We’ve all had that feeling: we’re singing along to a favourite song of ours, a song we’ve known for years, and then someone tells you it was actually a cover.
Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You, The Beatles’ Twist and Shout, Adele’s Make You Feel My Love, Amy Winehouse’s Valerie, and Bananarama’s Venus are just some of the most widely known and beloved covers of all time.
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But every now and again in pop music, some cover versions can be so much better, and become so much bigger, that people forget the original versions even existed in the first place.
It’s happened more times than you’d think, and some of the most famous recording artists in history have had their original compositions lost to time because a cover version became a phenomenon.
The list below features some of the biggest names of their era, performing some of their best known songs – and every single of them of them is a cover.
Let’s take a look. Let us know if you already knew about some of them.
Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
In 2014, Ben Haenow became the last X Factor champions to secure a number one hit with his winner’s single, claiming the Christmas chart topper that year with Something I Need.
Now, X Factor winners covering songs to launch their singing career is a tale as old as time. Only Strictly Come Dancing contestant Shayne Ward released an original song as his debut single – That’s My Goal – after winning the competition.
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Leona Lewis, Sam Bailey, Alexandra Burke, Leon Jackson, and even Steve Brookstein – all of them released covers to get to the top of the charts with their debut release.
And Ben Haenow carried on that tradition by covering a song which had been written and released by OneRepublic in 2013. Ryan Tedder and The X Factor’s Simon Cowell had a close working relationship from the mid-2000s onwards.
