Wow! I never knew about any of this, but I can already tell you there is some FUN YouTubing to be done for “Dance of the Vampire”!
Oops! According to Wiki “70% of the musical score written by Steinman was recycled from his earlier projects”.
First ever performance of Tanz der Vampyr was in 1997- postdating Bonnie Tyler’s performance of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by 14 years.
Oh good call. I’m a 10cc fan and learned this recently.
He’s already been mentioned, but I think of Neil Diamond - his songs for the Monkees in particular.
I always thought Dave Edmunds was the genius behind “Queen of Hearts,” which Juice Newton recorded and had great success with… turns out some guy named Hank DeVito wrote it. His signature song, “I Hear You Knocking,” is a cover of a Smiley Lewis song.
Also, how about Bernie Edwards and Nile Rodgers?
“We Are Family” - Sister Sledge
“I’m Coming Out,” “Upside Down” - Diana Ross
Or Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis:
“I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On” - Robert Palmer
“Can You Stand The Rain” - New Edition
“Control” - Janet Jackson (Janet is a co-writer)
“Human” - Human League
Oh, and even though I hate these guys, Stock Aiken Waterman ruled the UK pop scene in the 80s:
“Never Gonna Give You Up,” “Whenever You Need Somebody,” Rick Astley
“I Should Be So Lucky,” Kylie Minogue
“Respectable,” Mel and Kim
Those are the famous ones. They did about a million songs, and they have that same sound…
Okay, I didn’t realize that! That’s kind of disappointing he recycled so much. It’s still a treat to hear the song sung in German, though. You should check it out!
Carole King wrote (or co-wrote) a ton of songs.
One Fine Day. (The Chiffons 1963)
Up On The Roof (The Drifters 1962)
Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (The Shirelles 1960)
Some Kind Of Wonderful (The Drifters 1962)
The Loco-Motion (Several)
You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin 1967)
as well as others. It’s kind of a shame that she’s only really well known for Tapestry.
Patsy Cline’s best known song “crazy” was written by Willie Nelson. I have an album where he sings the song himself, and it’s just as good (maybe better) than the Patsy Cline version.
He gave a great performance of it when he and Johnny Cash did their VH1 Storytellers special.
Also Chuck Berry (who usually gets credit for his songs, but “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” is sometimes misattributed to Buddy Holly or someone).
Anyway, just echoing Willie Dixon. If it’s a blues song that you’ve heard more than once, just assume he wrote it: “Spoonful”, “Little Red Rooster” , “Hoochie Coochie Man”, “You Need Love” (turned into “Whole Lotta Love” by Zep), “Wang Dang Doodle”, “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and way too many more. Willie Dixon - Wikipedia
I read a quote from Diamind in which he said that he describes a certain area of his house as teh “Monkees wing.”
Two songs written by Joni Mitchell are commonly attributed to other folks:
Both Sides Now - originally made a hit by Judy Collins.
Woodstock - the CSN version is more famous.
The latter case is apparently a sore subject with Mitchell. In several interviews I’ve read, she seems to think that David Crosby takes too much credit for getting her career off the ground. She stated once (no cite) that Crosby often seemed to imply that she only wrote the song because of his direct inspiration, when in fact she had written the song before she ever had a chance to talk to him about the festival.
Amazingly he does that song as a duet with Susan Tedeschi which I think is a fantastic complement to a young blues singer.
But I’m just a big fan of ST. My favorite video of her here singing a Clapton tune while her husband makes it look easy to play slide guitar.
Otis Redding wrote Respect and his version even made it into the Top 40. Aretha’s version blew it away.