Pop culture has a short memory for songwriting credits, and radio has never cared much about who wrote what first. Some of the catchiest, most instantly recognizable songs of the last sixty years reached the charts as somebody else’s leftovers, tracks that flopped once, twice, sometimes three times before the right voice finally cracked them open. Below are ten cases where the version everyone remembers wasn’t the version that came first, and where the artist who scored the hit never managed to repeat the trick.
Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” started as a B-side nobody noticed
Before Marc Almond ever touched a synthesizer, “Tainted Love” belonged to Gloria Jones. The song was composed by Ed Cobb, formerly of American group the Four Preps, and was originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964. It went nowhere at the time, tucked away as a B-side, though it later found a small but devoted audience in the UK’s Northern Soul clubs.
Jones actually cut the song twice, first in the mid sixties and again a decade later, and neither attempt made a dent commercially. In 1981, the song attained worldwide fame after being covered and reworked by British synth-pop duo Soft Cell for their album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. Soft Cell’s icy, minimal arrangement turned a soul stomper into a synth-pop landmark, and it remains the only major hit either member of the duo ever had outside of Soft Cell’s small catalog.
Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” traces back to prison work songs
Few one-hit wonders have a backstory as murky as Ram Jam’s. The original “Black Betty” dates back to chain-gang songs of the early 20th century, which is why not many people realized Ram Jam was covering it when they released their version in 1977. Folk historian and musician Lead Belly recorded an early version decades earlier, and the song had already passed through several hands by the time Ram Jam got to it.
What the New York rock band did with the material barely resembles a folk chant anymore. The Ram Jam version of “Black Betty” is virtually unrecognizable compared to the original song by Lead Belly. Fat guitar riffs and a stomping beat turned a work song into a stadium-rock staple, and it stands as the band’s only real chart moment.
Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” borrowed its most famous part from a different cover
This one has three layers, which makes it one of the stranger stories on this list. “Hooked on a Feeling” is a 1968 pop song written by Mark James and first recorded by American singer B. J. Thomas, whose version reached No. 5 in 1969 on the Billboard Hot 100. That alone would be a solid showing, yet almost nobody associates the song with Thomas today.
The chant that everyone actually remembers, the “ooga-chaka” hook, did not come from Thomas at all. English singer and pop mogul Jonathan King added the “Ooonga Chackas” in his 1971 version, based on the chant from Johnny Preston’s 1959 hit “Running Bear,” and that version was a UK hit reaching No. 23. When the Swedish band Blue Swede got hold of the song three years later, they kept King’s chant and pushed the whole thing to No. 1 in the United States, making it their only significant American hit.
Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” reworked a country ballad into a metal staple
“Love Hurts” started life as a fairly gentle tune before Scottish rockers got their hands on it. The Everly Brothers first released “Love Hurts”, a song originally written by Boudleaux Bryant, in the fall of 1960. Roy Orbison also cut a version around the same era, so by the time Nazareth arrived, the song had already had a full life as a soft harmony ballad.
Fourteen years after the Everlys’ recording, Nazareth slowed the tempo and leaned hard into Dan McCafferty’s raw, aching vocal delivery. The transformation turned a tender pop ballad into something closer to a power ballad template that later hard rock and metal bands would study closely. It remains the song most people associate with the band, even though Nazareth had a long and steady career in the UK and parts of Europe.
Pseudo Echo’s “Funkytown” started life as a disco anthem
“Funkytown” is one of those songs where the original and the cover barely sound like they belong to the same genre. The original of this song sounds quite different, since when Lipps Inc. released the first version of “Funkytown” it was a disco masterpiece. That 1980 version topped the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the defining disco singles of its era.
Six years later, Australian synth-rock band Pseudo Echo stripped away the disco horns and rebuilt the song around pulsing synthesizers. The synth-driven 1980s rock band released their own rendition and that, too, raced up the Billboard charts, hitting No. 6 on the Hot 100. For most listeners under a certain age, that version is the one that comes to mind first, even though it arrived as a cover nearly a decade after the original charted.
