re: Confession time. Songs you didn't know were covers?

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Wild Horses - Covered by The Rolling Stones...original by The Flying Burrito Brothers

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Wild Horses is a Jagger/Richards original. They gave it to FBB, just like they gave"As Tears Go By" to Marianne Faithful before they actually cut it themselves. But to me that doesn't make it a cover.

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Kristofferson wrote it...but a dozen people recorded it before he did.

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Someone To Lay Down Beside me was the same. Written by Bonoff. Recorded first by Ronstadt.

My favorite artist's name is Weird Al.. A lot of people do covers of his songs. I believe Green Day did a cover of "Canadian Idiot."
Michael Jackson based his hit song "Beat It" off of Weird Al's "Eat It"

It's funny because these bands add different words. It's crazy man.

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No. Technically it is NOT a cover. You can't "cover" something you wrote yourself. That's not how it works. The Burrito version was the first one released, but they didn't write it. So "technically" none of this falls under the "cover" terminology.

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Do the Stones have to pay Gram Parson's estate a license fee when they play Wild Horses? I'm guessing not.

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It's My Life - No Doubt


Had a local radio station on and heard this version and was thoroughly confused. Covers are everywhere.

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Talk Talk is amazing. I can't change the No Doubt version fast enough when I hear it on the radio.

It's not all that different, honestly.

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Do the Stones have to pay Gram Parson's estate a license fee when they play Wild Horses?

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That doesn't enter into it at all. If I use the actual recording, I need the original artist's permission. But, to record the song myself, I have to receive permission and pay royalties to the songwriter(s).



"cover version

n. A recording of a song that was previously recorded or made popular by another. Also called cover song."

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.


So, by fair reading of the definition, the Stones' Wild Horses and Willie Nelson's Crazy are covers of other artists songs, despite these cats being the songwriters.

They get all the songwriter royalties, though, regardless if they record it or not, so there's that. In other words, Willie is still makes money from Cline's hit half a century later.

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Common sense > splitting hairs

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Well, that wasn't what I was trying to do. Songwriting and recording are completely separate crafts. Some songwriters simply don't have the acumen to record anything other than, perhaps a guitar or piano demo.

Some elite recording artists don't have the background or ability to write songs.

Particularly in the case if it is a huge hit for the non-writing artist. Let's take Patsy Cline's "Crazy" just as a fairly extreme example. I think it is fairly considered a cover, even when recorded by Willie Nelson. Cline's was an international hit - and the royalties from that probably bought Willie A LOT of weed until the 1980s.

On the other hand, I can see Wild Horses being argued the other way - while "technically" (meaning, by the definition I listed above) the Rolling Stones' version could be considered a cover, I wasn't really familiar with the FBB version until way, way, way later. Few can argue that it was as big a hit as the Stones version.

So, maybe an exclusion to the "cover" tag could be if the songwriters ultimately equal or exceed an earlier recorded version. And it is likely to be fairly rare among recording artists who also write songs, as they will almost always record a quality song first - very few exceptions, I would think.

I mean - Lauper was mentioned a couple of times in the thread (at least once by me) - if The Hooters record "Time after Time", is it a cover? One of their members (Rob Hyman) co-wrote the song with Lauper.

Of course it is.

Staying with the Hooters theme - if Eric Bazilian (or The Hooters) records (and they have, live at least) - "One of Us" is it a cover of the Joan Osbourne song?

Of course it is.

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Did Joe Cocker ever do anything that wasn't a cover?

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Not as much as most people think.

Ice Cream Man by Van Halen

Written and originally recorded by the Chicago blues musician John Brim in 1953. Also recorded by Elmore James.

I just learned this recently.

"Dedicate one to the ladies ..."