Songs you belatedly discovered were covers of a very different artist

So today I found out that Rollin’ with the Flow was not a Kurt Vile original but a cover version of a Charlie Rich song. I guess I’d known Kurt Vile’s work better I might have guessed.

Someone on Twitter was shocked that Robert Wyatt’s At Last I Am Free was a Chic cover.

What are yours?

Alice Cooper's "Hello Hooray", original version by Judy Collins, they're almost like different songs though.

Watching the Hair movie high af trying to figure out how Evan Dando could've written the song "Frank Mills" at the age of 2...

Ha ha

Devo's "Satisfaction". my parents are from Akron so I was exposed to their music at a very young age.

Soft Cell - Tainted Love. Didn’t know it was a cover until I started listening to more classic soul.

I didn't realize "The Hammond Song" wasn't by The Colourfield until last year (when The Avalanches sampled it and credited The Roches, not Terry Hall)

when I was 12 or 13 I got heavy into Big Beat and "electronica" (whatever that meant in 1998) and I for some reason assumed that all the sounds were originals outside of the obvious stuff. later in life it always threw me for a loop to hear something sampled on those CDs

Yeah, on that note, I think it was ILM that clued me in, quite recently, to Edwin Birdsong... I guess this was technically a sample, but it feels more like a cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3AKrwna2C8

lol yeah I remember watching a video detailing the many many tunes DP lifted giant chunks of and almost showed it to my friends who were huge into them but it almost felt like telling a kid that Santa isn't real

I was a bit surprised at how pretty much every Massive Attack song where Horace Andy sings is a cover of a song of his.

Also found Don’t You Evah by Spoon was a cover almost a decade later, but that one is way too obscure, noone outside of Austin had ever heard the original before.

It was only a couple of years ago that I found out Not So Manic Now by Dubstar was a cover. The original is by a band called Brick Supply who I'd never heard of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpKlwFNMI60

i thought "fly me to the moon" was a song written specifically for the end credits of neon genesis evangelion until i saw elvis costello perform it on an episode of third rock from the sun

I never knew Not So Manic Now was a cover!

my most recent realisation was Minnie Riperton, Les Fleurs. I think maybe I thought it might be a small sample or reworking in there but the 4 Hero version is a direct cover.

Recently discovered that Ha Ha This A Way is by Lead Belly and not a Paul Daniels original.

When I was a naive 20y old, I was allowed backstage at a Primal Scream gig and told Bobby Gillespie that I thought 'Slip Inside This House' was my favourite song of theirs. He was the one who then informed me that it was a cover of 13th Floor Elevators. I felt pretty embarrassed but he was really nice about it, he wrote down the name of the album for me.

Well I just heard a version of 'Sinnerman' recorded a full decade before Nina Simone's version so add that to the list I guess.

Wait what?

I know, right?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinner_Man

i had extreme cognitive dissonance when i first heard wire's version of 'strange' because I didn't understand how they covered an REM song from ten years in the future

Not exactly a very different artist but Henry Thomas' "Bull Doze Blues" surprised the hell out of me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bO0kp4lAPo

not exactly a cover but anyway, first heard this one yesterday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRnFmHm_ANg

LCD Soundsystem's "Jump Into the Fire", which I assumed was just a really great B-side ("of COURSE this fucking hipster would save the best track for the back of some single") - when I heard Nilsson's version I kept bouncing between "this is 30 years ahead of its time" and "LCD really based their entire career on this, huh?"

"LCD really based their entire career on this, huh?"

lol I felt kinda the same when I first heard this old Chuck Prophet track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMvRu3_d50U

glee cover of rebecca black’s friday

That "Turning Black" track, wow. Had never heard that. Pretty strong stuff!

Frank Mills on Hair got me too

This Mortal Coil's three albums, didn't realize they were largely covers until after _Blood_ and discovering The Apartments.

My wife didn't realize that Through the Looking Glass by Siouxsie and the Banshees was all covers, I got to surprise her a lot.

It was only a couple of years ago that I found out Not So Manic Now by Dubstar was a cover. The original is by a band called Brick Supply who I'd never heard of.

many years ago i worked with one of the BS blokes.
he was very angry and bitter re the whole thing re that track (and everything else in life to be fair).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIeY7J9kjg0

I know we download and stream everything nowadays so this is now probably the norm.

Back in the day I always read liner notes and credits on LPs and CDs, maybe no one else did idk.

“This flight tonight” a genius choice for Nazareth to cover Joni Mitchell

Reading liner notes wouldn’t always tell you if it was a cover. Eg: Led Zepellin

I've just realised that there are a bunch of songs I have a deep revulsion towards - nothing strange there, everyone has songs that they can't stand.

