Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/the-one-hit-wonder-songs-that-are-secretly-covers/
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…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-08-31 05:40:00
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