Less famous covers that you knew before the more famous originals

Pomplamoose, "Single Ladies"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4gicHqWzv4

The Bangles' "September Gurls"...pretty sure.

Top of my mind:

Slade - if this world were mine
Heard it before the Gaye version and I think I actually like it better.

13th floor elevators - its all over now baby blue
Might be that it was my first but it's also my favorite version, love how loose it sounds.

Soft Cell's Hendrix Medley (Hey Joe/Purple Haze/Voodoo Child)

Portastatic cover of 'Boy from School' before Hot Chip original

pretty much every Motown song I knew the California RAisins version before I knew the original

^^ oh god, yes, same here. they only made 13 episodes of the cartoon, which seems almost incredible to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJyfpm_NyW8

Yeah there must be a fair few Motown ones - for starters:

Japan - Ain't That Peculiar
Kim Wilde - You Keep Me Hangin' On
Incognito - Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing
The Jam - Heatwave

john cale - hallelujah
neko case - never turn your back on mother earth
van halen - (oh) pretty woman, etc
all burt bacharach songs

elliott smith - thirteen

Garbage - Thirteen

I didn't know Minor Threat's "12XU" was a Wire cover for many years until I finally picked up Pink Flag and played it.

Metallica introduced me as a teenager to Killing Joke via their version of "The Wait."
I think that's the only band/song that can be considered "famous" at least compared to the NWOBHM obscurities that they were doing at the time.

I guess this happens more when yr young.

Like for some time, I only knew "Too busy thinkin 'bout my Baby" by Mardi Gras.

toots & the maytals - country roads

The Bangles' "September Gurls"...pretty sure.

― clemenza, Tuesday, September 1, 2015 4:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a more famous cover of a less famous original though, surely?

All the covers on Living Colour's Biscuits were this way for me -- Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothin, Burning of the Midnight Lamp, Love and Happiness, Memories Can't Wait

Stone Temple Pilots - "Dancing Days"

no wonder I thought that song was so much better than the rest of their output...

That's probably one of my least favorite Zep songs

jawbreaker - pack it up

an embarrassing amount, but one: tracey thorn's get around to it

Minor Threat - Stepping Stone

Phil Collins "You Can't Hurry Love"

Nirvana-The Man Who Sold The World

Oh huh, I always think of that as the more famous version, like it took what was for most people a real obscurity and put it on this mega-selling album and MTV special.

i had the young marble giants on in the stockroom at this one job and one of my coworkers asked me, 'who are this band covering hole'

The Blues Brothers, "Soul Man."

This abomination was played on Chicago radio at least twice an hour in 1979. Hearing the Sam & Dave original five years later was a monumental revelation.

Pretty sure I heard Alexei Sayle's "Play That Funky Music Jewish Boy" first. The original is definitely more famous.

xpost Christ, I'd never seen it until today. friends of a friend used to do this version at karaoke nights, dance choreography and stupid Aykroyd "Soul mahhhhn" vocal. I thought they were just clowning it up but nope. Aykroyd annoys me cos he appears to be making fun of the song with his performance, even though I know he has reverence for it.

Nancy & lee's version of Jackson. Dopn't think I knew it was a cover for several years after it. Still not sure how often I've heard teh Johnny Cash version.

Gun Club Run ThrouGH The Jungle think I heard a couple of years before the CCR.
& I probably picked up on Robert JOhnson after hearing their first lp, which in turn may have been picked up from Son House. Preachin The Blues that is.

THink it toook me years to finally hear Tiny bradshaw's Train Kept A rollin, loved the Johnny BUrnette version for a couple of decades before taht and probably first heard the song in garage punk versions or by the Yardbirds or Led Zeppelin. Garage punk versi8on may have been the Chosen Few.

First came across I'm MOvin On by the Rolling Stones on No Stone Unturned the lp that was supposed to be their bsides and I'm not sure stuck to that model. I later heard it by Ray Charles on a best of him and only after that heard the Hank Snow original.

I only know the Lydia Lunch version of Run Through the Jungle... it was years before I even knew it was a CCR song, which I've still never heard.

Original is on Cosmo's Factory and I think it may be about Vietnam.

Lydia version 8 Eyed Spy?

Yes, 8 Eyed Spy.

This is probably an opposite example, hearing the original after the more famous cover. Anyway, Dawn Penn's version is wonderful, but so is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsJMfYDUNCE

Joy Division's version of Sister Ray - put the teenage me off wanting to hear the Velvet Underground for ages

I was very familiar with 1992's two rocked-out covers of "Pink Moon" (by Walt Mink and Sebadoh) long before I heard the original -- probably in that VW ad.

fIREHOSE's live totem pole ep introduced me to böc's 'the red and the black', wire's 'mannequin' and the butthole surfers' 'revolution (part 2)'

r.e.m. introduced me to wire's 'strange'

r.e.m. introduced me to wire's 'strange'

Me too - though my guess is the R.E.M. version is more "famous," in that Document has probably sold more copies / been heard by more ppl than Pink Flag?

I never knew about Willie Cobbs' "You Don't Love Me," that's totally amazing!

Carnivore’s “Manic Depression”

Not strictly a cover but I heard Evolution Control Committee's Whipped Cream Mixes before Rebel Without a Pause.

I feel like we may be entering a golden age of people being more familiar with less famous cover versions. Went out to dinner tonight, and the music playing on their stereo was 100% cover versions, with an emphasis on reggae takes of 80s songs. I know people who would tell you their favorite type of music is cover versions.

...also, "A Child's Introduction to the Beatles" by a group called the Wild Honey Singers with several of the best known Beatles songs before I'd ever heard the Beatles.
And Status Quo's Roadhouse Blues before the Doors'.

Sebadoh's "Pink Moon" and REM's "Strange" for me too. Nick Drake and (early) Wire seemed impossibly obscure when I were a lad, pre-internet.

One 'original' I only just heard last night was Elton's John's "Step into Christmas". I made of point of finally looking it up after seeing a snippet of Gavin & Stacey characters singing it. I've known it was a John/Taupin thing since shortly after the Wedding Present covered in 1992, but the latter was somehow the only rendition I'd ever knowingly been exposed to.

Heard Joe Cocker's version of "With A Little Help From My Friends" before the Beatles version when I watched The Wonder Years as a kid. Bet that one goes for a lot of people.

― musically, samedi 12 septembre 2009 03:49 (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I think I only "discovered" the Beatles original years later as a teenager !

Does that count as being less famous than the original though?

There's a lot of these on the Residents' "Third Reich and Roll" but the Rascals' "Good Lovin'" is the one that springs most readily to mind.

... was always great to hear the original songs because they were uniformly so good.

Ah, I just thought of 2 pretty embarrassing ones :
Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes's "If You Don't Know Me By Now" and Simply Red's 89 cover version (surely Harold Melvin's is considered the classic version, right !?)
And again, H. Melvin's "Don't Leave Me This Way" and The Communards' 86 cover version.

The Communards version was more a cover of Thelma Houston’s m/l contemporary discofied cover version of HM&BN’s Philly soul original.

The Psychedelic Furs' version of 'How Soon is Now' that was the theme from Charmed (or some other show?)

I don't think I'd heard any Smiths stuff outside of 'the Queen is Dead', I knew one of their major songs was called 'How Soon is Now' and I knew the song from that cover version but had no idea that's what it was.

There was a band called Dark Star who had a single out 'I am the Sun' around that same time, so I figured it was that.