Whether they turned a good song into a great song or just reinvigorated an old classic, these 20 acts secured the biggest hit of their career (so far) with a cover song.
Elvis Presley’s most successful song was a cover of Big Mama Thornton. The crown jewel of Elvis’ untouchable body of work, “Hound Dog,” sold over 10 million copies globally and topped the U.S. pop chart for 11 weeks, cementing a record that stood for a staggering 36 years.
Fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Joan Jett created one of music’s most illustrious solo careers after leaving the Runaways. However, her only No. 1 hit is “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” a cover of an Arrows song from the ‘70s. Most people don’t even know Jett’s mega-hit is a cover, proving how synonymous the song is with rock’s leather-clad queen.
Tesla’s “Signs” is instantly recognizable, but it was the second time the song was a huge hit. Five Man Electrical Band popularized the cut in 1971, selling half a million copies of the single. When Tesla made their version of “Signs,” it peaked all the way at No. 8, besting the original, which only hit No. 24. Thanks to “Signs,” Tesla sold a million copies of their 1990 album, Five Man Acoustical Jam.
Just your typical Los Angeles punk band named after a borough of New York City playing music in a traditional Mexican style.
Actually, that is pretty punk.
The Bronx have been recording since 2002. After three eponymous releases under that band name they released the first of (at this writing) three albums of mariachi originals.
Not what you’d expect from a punk band, but said singer Matt Caughthran, “[Mariachi El Bronx] was something that was a part of us that we didn’t really realize. I mean, being from Los Angeles and, you know, growing up and surrounded by Mexican culture, it just kind of happened […] We were writing two or three songs a day for that record, and the lyrics and everything just kind of shit out of all of us […] it was the funnest and easiest record we’ve ever made.”
UFOs, violins and killer songs – this the epic story of Electric Light Orchestra
Way back in the 60s, The Move were part of a peculiar pop dynasty, huge and respected in the UK while never having quite made it in the USA. By the mid-70s this most English of bands had morphed into one of the few genuinely huge bands in the world – the Electric Light Orchestra.
By 1978 ELO were selling out eight nights on the trot at Wembley Arena during a memorable global tour. When their star shone it was with a dazzling brilliance. I was lucky enough to be hanging onto their coat-tails through the 70s as they went into overdrive and into orbit, knocking out a string of exceptional hit singles and albums.
Back to The Move. Led by eccentric pop genius Roy Wood, their single Flowers In The Rain was the first ever track played on Radio 1 when the station was launched at 7am on September 30, 1967. They were Birmingham’s Beatles.
At that time, Wood was The Move: a massively inventive pop writer, a great singer and a consummate showman. He came to dislike the limitations The Move imposed upon his creative ambitions. His canvas was bigger, more colourful, a grand, kaleidoscopic, wide-screen pop-o-rama.
Manfred Mann’s nursery rhyme-ish 1968 single (#8 UK, #104 US) was one of the more often-played 45’s in my proud collection as a four-year-old, and more recently became a favorite of my granddaughter at about the same age.
But the more you learn about the song’s origins, the less like a nursery rhyme it all seems.
The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls was a real place. San Francisco’s Kirkland Hotel, a Victorian-style hostel located not far from the Fillmore, got its nickname from a Greta Garbo poster on its wall.
The characters in the song–written by American John Simon and featured in the 1968 counterculture documentary You Are What You Eat–were also real.
“Superman” (originally “Superspade” but altered for the song’s American release) was a drug dealer.
Some reminiscences of former residents:
I remember it well. The guys who opened it were enamored of the beats and want to recreate that era. When they were first opened (with very little in the way of renovation) some of the residents found a cache of old but never worn high button shoes in the basement and soon hippie chicks all over the bay area were wearing them. The last time I was there, I went to see Betsy, a skinny southern girl and a quy I owed 20 bills to and had lost track of for 2 years. Someone told me Betsy knew where he was and, indeed, he was living on the same floor as she. By then the building was overrun with hippies and the lobby was full of runaways just hanging out (must have been 50 or 60 young kids there). There were two SFPD detectives walking around with a poster board covered with photos asking: “Have you seen any of these people”. People were freely smoking weed in front of these cops. I was told the floors of the building had been informally divided up by drug of choice with potheads on the first floor, acidheads on the second and ending up with the Meth Monsters on the 5th. As you walked the hallway you could see that every door had been kicked in at least once (management? cops? thieves?) and had hasps and padlocks on them.
And…
We got one of the rooms with a bay window – on which we painted a picture of HULK. We were scared to death that heavy dopers would crash through the thin wooden door – but the Hulk seemed to scare them away.
Our room overlooked a little deli that sold tiny loaves of bread for like a nickel. I think we lived on those. We drove a VW bus of course.
And…
Super Spade, featured prominently in the film was a friend of my older brother, who lived at 408 Ashbury, a block-&-a-half north of Haight. Bro told me Super got into dealing drugs, and got himself killed in an unsolved crime.
The Kirkland was eventually demolished, and a church was opened on the site in 1975.
It’s odd that an English band would record a song extolling the rather unremarkable real-life residents of a seedy San Francisco hotel.
It’s odder still that it would be a top 20 hit in the UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Netherlands but not the U.S.
But oddest of all is that this nursery rhyme of a pop song (in reality an ode to flower power gone to seed) washing back onto American shores as an obscurity, would find the eager ears of a four-year-old on the east coast in 1968, and do the same once more in the 2020’s.
Every Moment Has A Song 