But I realised yesterday that quite a few of them are covers (which I didn't know at the time my hatred was ignited), and that I don't really mind the originals so much. Am I somehow sensing a horrible mismatch between song & cover artist that doesn't gel?

So far the ones I can think of are
Proud Mary (Tina Turner version leaves me very very cold)
Dancing in the Moonlight (shit shit Toploader song)
Dreams (Corrs version)

I still have lots of other deeply hated songs that I'm sure aren't covers. So maybe this is just a normal proportion of popular music.

OTOH, I really enjoy a good cover where it feels like the song was always meant to sound like that, or it's a really good but different spin on a great song.

Living in Canada, I did not know until a few months ago that "Days Like That" by Sugar Jones, a Canadian girl group that formed via a reality show in 2001, was a cover of a UK R&B group, Fierce, from two years before.

Living in the US, I did not know until a few months ago that Just Missed The Train – a song I love off Kelly Clarkson's debut album – was originally a 1993 Norwegian hit (in a markedly different style), by the singer Trine Rein; although it was actually (co-)written by former child actress Danielle Brisebois, whose own version is even more distinct (it's also been covered by others). From what I can tell, Brisbois's recording came out a year after Rein's, so it also predated Kelly's...

...which leads into another curlicue that I discovered via this research. I was dimly aware that Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" was a cover of a song by a band called Ednaswap; but I was not aware that (a) the aforementioned Trine Rein covered it in 1996 (a year before Imbruglia, and sounding very much like her take); but also that (b) Ednaswap themselves actually didn't release their own version until 1995. Turns out the song first appeared in Danish, as Brændt (1993), by singer Lis Sørensen. I imagine this is common knowledge to some folks, but I found it an interesting knot to untangle.

"Songs you belatedly discovered were covers that were originally recorded by artists other than the songwriters, even though the songwriters are themselves recording artists"

("...and the versions you knew were covers that came much later")

Torn was also cowritten by Phil Thornalley who produced the Cure's Pornography and also was the bassist for a bit when Simon quit.

Oh snap, wait a minute! It turns out that Danielle Brisebois's co-writer on "Just Missed the Train" was... Scott Cutler, of Ednaswap (one of the "Torn" writers)! This really brings things full circle... I guess Trine Rein is the common link here.

(Looks like Cutler is a fairly big-name songwriter who just happened to have a band of his own for a few years, so it's not exactly an oddity that he wrote songs that were first recorded by others.)

Is the Massive Attack version of "Light My Fire" meant to be a cover of Al Green's version rather than of the Doors? Probably other people realized that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqnb_nU7RBE

On the flip, there's a bunch if songs I grew up with which I always thought were covers.

"Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" struck me as an old Vaudeville song that Monty Python had repurposed and thrown a few swear words into.

I thought for years that "Obladi Oblada" was an old spiritual of some sort, similar to "Mango Walk" or "Michael Row The Boat Ashore" which the Beatles had covered

Xp whaaaaaaat.

Recently found out that Bette Davis Eyes is a cover of a 1974 song by Jackie DeShannon.

Also Don’t Turn Around by Ace of Base is actually an obscure Tina Turner b-side.

As a kid in the 80s I found out much later that «  A groovy kind of love » wasn’t by Collins but a cover from a sixties duo, Dianne&Annita, based on a melody from a Italian classical composer, Muzio Clementi. I’ve always liked that song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPJYT7LigtY

I thought it was by the Mindbenders.

nine inch nails - physical

one of my fave nin songs btw

I always knew about the Aswad version of Don't Turn Around, but didn't kmow it was a Tina Turner song

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned "Got My Mind Set On You" by George Harrison, which was originally recorded by James Ray in 1962.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1E6xvM7PeA

I must admit I did think it was fairly unusual for George Harrison to release a single that was actually good.

Andrea Martin - Share The Love --> Tomcraft - Loneliness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS2A19BZRe0

Those are both new to me, moka (Don’t Turn Around, Bette Davis Eyes)

recently blew a friend's mind with the Blue Oyster Cult tune "Summer Of Love", all he knew was the much later Current 93 version lol

dr. demento's show was my introduction to the james ray og version. he played it when george harrison had the big hit with it. xp

Is the Massive Attack version of "Light My Fire" meant to be a cover of Al Green's version rather than of the Doors?

