Music Songs you didn’t know were covers

Nanook

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My entire world was turned upside down by the recent discovery that Soft Cell’s 1981 hit “Tainted Love” was originally a 1964 Motown song.


I also never knew Torn by Natalie Imbruglia was a cover.

 

GhastlyHun

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If I knew the songs that are actually covers, I couldn't post them here anymore
 

Rooney in Paris

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For a long time, I didn't know Johnny Cash's Hurt was actually not his but a Nine Inch Nails song.



And while I think that the NIN version is a pretty perfect conclusion to an excellent album (The Downward Spiral), there is something about Cash's version that makes it unique - a frailty and the feeling that the guy had an accute understanding of his own mortality (he died within a year of releasing his version of Hurt) that give it a beauty the NIN version just can't have. Trent Reznor actually loved this version too, after initial reservations that it would be "gimmicky":

I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning – different, but every bit as pure.
 

onemanarmy

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A lot of people probably won't know that "Diane" by Therapy? is in fact a song originally recorded by Hüsker Dü.


And Moby's "That's when I reach for my revolver" is a cover of the fantastic Mission of Burma song.

 
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Organic Potatoes

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For a long time, I didn't know Johnny Cash's Hurt was actually not his but a Nine Inch Nails song.



And while I think that the NIN version is a pretty perfect conclusion to an excellent album (The Downward Spiral), there is something about Cash's version that makes it unique - a frailty and the feeling that the guy had an accute understanding of his own mortality (he died within a year of releasing his version of Hurt) that give it a beauty the NIN version just can't have. Trent Reznor actually loved this version too, after initial reservations that it would be "gimmicky":

I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning – different, but every bit as pure.
This one shocks me. Not the part where it wasn’t a Johnny Cash original, but that people thought it was.

:annoyed:
 

jeff_goldblum

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Special shout-out to whoever made the dance remix of Calum Scott's acoustic cover of Robyn's dance song 'Dancing on My Own'.

My big shout is Hound Dog by Elvis, and for a childhood favourite, 1985 by Bowling for Soup.
 

Minkaro

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I only found out this year that Shape of Things is by the Yardbirds, and not by Black Stone Cherry.
 

JPRouve

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For a long time, I didn't know Johnny Cash's Hurt was actually not his but a Nine Inch Nails song.



And while I think that the NIN version is a pretty perfect conclusion to an excellent album (The Downward Spiral), there is something about Cash's version that makes it unique - a frailty and the feeling that the guy had an accute understanding of his own mortality (he died within a year of releasing his version of Hurt) that give it a beauty the NIN version just can't have. Trent Reznor actually loved this version too, after initial reservations that it would be "gimmicky":

I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning – different, but every bit as pure.
From memory most of the songs in that album are covers, like in American VI.
 

Summit

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Nowt worse than Noel for this.
 

Chipper

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My entire world was turned upside down by the recent discovery that Soft Cell’s 1981 hit “Tainted Love” was originally a 1964 Motown song.

I knew of that one because I played GTA San Andreas, it was on one of the mock radio stations you could listen to while driving around.

Googling to find my own contribution - I didn't know this even existed or came before Sinead O'Connor until just now.
 

marukomu

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I always thought this was by The Pretenders until I heard another version in a US TV show.
 

RamblingRebel

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