20 Hit-Songs You Might Not Realize Are Covers

Some songs become so closely tied to one singer or band that it is easy to assume they must have written and recorded them first. Music history is full of surprises, though. A forgotten single, an obscure album track, or a song that barely made a dent the first time around can get a second life when another artist hears something in it and takes it in a completely different direction.

These 20 songs all existed before the versions that made them famous to millions of listeners. Some covers stayed fairly close to the source material, while others changed the arrangement, perspective, genre, or even the song’s place in pop culture.

Original Artist: Bobbie Gentry. Gentry wrote and recorded “Fancy” in 1969, releasing it as a single that November. Reba McEntire revived the song for her 1990 album Rumor Has It, turning the Southern Gothic story into one of the performances most closely associated with her career.

Original Artist: The Zutons. The Liverpool band released “Valerie” in 2006, and their version reached the U.K. Top 10. The version most listeners associate with Amy Winehouse came a year later through producer Mark Ronson, who recorded it with Winehouse for his 2007 album Version.

Original Artist: The Top Notes. Written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns, “Twist and Shout” was first recorded by the Top Notes in 1961, then reshaped into a hit by the Isley Brothers in 1962. The Beatles recorded their famously raw version in a single take on Feb. 11, 1963, at the end of a marathon session for Please Please Me.

Original Artist: The Arrows. Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker wrote the song for the British glam-rock band, which released it in 1975. Joan Jett discovered it while touring in England with the Runaways and later recorded the version with the Blackhearts that became a defining rock hit of the early 1980s.

Original Artist: Wayne Cochran. Cochran wrote and first recorded “Last Kiss” in 1961, though J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers had the song’s first major U.S. hit in 1964. Pearl Jam released its stripped-down cover in 1999, with the band directing its proceeds from the single to CARE for Kosovo refugee relief.

Original Artist: Otis Redding. Redding wrote and released “Respect” in 1965, two years before Aretha Franklin transformed it with a new arrangement and lyrical touches of her own. Franklin’s 1967 recording turned the song into a much broader declaration of dignity and became one of the signature performances of her career.

Original Artist: Bruce Springsteen. Springsteen wrote and recorded “Blinded by the Light” for his 1973 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band dramatically reworked the song for The Roaring Silence in 1976, giving it the sweeping, keyboard-heavy sound that made the cover far more commercially successful than the original.

Original Artist: Neil Diamond. Diamond wrote and recorded “Red Red Wine” in 1967 as a melancholy pop song. UB40 recast it as reggae on the group’s 1983 album Labour of Love, and the relaxed new arrangement became the version that turned the song into an international smash.

Original Artist: Robert Hazard. Hazard wrote and recorded a demo of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” in 1979 from a male point of view. Cyndi Lauper changed portions of the lyrics and released her version in 1983, flipping the perspective and turning the song into her breakthrough hit and an enduring pop anthem.

Original Artist: SR-71. SR-71 frontman Mitch Allan wrote the song, and his band recorded the first version before Bowling for Soup released its own in 2004. Bowling for Soup worked with Allan on revised lyrics, sharpening the song’s jokes about fading pop-culture dreams and turning it into the band’s biggest mainstream hit.

Original Artist: Joy Division. Joy Division recorded “Dead Souls” in 1979, and it was first released in 1980. Nine Inch Nails brought the song to a much larger 1990s audience with a heavier industrial-rock cover recorded for the 1994 soundtrack to The Crow.

Original Artist: David Bowie. Bowie wrote the song and released it on his 1970 album The Man Who Sold the World. Nirvana performed a stark acoustic cover during its November 1993 MTV Unplugged set, and that performance became one of the best-known recordings from the band’s final months.

Original Artist: Bob Dylan. Dylan wrote “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” for the 1973 film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. Guns N’ Roses had been performing the song live before recording a studio version for the 1990 Days of Thunder soundtrack, then included another version on Use Your Illusion II in 1991.

Original Artist: 3rd Party. The girl group 3rd Party recorded “Waiting for Tonight” for its 1997 album Alive. Jennifer Lopez reworked the song into a sleek dance-pop track for her 1999 debut album, On the 6, and her version quickly became one of the defining songs of the turn-of-the-millennium club-pop era.

Original Artist: Bob Marley and the Wailers. Bob Marley wrote the song, and the Wailers released it on their 1973 album Burnin’. Eric Clapton covered it for 461 Ocean Boulevard in 1974, introducing the song to an even wider rock audience while keeping its reggae foundation recognizable.

First recorded by: Brenda Lee. The song was written by Wayne Carson, Johnny Christopher and Mark James. Lee recorded it first, but Gwen McCrae’s “You Were Always on My Mind” became the first released version on March 28, 1972; Elvis Presley recorded his take the very next day and released it later that year.

Original Artist: Otis Redding. Redding co-wrote and recorded “Hard to Handle” in 1967, and the track was released posthumously in 1968 after his death in a plane crash. The Black Crowes gave it a gritty Southern-rock overhaul on their 1990 debut, Shake Your Money Maker, bringing the song to a new generation.

Original Artist: Shocking Blue. Dutch rock band Shocking Blue released “Venus” in 1969, and the song reached No. 1 in the United States in 1970. Bananarama revived it in 1986 with a glossy dance-pop production, and their version also climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Original English-language Artist: Ednaswap. “Torn” was written in 1991 by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven and Phil Thornalley, but the first released recording was a Danish-language adaptation by Lis Sørensen in 1993. Ednaswap, the band featuring co-writers Preven and Cutler, released an English version in 1995 before Natalie Imbruglia turned the song into a worldwide hit in 1997.

Original Artist: New Order. New Order released “Blue Monday” in March 1983, pairing electronic dance music with the band’s post-punk roots. Orgy rebuilt the track with heavy guitars and an industrial-rock edge for its 1998 debut album, Candyass, giving the synth-driven classic a distinctly late-1990s sound.