6 Songs That Rocked Hard Before They Got Covered and Became Famous
If you ever find yourself unmoved by new music, here’s a trick: Type the name of the song into YouTube and then add the words “metal cover.” If that doesn’t do it for you, try “rock cover” or “pop punk cover.” You’ll hear the song reinterpreted by some cover band with guitars and drums while keeping the song’s melody and even maintaining the original spirit.
That’s not to say songs get objectively better when they get harder. Quite a few times over the last few decades, someone heard a song and said, “Let’s try that again, but this time, let’s remove the rock part.” And that’s how the song became a hit.
Mariah Carey’s ‘Without You’ Was a Cursed Rock Song
You might know the song “Without You” best from the version Mariah Carey released in 1994:
Some of you might instead know it from the version released by Air Supply three years earlier, or from the version released by Harry Nilsson in 1971, popularly known as “the original version”:
You also might know one of the 200 or so other cover versions that have been officially recorded over the years. In all these versions, the most striking line is the singer belting out “I can’t liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive,” which sounds (depending on the artist) either like a true vocal triumph or like someone stretching out a note to fill dead space.
It’s striking then to hear the true original version of the song, released by the Welsh group Badfinger just one year before the Harry Nilsson cover. It’s still a power ballad. But a guitar now hums, and that line “I can’t live”? The live is now a single short syllable.
Badfinger’s Pete Ham and Tom Evans wrote the song, combining elements from two different songs they’d been working on independently. It’s nice to imagine that these two got rich off royalties from so many other people recording their own versions, but that’s not what happened. Their manager, Stan Polley, got full control over their money and in 1975 outright drained their accounts. Ham hanged himself the following day. His suicide note read, “Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me.”
Ham was 27. And Evans? Evans also hanged himself, immediately after arguing on the phone with remaining members of the band over “Without You” royalties. Knowing this, you’ll never again react the same way on hearing the line “I can’t live.”
‘The Next Episode’ Comes From an Experimental 1960s Piece
In “The Next Episode” by Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Nate Dogg, the hook is very important. Without it, you’d just be listening to three guys introduce one another.
Okay, the song is more than that, of course, but the hook remains very memorable, and when other songs use it, we say they’re sampling “The Next Episode.” But that hook is itself a sample, from the 1967 song “The Edge” by David McCallum. Many people heard the original song for the first in the movie Baby Driver, and they assumed wrongly that they were hearing a reworking of “The Next Episode.”
After you hit play on the above video, you’ll find yourself waiting to hear what vocals are about to kick in, and how different they’ll surely be from turn-of-the-century hip-hop. Those vocals never come. It’s an entirely instrumental piece. It comes off like the soundtrack to a 1960s spy movie — which is appropriate because McCallum was most famous not for his music but for starring in the spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
People today are more likely to know McCallum from the astonishing 20 seasons he spent in the cast of NCIS. You can currently stream NCIS on Netflix and Paramount+. There are many seasons to choose from, and whenever a case-of-the-week bores you, you can simply click “Next Episode.”
‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ Started Out on a Rock Concept Album
“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” was written by Jim Steinman, the man behind other power ballads such as “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” All these songs have one well-known abridged version that played on the radio as well as a longer version that was deemed too epic for the airwaves. Also, all three have gothic music videos featuring beds and candles.
The recording above is by Celine Dion and is the most famous version. The song began, however, with a group called Pandora’s Box, who got together solely to record one album of Jim Steinman material called Original Sin. Some of the tracks on the album are spoken-word performances. Several of the songs ended up being recorded by other artists, some in Steinman’s German vampire musical. One song is an instrumental medley of several songs that came before, just to remind you of what you already heard. The album flopped completely, and the members amicably parted ways, never to sing together again.
But the album’s commercial failure didn’t stop them from shooting a music video for “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” We said before that Jim Steinman videos always have fire and bedsheets, and this is no exception. It also goes further, with nudity and orgies. Steinman’s manager saw it and said, “It’s a porno movie!” This explains why they put such trouble into doing a video for a song that wasn’t being released as a single — it’s pure art.
Watch the video to hear the piano of the Celine Dion version retained but with added guitar solos and an opening monologue. But when you watch it, just make sure you’re not at work.
‘Mickey’ Was Sung by Guys, About ‘Kitty’
Toni Basil’s song “Mickey” from 1981 launched the hitherto unknown genre known as cheerleader pop. In the decades that followed, artists from Gwen Stefani to Chappell Roan were unable to record any song with any sort of chant without people saying, “Oh, so she’s doing a ‘Mickey.’”