My 'vaguely read this somewhere' line-of-descent understanding was that it grows out of Jose Feliciano's smash hit cover, which was big enough to inspire at least a couple of further cover versions in Jamaica around the turn of the seventies etc. That said, the actual sample used in their version is here:

https://www.discogs.com/master/95393-Young-Holt-Unlimited-Just-A-Melody

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fn3OOX3IMc

The original version of 'Real Wild Child' is pretty strange, O'Keefe's singing twang is off sounding, the 'doo be doo' drone vocals in the background are kinda sinister, oh and the guitar breaks are really pretty, and not the usual blues-based licks you'd expect and are exactly the same every time, like they were composed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh0epVjk0HY

not TODAY, but in the last few years still belatedly discovered that boy george's "the crying game" is a cover.

Discovered this Louise Cordet track (featuring Jimmy Page on guitar) years ago on some British girl group compilation and only yesterday discovered it’s actually a venerable Smokey Robinson composition for Mary Wells among others. Having learned my lesson, I still think Louise did the best version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYTyZAa2zKQ

The original version of 'Real Wild Child' is pretty strange, O'Keefe's singing twang is off sounding, the 'doo be doo' drone vocals in the background are kinda sinister, oh and the guitar breaks are really pretty, and not the usual blues-based licks you'd expect and are exactly the same every time, like they were composed.

📹

Today years old when I discovered Always Something There to Remind Me wasn’t written by Naked Eyes, after stumbling across Dione Warwick’s version

The original version of 'Real Wild Child' is pretty strange, O'Keefe's singing twang is off sounding, the 'doo be doo' drone vocals in the background are kinda sinister, oh and the guitar breaks are really pretty, and not the usual blues-based licks you'd expect and are exactly the same every time, like they were composed.

That isn't the original, that's a cover version by Jerry Allison of the Crickets - and that's Buddy Holly on guitar! This is the Johnny O'Keefe original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNZ4E73SS_g

Apparently most of the covers are based on the Jerry Allison (or Ivan, why?) version - including I imagine the Iggy cover?

only recently learned of the chris montez omd cover, thanks to ned!

XP - Blimey! Thanks for the info Tom

How about a half&half?

"Tainted Love" by Soft Cell has always been a given that it's a cover of the Gloria Jones orig, but I found the version by Ruth Swann in a charity shop, and when I heard it i was sure that had more to do with it (there's various stings in there that aren't in Gloria's but are in Soft Cell's).

Anyway, I saw an interview where Marc and Dave were talking about it, and Dave said he always liked the Ruth Swann version more.

So, there you go.

MC5 cover Ramblin Rose which is pretty cool and slinky in the Jerry Lee Lewise original but they take it from the soul cover by Ted Taylor and rev it up a bit further.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMRtqnzA_oU
MC5 live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF64tTw9nDE
Jerry Lee Lewis which I discovered on a compilation of his stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot_-B-83Lb0
Ted Taylor which came out in 1965 and I think is the obvious source for the 5.

Yeah I hear Ted Taylor in the MC5 version too. Interesting also that the Taylor version wasn’t really a hit (#135 peak chart), someone in the MC5 really liked deep cuts.

I only learned about this recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJzPLhDf3-8

And here's a good run. We all know "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers, but apparently it had been recorded at least three times in the weeks/months before his 1978 version came out, the first by Bobby Bare in 1977:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPgOnLeZFPw

The second by the original songwriter in 1978:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1u3cIjS2XY

And then by Johnny Cash, also in 1978:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOKMVSk4j9w

Also, I had no idea this was the original song/sample, I just figured Salt N Pepa and En Vogue's version/interpretation was original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTJvkHrZHmQ

wow, me too!

xpost to Josh - I remember that one well - the original lyric "I wanna take you home, I don't wanna sleep alone...." but they felt they'd get banned if they tried it.

I've known that for a whole 3 months since clemenza posted it on another thread!

Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Wow! I heard it on a random playlist out and about a couple of weeks ago and did a double take.

I remember being surprised to find that "Hanging on the Telephone" by Blondie... wasn't actually by Blondie. It was originally released by The Nerves in 1976:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emy5mA8Ixtc

It stands out because the chords have something of the late-70s power pop revival, viz The Knack. But it was a kind of Jonathan Richman pre-punk song. Blondie's version got to number five in the UK, but didn't chart at all in the US. What was up with that.

the nerves are the greatest band of all time

Top hits on American charts for 1978 were Bee Gees songs from Saturday Night Fever and “You Light Up My Life” by Debby Boone. We weren’t ready for “Hanging On The Telephone.” xp

The Nerves also wrote this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNUFNXb-1Yc