After the Fire’s “Der Kommissar” hid an Austrian new wave hit in plain sight
This is a case where the cover traveled much further than the original ever did in America. This British rock tune took the world by storm in 1982, and after The Fire’s version of the song became an international hit and managed to reach No. 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. For most American listeners, that was the first and only time they heard the song.
What they likely did not realize was that the track had already been a hit overseas under a different artist’s name. After the Fire’s version is actually a cover of an Austrian new wave song by Falco, and the original version was released just one year earlier and enjoyed quite a bit of fame in Europe before crossing the Atlantic in translated form. It’s a rare instance of an American cover outperforming a European original on US soil.
Alien Ant Farm’s “Smooth Criminal” reimagined a King of Pop classic as nu-metal
Few covers on this list involve a bigger gap in stardom between original artist and cover artist. “Smooth Criminal” by Alien Ant Farm was all over the radio when the rock band released it in 2001, though some might not know that “Smooth Criminal” was originally produced by King of Pop Michael Jackson in 1988. Jackson’s version was a slick, percussive pop-R&B production that became one of his signature tracks.
Alien Ant Farm’s take swapped the moonwalk choreography for distorted guitars and a nu-metal edge, and it caught on fast with a rock audience that had little connection to Jackson’s original fan base. The two songs couldn’t sound more different, in a good way. It became the band’s defining moment, and despite a respectable career afterward, nothing else they released reached the same cultural saturation point.
The Ataris turned a wistful Don Henley song into pop-punk nostalgia
Not every cover on this list is decades removed from its original; some jumped genres almost immediately. The Ataris’ version of “The Boys Of Summer” is actually a cover of a 1984 rock song by the Eagles’ Don Henley. Henley’s original was a moody, synth-tinged reflection on lost love and faded summers, and it had already been a hit in its own right.
The Ataris reworked it for the early 2000s pop-punk crowd, sanding down the moodiness and speeding up the tempo. The Ataris’ version of the song is very early-2000s in the best way possible, and the song hit No. 20 on the Hot 100 that year and also did quite well on other charts in other countries. It became the band’s only real crossover hit, introducing an entire generation to a Henley song they might never have otherwise encountered.
Nicolette Larson’s “Lotta Love” was a Neil Young leftover
Sometimes a songwriter simply hands a track to someone else, and that is more or less what happened here. Young didn’t release “Lotta Love” as a single on his ninth album, Comes a Time, but it was the main single from Larson’s eponymous album, Nicolette. Accounts differ on exactly how Larson got hold of the song, but the outcome was clear enough on the charts.
Her version leaned into a smoother, radio-friendly soft-rock production that suited the era perfectly. Her version peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it remains the song most casual listeners associate with her name, even though Young’s own catalog is filled with far more famous compositions.
Musical Youth’s “Pass the Dutchie” was built from someone else’s blueprint
This one stands out because the cover isn’t just a reworking of a single song. This reggae new wave hit was a big one for Musical Youth in 1982. The young British-Jamaican group’s version had an effortless, breezy quality that made it feel like a fresh original composition rather than borrowed material.
In reality, the song had a more complicated pedigree behind it. Surprisingly, despite sounding so seamless and natural for the band, “Pass The Dutchie” was written by musicians other than Musical Youth, and this cover is unique because it’s actually a blend of three different songs. It became an international hit and remains the one song most people can name from the group’s short run of fame.
Final thoughts
What ties these songs together isn’t just the fact that they were covers. It’s that the versions people remember often bear almost no resemblance to where the songs started, whether that meant slowing a soul number into synth-pop, speeding up a moody rock ballad into pop-punk, or blending three reggae tracks into one seamless single.
Chart success rarely rewards originality alone. Sometimes it rewards timing, arrangement, and the willingness of one artist to hear potential in a song that another artist had already set aside.
