Had a revelation this morning while listening to a HonkyTonk playlist on Spotify that Jerry Reed originally made Amos Moses. For YEARS I just thought it was a Primus song as it has that vibe Les Claypool puts out.
Another for me was Astronomy Domine by Pink Floyd. I originally heard it on Headbangers Ball by Voivod and had no idea it was a cover. A few years later I discovered that it was a cover and to this day Pink Floyd and Voivod are two of my favorite bands.
So, What songs did you surprisingly find out were covers some time after hearing the song by the cover artist?
Kinda going back to that post I did the other day about Ska, but The Clash’s cover of Wrong Em Boyo, which was originally by The Rulers.
“I Put a Spell on You” is commonly attributed to CCR since they covered it on their debut album, but it’s actually a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins original.
The now infamous Billy Ray Cyrus debut single, “Achey Brakey Heart”, was actually a cover of The Marcy Brothers’ “Don’t Tell My Heart”. They were released within a year of each other but the Cyrus cover exploded in popularity in Australia (yes, Australia), and the rest is history.
Cyndi Lauper’s biggest hit, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, was a Robert Hazard cover.
Elvis Presley had a really bad habit of ripping off lesser known (black) blues artists. As in, of the 24 songs off his first 2 albums, 20 of them were covers, bad.
There’s so many more I can think of off the top of my head, like Johny Cash’s cover of NIN’s “Hurt” getting Trent Reznor to say it “wasn’t my song anymore” after seeing the video, but I think that’ll do for now.
Louie Louie was originally by Richard Berry. Unlike the Kingsmen’s more famous cover, this is completely intelligible.
When I was in middle school I didn’t realize how many of Reel Big Fish’s songs were covers until late in high school, obviously that’s kind of their shtick but when you don’t have access to a big list of nearly every song things slip by you pretty easily, this experience is probably less common these days with streaming etc.
I didn’t know primus covered Amos Moses I’m much more familiar with the original track I’ll have to check that out seems like a great fit.
Type O Negative’s Summer Breeze is originally a song by Seals and Crofts
Apparently Peter had much ruder lyrics ready to go but the label told him he couldn’t do them. Mr. Bungle sort of covered it on their new live album, too, and took a lot of liberties with the lyrics.
