Songs You Didn't Know Were Covers and Their Originals

There Are So Many Songs I DIDN'T KNOW Were COVERS!??

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Top 80 Songs You Didn't Know Were Covers and Their Originals

Edited by Jiva Brown

[vyvyansevilsocks]

And for anyone who's wondering, David Bowie sang the original Man Who Sold The World, and it was covered by Lulu, Nirvana, Midge Ure and loads of others. I think it was cut out due to copyright but it's weird how the Nirvana bit was kept in

[monochromeyoshi]

A part of me died inside when Joel referred to Mercury’s solo career as Queen.

[mediumbreed]

Anyone else getting worried they are getting old when the majority of versions you know are the originals and not the covers?! 😳

[dabilq]

Neat story behind Guess Who's "American Woman". Randy Bachman was playing a riff between sets, the band came on stage and started jamming along. Burton Cummings ran on stage and totally improvised the lyrics. A kid was making a bootleg recording and the band asked him for the cassette...to get the lyrics.

[thelovelyann]

I love how Joel is such a paradox--he knows so much about pop music but so little at the same time

[loripelt]

I used freak my kids out when they brought home "new" songs by bands they liked, and I knew the song, and had it on vinyl in my collection by the original artists😂

[GUNkify]

All songs as a list
0:05 Red red Wine
0:28 Bitter Sweet Symphony
0:42 Wild World
1:05 Waiting For Tonight
1:27 Get My Mind Set on You
1:45 American Woman
2:04 Self Control
2:48 Ain't Nobody
3:08 Venus
3:54 Girl you know it's true
4:21 Love is all Around
4:36 If I Were a Boy
4:52 Sailing
5:16 It's my Life
5:38 Hound Dog
6:04 Always on my Mind
6:35 Torn
6:56 I'll be Your Baby Tonight
7:16 The Great Pretender
7:36 I'm a Believer
7:53 Love Hurts
8:16 The Tide is High
8:45 Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You
9:05 The Man Who Sold the World
9:22 Hallelujah
9:46 Babe I Love Your Way
10:06 Everlasting Love
10:22 The Unchained Melody
10:40 It's Oh So Quiet
10:53 Nothing Compares 2 U
11:16 Ring of Fire
11:44 I Love Rock 'n' Roll
12:05 You Can't Hurry Love
12:27 Without You
13:15 Knockin' on Heaven's Door
13:35 Don't Turn Around
13:49 Behind Blue Eyes
14:13 Only Love Can Break Your Heart
14:35 Games People Play
15:03 She's the One
15:22 Everytime You Go Away
15:36 The Game of Love
15:58 The Loco-Motion
16:21 Somebody to Love
16:39 Where Did You Sleep Last Night
17:09 Mad World
17:28 Hurt

[jamesflanagan]

The Guess Who is a solid rock band from Canada worth investigating if you haven't come across them before. When they eventually split up, the resulting branches were Randy Bachman's Bachman-Turner Overdrive(BTO) and Burton Cummings solo gig.
The Guess Who had great hits in: No Sugar, These Eyes, and Laughing.
BTO had the legendary "Takin' Care of Business" and "You Aint Seen Nothin' Yet."
Cummings had impressive hits with "Stand Tall, " "I Will Play a Rhapsody, " and "I'm Scared."

Bachman plays a straight forward hard driving guitar.

Cummings plays complex and magical melodies on his piano.

Worth a listen.

[tonypapas]

Joel REALLY needs to learn more about 1970s Rock and Pop - the great sound of live instruments and singing, plus the variety of songwriting styles.

[Dzqnn]

Freddie Mercury said somewhere in an interview I watched, that ''The Great Pretender'' is a song, that he always wanted to cover, but he couldn't have done it with Queen, because he describes Queen as a band with only original stuff.. So he did a cover of it, in his solo career! :)

[step]

Cat Stevens is awesome, that was Janis Joplin, and the monster hit version of “You are always on my mind” was Willie Nelson.

[sinimsdp]

Sign of my age. There were a few songs where you were surprised it was a cover and I only knew the original.

[informedchoice]

That "man" in the "want somebody to love" photo was Janis Joplin, and it's pronounced Leadbelly, as in the metal. He is one of the seminal bluesmen.

[mygreywolf]

I love how every time you say, "I didn't know this was a cover." I am saying, "I didn't know they covered this." 😆😆😆

[erilaz]

Santana's "Black Magic Woman", Judas Priest's "The Green Manalishi", and the Rezillos' "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight" were all songs that I first heard in these cover versions, only to learn later (in the last case *decades* later) that they were all originally done by Fleetwood Mac!

[kerrihennebury]

I literally yelled WHAT?! when you didn’t know The Guess Who. Omg, man. You need to have a Gen X friend that shows you their record collection. You need a Jedi Master to your padiwon.

[reid]

Not knowing the Guess Who leaves such a void in Canadian rock music. Without them, we would never have had Bachman-Turner-Overdrive or Burton Cummings. You need to take time to appreciate these artists

[ArchangelNashan]

The really cool thing about Hurt was Trent wrote it from the perspective of a young man whose life was spiraling out of control but when Johnny Cash looked at the lyrics he ended up viewing them through the lens of an old man at the end of his life. So both versions hit hard for different reasons.

[elfiefromangelcity]

Early 80's baby, raised on my baby boomer parent's music, and many of these did not surprise me. There were a couple that I had forgotten they were a cover til I heard the original. And then there were one or two that DID surprise me!

The reason older music sounds better is because of audio texture, and dynamics. Newer music is compressed and flat. It's also all auto tuned, so notes are perfect, and have no vibrato to it.

[DarkElfDiva]

I think the reason people talk about Johnny Cash's cover of Hurt (apart from the fact that it's an incredible cover) is because it was the last song he ever recorded, and he chose THAT.