What songs are the most "multicultural" or have the most influences?

Cafe Society
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I was flipping channels tonight and came across a figure skating show in which the techno remix of Dolly Parton’s version of Cat Stevens’ Peace Train was playing.

This song has struck me as really odd since the first time I heard it years ago. It’s a techno version (i.e. a sound particularly popular in and marketed to gay dance clubs) of a song by Dolly Parton (most popular as a singer of country songs {i.e. a rural American music based on Celtic folk music and other influences}) remake of a song by Cat Stevens (a half-Greek, half-Swedish English singer from the 60s and 70s who is now a Muslim). So this one song has (if only very tangentially) gay, American, Celtic, English, Swedish, Greek, Muslim, rock, techno and country connections. Sorta… kinda… if you squint. Throw in Reggae and some Chinese operatic notes and you’ve got more degrees of connection than Kevin Bacon.

But there are other songs where the multiple influences are way more apparent:

Grace Jones’s remake of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire has techno, country and reggae influences

The Blind Boys of Alabama’s version of Amazing Grace weaves African-American with English spiritual with rock influences

Paul Simon has famously incorporated African sounds with rock

What are some other famous polygenetic numbers?

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Most multicultural would be something like, “We Are the World,” which, thanks to skillful producing by Quincy Jones, manages to incorporate a huge array of musical styles, from rock, to r&b, to pop, to folk, to country.

Ineptly multicultural is the Chicago Bears rap, “Superbowl Shuffle.”

… or possibly the John Wayne-parody “Rappin’ Duke.” I’m always ready to fling something at my speakers by the time it gets to the “titwillow” part.

A personal favorite: Truth Hurts’ “Addictive”: singing a typical R&B “I love my man, he’s so great” ditty with a syncopated hip-hop beat over a Hindu Bappi Lahiri sample sung by a 70-year old woman with an interlude by impressario Rakim. Add the video to it and you have the somewhat confusing visuals of Middle eastern bellydancing and an African-American hip-hop club scene. Too bad their record label never got permission for the Hindi sample and got the shit sued out of them.

DNA’s remix of Suzanne Vega’s folksy acoustic diary bit, “Tom’s Diner.”

The Bloodhound Gang’s co-opting a timeless hip-hop chant for the rock-out “Fire Water Burn,” used famously to blare forth from tank speakers in Farhenheit 9/11.

Oh, and of course, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”