Four famous songs you might not know were covers

Have you ever loved a song and forever associated it with a particular artist - only to find out later that it’s a cover version?

Many tracks that have been re-recorded by different artists over the years. While some cover versions stay true to the essence of the original, others have achieved chart success having undergone a drastic reinvention.

BBC Bitesize has compiled a list of four acclaimed songs that you may not have known were originally someone else’s record.

I Will Always Love You

Perhaps best known as Whitney Houston’s iconic power ballad, I Will Always Love You was released as part of the soundtrack for the 1992 film The Bodyguard.

It spent a then-record of 14 weeks at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts and is one of the best-selling singles by a female artist.

But the song was first penned and originally recorded by the country musician Dolly Parton almost two decades prior.

The track, which celebrated its 50 year anniversary in 2024, was also admired by the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.

In a 2023 interview, Parton explained that Elvis had reached out to her to discuss recording a cover, something she described as ‘the greatest thing that's ever happened to me as a songwriter.’

But it wasn’t meant to be, as a dispute over songwriting rights ended any notion of a potential rendition. She recalled having to walk away from the opportunity, saying, “Of course I cried every night about that.”

Torn

In 1997, Australian musician and actor Natalie Imbruglia released her breakthrough Torn.

The single, which earned her a BRIT Award for Best International Female and a Grammy nomination, sold over one million copes in the UK alone.

But the song was originally written and performed by members of an alternative rock band called Ednaswap.

Released under the title, Burned, it had already been covered twice before Imbruglia’s rendition brought it into the mainstream.

The song was co-written by singer Anne Preven, band member Scott Cutler, and The Cure producer Phil Thornalley.

In 2017, Preven told an Australian news outlet, “We didn’t think anything of Natalie’s version - (we thought) it’s just another European cover. […] Until, all of a sudden, we get a call saying it’s a number one in the UK.”

But that wasn’t the end of Preven and Cutler’s songwriting partnership.

In 2007 they helped co-write the Beyonce song Listen for the Dream Girls soundtrack.

Twist and Shout

Written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns (also known as Bert Russell), Twist and Shout was first recorded by a vocal group called The Top Notes in 1961. But it wasn’t until the following year that it became a chart hit, when it was performed by the American soul trio The Isley Brothers.

The Beatles’ version of Twist and Shout was produced at the end of a 12-hour recording session in 1963. It was released on the Liverpudlian band’s first UK album, Please Please Me.

When The Beatles took to recording the track, which was the last of ten songs recorded for the album that day, John Lennon was about to lose his voice. Lennon later recalled in 1976, “I was always bitterly ashamed of it, because I could sing it better than that; but now it doesn’t bother me. You can hear that I’m just a frantic guy doing his best.”

Following the album’s release, the song continued to be a part of The Beatles’ live set and was the closing number of their Sunday Night at the London Palladium performance that same year - just as Beatlemania began to take effect.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

When Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was released by Cyndi Lauper in the early 1980s, it became a smash hit. But the song, which has been hailed as an anthem for female empowerment, was originally recorded by male rock musician Robert Hazard.

The track, which Hazard claimed he wrote in 15 minutes, was discovered by Lauper’s producer while looking for songs for her debut album.

But he asked Lauper whether she’d like to cover the song, she gave a resounding no, stating that it was wrong for her.

That was until she worked on the song arrangement and made some lyrical changes, so that the story was sang from a female perspective.

“I began to cut this out, cut that out, this needs a melody here, make this change bring this together,” Lauper told Billboard in 2023. “All of a sudden, it had this new life.”

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun went on to become one of Lauper’s signature hits and in January 2022 the song’s music video surpassed one billion views on YouTube.

This article was published in April 2025