The song was originally written and performed by Dolly Parton in 1974. She wrote it for her mentor and partner Porter Wagoner after leaving their band.
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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Adding to this extensive list (thanks for doing this - TIL about Misirlou!)
Hound Dog by Elvis was a cover of the Big Mama Thorton version. Elvis was a prolific thief of songs from Black musicians.
Like 1/3 of Sublime songs were covers.
Half-cover, Boney M's Rasputin is built around a hook that is a Balkan song that is debated as to the origin. The documentary about it is sort of hilarious.
Nirvana's Man Who Sold the World was a David Bowie cover
Sinead O'Conner's Nothing Compares 2U is a Prince cover (hers is better), and both are covers of an earlier version by The family
Louie Louie by the Kingsmen was a cover of a 1957 version by Richard Berry
All Along the Watchtower originally by Bob Dylan.
Respect was originally by Otis Redding, not Aretha
House of the Rising Sun was an oooold folk song that the Animals just did really well.
Me and Bobby McGee....Lady Marmalade...Proud Mary...Video Killed the Radio Star...Tainted Love....Bette Davis Eyes...Taco's weird version of Puttin' On the Ritz...Cum On Feel the Noise.... all the popular ones are covers.
I could go on, but covers are just really common. That's the beauty of art, it can be an interpretation of something in a new way.
David Bowie apparently got a lot of comments for "covering a Nirvana song" despite the Nirvana Unplugged recording ending with Cobain saying "That was a David Bowie song."
Probably fueled his legal battle with Vanilla Ice.
‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was written by Prince, as The Family was his band. Not sure if Prince released a solo version before O'Connor: Wikipedia only mentions a live version from three years later.
‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ was written by Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley, and released by Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club, and three months later by Horn and Downes' band The Buggles, which initially also included Woolley. So it's a weird case of two versions more than a cover.
Thanks for the clarification. I had always thought it was Prince and just figured some other band got mixed up in there i just wasnt aware of. Turns out Prince's band's name was my blind spot.
I had to look that up, actually, because it's typically asserted that Prince wrote the song for O'Connor. I'm not into his music, so didn't know about The Family before.