Less famous covers that you knew before the more famous originals

I knew Scissor Sisters' Comfortably Numb first. Still think it bangs?

did hearing the Beyonce version undermine the primacy of the Lil Wayne track in your mind, or was it......... impossible to supplant?

Lana Del Rey's cover of Sublime's "Doin' Time" rewrite of Summertime

Is Camper Van Beethoven’s version of Pictures of Matchstick Men more or less famous than the Status Quo’s?

I would say less because it hit #12 on the US charts and was played a lot on rock radio when I was a kid; I knew the CvB version was a cover from the get-go.

Here's one: David Bowie's version of "God Only Knows" on Tonight. I knew of the original, and remember thinking incredulously, "isn't this supposed to be one of the greatest songs ever?"

"Pictures of Matchstick Men" seems like one of those Sixties songs along with "For Your Love" and "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" that didn't make the jump from 80s AOR playlists to 90s-onward classic rock radio. CBVs cover came right in the transition, and was a label suggestion to get them on the radio, IIRC.

One time as a kid I was listening to the Naked Eyes version of "Always Something There", and my dad came by and said, "this was the first song I heard after coming to America in the 60s" and for years it gave me a very mistaken impression of how old the Naked Eyes version was

I also used to like the Howard Jones cover of "I.G.Y." a lot until I realized it was a cover, and a very lazy one at that. Basically it's the original with Jones trying to sound like Fagan and crappy synth horns in place of real ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-bgiiTxhzM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBfFDTPPlaM

Is the Love reworking of My Little Red Book now the familiar version as in the better known one.
Not sure to what extent they were aware of teh Mannfred Mann version which features in What's Up Pussycat. Must be several recordings where a set up like that has happened where the once lesser known cover is now the known one.

Also seeing way up thread a reference to Season of the Witch , is the Donovan version well known? I think it has been a fav song of mine in the Joolz and Brian Auger version since my early teens. BUt it seems several acts had versions in the late 60s.

Where does First Time Ever i Saw Your Face fit is the Macoll original as well known as Roberta Flack's? I assume her That's No Way To Say Goodbye is less known than Leonard cohen's? sublime anyway.

Love and Rockets "Ball of Confusion" before The Temptations
Devo "Working in the Coal Mine" before Lee Dorsey
10,000 Maniacs "Peace Train" before Cat Stevens (although I'm sure the Cat Stevens version was lodged somewhere in the recesses of my memory)

*I've still never even heard the Macoll original of "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_ozjAu_vM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxgMGk9JPVA

Also,

Lush "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" before Middle of the Road or Mac and Katie Kissoon, whichever one considers the most famous version (for quite a while I thought it must have been an ABBA song)

I'm the US charts at least, the ATF version did better than the Falco version, and the Quiet Riot version did better than the Slade version.

I'm sure I mentioned but Will to Power's "Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird" was the first time I'd heard either song.....I didn't hear the OG "Freebird" until middle of high school, and Frampton's BILYW only a few years before that.

Yeah, I thought everyone in North America knew the Quiet Riot version of that song before the Slade one. Only big music fans even know it was a Slade song!

I only learned Slade did the original after I played Vice City and heard the Quiet Riot one for the first time in years, and then looked it up.

did hearing the Beyonce version undermine the primacy of the Lil Wayne track in your mind, or was it......... impossible to supplant?

― honkin' on bobo, honkin' with my feet ten feet off of beale (Doctor Casino), Monday, March 1, 2021 7:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'm p sure I must have heard the Bey track a few times before, but not really compartmentalised the "To the left" part enough to recognise that that was what LW was referencing. But I was really into "Comfortable". Not sure which one is most prominent in my mind now because I must have heard "Irreplaceable" a lot more times I recent years as it's a work radio staple and also hugely excellent

I knew "Alone Again Or" as an early Boo Radleys song before realising it was a cover of Love.

All those songs on Incesticide, like "Turnaround", I didn't realise were covers. I was really surprised to find out that was a Devo song: it just sounds like something Kurt would write

Galaxie 500 – 'Isn't It a Pity'

There are lots of sections on The Beach Boys "Smile" which I didn't really know were ripped straight out of the Great American Songbook. I like how that record is kind of a mix album in that respect

Something I did know, when I was very young and not familiar with the concept of cover versions, was that Strawberry Fields Forever was BY THE BEATLES AND NOT BY CANDY FLIP! I was so annoyed with Candy Flip for putting the wool over everyone's eyes and convincing them that it was their song when it wasn't. SO ANNOYED!

