than JE. Next, “the group’s sound” changed hardly at all with Nash’s departure, and it can be argued that Terry Sylvester was a better high harmony singer than Nash was. Tony Hicks was just as fine a guitarist after Nash’s departure as he was before. If you want to argue that the nature of their material changed, then you’ll have to account for the first post-Nash single “Sorry Suzanne,” which is very much of a piece with their previous pop output and a much better song than “Jennifer Eccles.” And finally, I know all about the “Graham Nash departed The Hollies so he could get away from pop fluff and do more serious music with CSN(Y)” bit. And so what does Nash do after leaving? Hand us a bunch of mostly pop fluff songs that appeared on their first two albums. It’s not that they’re terrible songs, but “Marrakesh Express,” “Pre-Road Downs,” “Lady of the Island” and “Our House” don’t exactly plumb the depths of the human soul, do they? Meanwhile, I’ll put Alan Clarke’s Hollies songs “My Life Is Over With You,” “Goodbye Tomorrow” and “Marigold Gloria Swansong” (just for starters) up against anything Nash wrote in the same period. They have it all over Nash’s slight stuff in terms of both musical and lyrical substance. “Long Cool Woman” (co-written by Clarke) was an attempt to do something adventurous and different and break away from the standard Hollies sound. That’s supposed to be a good thing in rock music, remember? And finally, the follow-up single “Long Dark Road” again bests anything Nash did on the first two CSN(Y) albums. All IMHO, of course. But if you want to argue to the contrary, be my guest. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/59 "2014-09-24T14:06:09Z")
\*\* RTFirefly\*\* and **DChord568** , get a room! (with perfect acoustics, ideally)😛 ---
**Author:** ![johnspartan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@johnspartan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnspartan)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381/60 "2014-09-24T14:11:18Z")
The thread’s gone this far without anyone mentioning “On the Dark Side” from Eddie and the Cruisers? Not Bruce Springsteen, but John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/songs-youve-misattributed/699381.md?page=4)