The song was a cover, having been originally recorded two years earlier by a British band called Racey. The original mercifully omits the famous “Oh Mickey you’re so fine” chant, but the lyrics are otherwise nearly identical — except here, it’s a guy singing to “Kitty” rather than a girl singing to “Mickey.” Given traditional relationship dynamics, it actually feels far more expected that a song about begging for sex would be sung by a guy to a woman rather than the other way around.
This origin for “Mickey” sheds light on a longstanding controversy. “Mickey” contains the following lines:
So come on and give it to me any way you can
Any way you want to do it, I'll take it like a man
A woman offering choices on how to give it to her, and saying she’d take it like a man if you want? Was this a reference to anal sex, wondered shocked listeners? Basil weighed in on this, saying, “No! That’s ridiculous. You change the name from boy to girl, and they read anything they want into it. When it’s a guy singing about a girl, it’s a sweet line. But when a girl sings it, it must mean butt-fucking!”
By all means, take Basil at her word. But we can’t help but notice that these lines were a little different in the original, and other than the name change from “Kitty” to “Mickey,” this is one of the few alterations in the whole song. In “Kitty,” the words were:
So come on and give it to me any way you can
Anytime you want to do it, I'll take it like a man
For some reason, Basil changed it to “any way” from “anytime.” This changed “take it like a man” to be about technique rather than scheduling, and this (beyond just the gender-flipping) was what raised people’s suspicions.
The line immediately after this features another of the song’s few lyric changes. In the original, Racey sang, “Don’t leave me in this jam,” while Basil sings, “Don’t leave me in the damp.” We will always err on the side of assuming innuendo like this is intentional. We’d go ask Basil for another confirmation, but she’s 80 years old now and might simply feel too embarrassed to share the truth.
‘Torn’ Was First Grunge, Then Danish
“Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia was the biggest song of the entire 1990s on Top 40 radio. That’s impressive from a purely statistical standpoint. The song came to America in the summer of 1998, so you’d think it couldn’t possibly have been played enough to compete with other songs that were played across more years. But charts are weird sometimes. Also, the song was never released as a physical single in America, so other tallies of the decade’s biggest songs act like it never existed.
Natalie Imbruglia is Australian, having become famous on the show Neighbors, which also gave the world such celebrities as Margot Robbie and Guy Pearce. Before “Torn” was Australian, it was Norwegian, a hit in 1996 by a singer named Trine Rein.
Before it was Norwegian, it was Danish. And here, we don’t just mean the nationality Danish but the language Danish, as it was sung entirely in that language and was named “Brændt.” Lis Sørensen’s “Brændt” came out in 1993 and was the earliest recording of “Torn.”
It was not, however, the earliest version of the song. Before anyone recorded the song professionally, it was performed by the original songwriters, California band Ednaswap. Though the other versions we listed spanned a couple continents and a couple languages, this is the one that was the most different from the others. It’s grunge. Listen to this raw version even once, and you might never be able to take any of the covers seriously again.
Some people will look at this footage (shot on someone’s camcorder?) and say, “Yeah, that was the ’90s.” Other people will see the Natalie Imbruglia video and say, “Yeah, that was the ’90s.” The ’90s were a lot.
‘Paper Planes’ Came from the Clash
The origins of the sample in M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” will be obvious to anyone who already knows “Straight to Hell” by the Clash. “Straight to Hell” is a less obscure song than any of the other originals we talked about today. Still, if you’ve not heard it before, you’ll be surprised by how familiar the intro sounds, so take a listen:
We’ve been thinking of 2008’s “Paper Planes” lately because of the news that singer M.I.A. endorsed Donald Trump for president. This was unexpected, and not just because she’s British. “Paper Planes,” her most famous song, is all about anti-immigrant attitudes. It’s about the idea that immigrants are sneaking across the border and will kill you and take your money.
Specifically, it parodies that idea. It says those things, which are central to the Trump campaign, but it says them satirically (M.I.A.’s family were refugees, and she’s had issues entering America). Plenty of songs are about politics, but we can think of just a couple hits in history that we can sum up as “Immigrants suck, but I’m being sarcastic when I say that, obviously.” The Clash’s “Straight to Hell” is one of the few others in that category, which is why “Paper Planes” samples it.
So, we must assume future Trump rallies will feature this song, and after every few lines, the crowd will shout, “But unironically.”
Apparently, M.I.A.’s endorsement has more to do with opposing vaccines than anything related to immigration, but if you don't know that, it comes off as a very specific reversal. It’s a more specific reversal than, say, all those bands who call for revolution when they’re young and then back whoever protects their wealth when they get older. In those cases, it’s actually a consistent philosophy of “I want to be free from rules and want what makes me rich” throughout their life.
No, it’s more like if Woodie Guthrie came out and endorsed Trump, after previously being famous for his song “Old Man Trump,” about his racist landlord Trump.
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