Orgy – 'Blue Monday'

(I was 13 at the time.)

Most of the songs on Cat Power's The Covers Record.

it was like a year ago when I learned the version of "Dream Weaver" I thought was the original was in fact the SECOND re-recorded version of Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver" from 1992

Strawberry Fields Forever was BY THE BEATLES AND NOT BY CANDY FLIP!

Holy crap you people are old. xp

lol I tried to say you people are young. I'm a few Belgian Tripels into the evening.

Tbf I'm at the midway point where I'm simultaneously young and old.

I think it's fair to always feel that way.

I guess they qualify more like samples or remixes rather than covers but I knew these hip hop versions from the late 90s before the original ones:

Pras - Ghetto Supastar (interpolation of islands in the stream)
Puff Daddy - I’ll be missing you (The Police)
Pras, Wyclef Jean and Queen - Another Bites the Dust

I guess also every song in the Space Jam soundtrack that was a cover.

Although I think that one is an example of covers being biggest hits than the originals.

People itt hearing Beatles covers before the originals makes me feel either very old or very young depending on what was the cover they heard.

xxxpost
Klaus Nomi was my first exposure to You Don't Own Me

Ditto

Pras - Ghetto Supastar (interpolation of islands in the stream)

Yeah, same for me.
Also, on the same level, I only found out a few months ago that Vampire Weekend's "Step" was based on Souls of Mischief's "Step to My Girl". The first time I heard the latter, by chance through a random Spotify playlist, was a WTF moment !

10,000 Maniacs "Hello In There" and "Everyday is Like Sunday"
Rod Stewart "Tom Traubert's Blues"

INterstellar overdrive and Love's My Little Red Book does nicking a semi remembered part of the main riff count as a cover?
& how does teh Steptoe an Son theme tune feel about taht

Pras - Ghetto Supastar (interpolation of islands in the stream)

Same for me with this one. In fact I think I only knowingly heard Islands In The Stream for the first time a few years ago and had previously thought Pras was interpolating the verse from "It Must Have Been Love" by Roxette

John Martyn Solid Air vs Pharaoh Sanders Astral Travelling (which I think came before Lonnie Liston Smith's own version)

A Certain Ratio's version of "Shack Up" by Banbarra is my example

I don't hear anything other than a similar pace and mood between "Solid Air" and "Astral Travelling"?

this happened to me soo much bc when napster first came out i mainly used it to download stuff i coulnd find in the shops - import-only bonus tracks and b-sides that were often covers, but it wasnt always obvious bc i didnt have the liners with writing credits or anything.

Vanessa Williams - 'Work to Do'. My eyes just about shot out of my head when I stumbled upon the Isley Brothers' AMAZING original a few years back.

Oh, lol, I was having second thoughts about the Isleys' being the more famous one and double checked: Isley Brothers hit 51 on the charts and Vanessa hit 52, so it scans.

One time as a kid I was listening to the Naked Eyes version of "Always Something There", and my dad came by and said, "this was the first song I heard after coming to America in the 60s" and for years it gave me a very mistaken impression of how old the Naked Eyes version was

for all the oldies radio I listened to growing up I never knew this song was a cover until just now, so I don't think the Naked Eyes version is less famous than the original

Ditto "Tainted Love" at about the same time; both were hits and you needed to be informed of their coverness.

Tin Tin Out was the first version of 'Always something there' I heard, and I didn't know it was a cover until years later.

xp i'd bank on the soft cell version being much better known though

(and yeah the tin tin out versh was the first one i heard too)

There's been baffled discussion 'round these parts before re: 'Always Something There to Remind Me'. Partly because the original wasn't that huge a hit and wasn't an oldies radio staple, partly because the Naked Eyes cover, while released by a British band, pretty much turfed out in the UK but became a huge hit in the US and elsewhere.

I first knew "Eight Miles High" from the To the Power of 3 album (the ELP minus Lake album that even the hardcore fans don't seem to know about)

I might have know the Husker Du cover first? Is that possible? *racks brain*