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Songs You Never Realized Were Covers


drawkcabi

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On 12/19/2016 at 2:00 PM, Trebla said:

Bruce Springsteen is probably second to Bob Dylan in having songs covered. "Blinded By The Light" by Manfred Mann was already mentioned and Mann also covered "For You". The Pointer Sisters covered "Fire" and Natalie Cole covered "Pink Cadillac".

Two songs I like that are actually covers of very old folks songs are "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals and the wonderful duet of Nick Cave and PJ Harvey on "Henry Lee".

Debatable whether it counts as a cover but Patti Smith's "Because the Night" was originally written by Springsteen, too. He wrote and recorded it but then gave it to her instead of putting it on an album.

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On Monday, December 19, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Trebla said:

Bruce Springsteen is probably second to Bob Dylan in having songs covered. "Blinded By The Light" by Manfred Mann was already mentioned and Mann also covered "For You". The Pointer Sisters covered "Fire" and Natalie Cole covered "Pink Cadillac".

Two songs I like that are actually covers of very old folks songs are "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals and the wonderful duet of Nick Cave and PJ Harvey on "Henry Lee".

If you are looking for people whose songs are covers by others, try Leadbelly and Bo Diddley. Between the two of them,  they wrote most of American music. They were covered, copied and imitated by almost everyone listed in the postings here.  

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Took me a long while to realise that I Love Rock N Roll isn't a Joan Jett original.
 

 


And in the not-a-cover, not-a-sample group there's 99 Problems, which it turns out was originally a truly awful in every way Ice-T song (warning- this will probably offend you and if it doesn't you're probably an arsehole):
 



But in that one Jay-Z really just took the hook.

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On 1/20/2016 at 7:10 PM, Astromech said:

I never realized Prince wrote Manic Monday and it was performed by Apollonia 6 before The Bangles.

 

When I found out Prince wrote this song I wanted to bash my head against the wall a hundred times because I HATE this song with the heat of a thousand suns.  Prince, how could you?     :tantrum:

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A confession: I react unreasonably when I find someone who thinks Downtown Train is a Rod Stewart song. Grrrrrr!

When I first read this I read it a Runaway Train which at first I though it was sung by Tom Petty, only to discover it was Soul Asylum.  :dunno:

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On 1/23/2016 at 8:32 PM, karaddin said:

Lol Nick Cave's Hallelujah is an original, completely different song that happens to share the name. Also an utterly amazing song, but less well known.  The Buckley one is Leonard Cohen's which is a very different performance, Cohen with his gravelly rumble and Buckey with his soaring beauty.  Both are great.  There is also a version by Rufus Wainwright that's well known thanks to being used in Shrek.

KD Lang sings this song very well too as her torchy voice sounds great for this song.  She brought this one home to Canada and opened the 2010 Winter Olympics with it and it's outstanding. 

 

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On 12/29/2016 at 0:28 PM, maarsen said:

If you are looking for people whose songs are covers by others, try Leadbelly and Bo Diddley. Between the two of them,  they wrote most of American music. They were covered, copied and imitated by almost everyone listed in the postings here.  

 Pat Boone made a career of covering black artists' songs for white audiences. Fats Domino, Little Richard, etc. 

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On 1/1/2017 at 2:01 PM, Trebla said:

 

 

 

I just discovered this. A man named Vassar Clements released an album in the 70s that included an instrumental song called Lonesome Fiddle Blues. Vassar's guitarist was Charlie Daniels. 

Some time later, Daniels formed his own band. He took Lonesome Fiddle Blues and moved up an octave and added lyrics to it and called it The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

 

Off topic, I just found out something that blew my mind.

If anyone was around for early 90s MTV rock you might remember a joke rock tune called Three Little Pigs by a band called Green Jello/Jelly. It was huge, you heard it everywhere. MTV played the cool claymation video every 15 minutes. 

What blew my mind is that the guy who sings the falsetto "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" part is none other than Maynard James of Tool fame.

Also apparently Les Claypool and Pauly Shore do some vocals in it as well but Im not sure what they did.

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6 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

What blew my mind is that the guy who sings the falsetto "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" part is none other than Maynard James of Tool fame.



On a similar, probably more embarrassing note, it took me a ludicrously long time to realise that the woman singing the chorus on Black Eyed Peas' Where is the Love is Justin Timberlake.

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On 1/3/2017 at 2:05 AM, DunderMifflin said:

Off topic, I just found out something that blew my mind.

If anyone was around for early 90s MTV rock you might remember a joke rock tune called Three Little Pigs by a band called Green Jello/Jelly. It was huge, you heard it everywhere. MTV played the cool claymation video every 15 minutes. 

What blew my mind is that the guy who sings the falsetto "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" part is none other than Maynard James of Tool fame.

Also apparently Les Claypool and Pauly Shore do some vocals in it as well but Im not sure what they did.

 Maynard was actually in that particular line-up of Green Jello (when that album was released) as was Tool drummer Danny Carey. Green Jello was really kind of amazing back in the day. I believe that they beat GWAR to the punch as far as costumed punk bands with elaborate props and storylines that fueled their live act. Saw them live at the I-Beam in San Francisco maybe a year before that album (Cereal Killer) came out. It was really unique. I had never seen anything like it prior, and really only GWAR afterwards was the only thing that compared. Fun stuff. 

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Cash's "Hurt" was pretty much on an album of covers.  Had "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode on it too.  He also covered "Rusty Cage" by Soundgarden on another album.

I had to convince my wife Cum on Feel the Noize was not Quiet Riot but was Oasis (just kidding).  I really like Oasis' version.

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The one that always comes to mind for me is Pat Benatar's "I Need a Lover".  Of course, Mellencamp wrote it.

When the gender of the singer changes, it seems to go in my mind from empowerment to abuse.  Perhaps this is symptomatic of a gender bias, but a woman who wants a lover who will thrill her and then go away to me seems very different from a man who wants the same.

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