Famous songs you didn't know were covers

When the Australian-born singer Natalie Imbruglia burst on to the scene in 1997 with "Torn," her rousing anthem felt like a summation of an era fueled by female-centric pop that artists like Alanis Morrissette and festivals like Lilith Fair. Although the information had been out for a while, the internet went into a frenzy in mid-2017 upon discovering that the original version was by a group called Ednaswap, whose rendition was notably grungier and slower than Imbruglia's sweet, pained mid-tempo pop. Two years prior to that, Danish singer Lis Sørensen recorded a version in her native tongue called "Brændt" that the Imbruglia cover clearly borrows from.

Do you remember Robert Hazard? No? It's OK, as virtually no one does. He composed some very minor new wave hits like "Escalator for Life," but it was a demo he wrote called "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" that ultimately made its way into the hands of Cyndi Lauper. His version is schlocky to say the least, and it's clear that when it came to working on it in the studio, Lauper and producers Rick Chertoff and William Wittman were not above making some changes to make it more palatable, let's say. It later went on to win the Grammy for Record of the Year and became a generation-defining girl-pop classic. Heck, you probably have it stuck in your head right now.

Bratty as they could come off at times, Bowling For Soup were a remarkably fun band, and had a knack for some great pop-punk hooks. How surprising it was for many to find out that the cheeky "1985" — still their biggest hit in the U.S. — was actually a cover of an original by SR-71. The boys in Bowling did alter a few lyrics, but given that SR-71 were a bit more straightforward in their approach to early-2000s alternative rock, the Bowling version works a lot better as they fully embrace the humor of the lyrics both in performance and their clever music video for the track.

Had "Despacito" not happened, DJ Khaled's superstar collaboration "Wild Thoughts" would have easily been 2017's inescapable song of the summer, and while the lyrics are all new, the backing instrumental — not sampled but instead recreated from scratch — was actually a Carlos Santana  original from his Grammy-dominating 1999 comeback album "Supernatural." Co-produced by Wyclef Jean and featuring vocals by long-forgotten R&B duo The Product G&B, the guitar playing on the Santana original is so much crisper and full of life than Khaled's rehash. But hey: at least it gets Santana a bit of a career revival for the umpteenth time, right?

Alternate parts psychedelic and sly, "Black Magic Woman" helped put Carlos Santana on the map, making for his highest charting pre-Rob Thomas-era single. Yet two years prior, the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac ended up snagging their first charting entry with their looser, sloppier rendition of the number. Santana clearly made his version the new go-to, but the original still has its own charms, even if it hails from an album called "The Pious Bird of Good Omen."

While "American Boy" is still Estelle's only real hit of note, boy does it bang. Those jazzy guitar chords, that sleek drum beat, her own vocals pouring over the verses and dripping with personality -- no wonder it topped the charts in the U.K. Yet as fun as it is, the original actually came out a year earlier on will.i.am's solo record "Songs About Girls." The song was then called "Impatient" and had barely any lyrics over it, but the instrumental was ... exactly the same. Smart move digging up the past on this one, because the mixture of Estelle and Kanye elevated the material into something so much more memorable.

Just give Wyclef Jean all the money, OK? After the breakthrough international success that was 2001's "Laundry Service," Shakira decided to do a two-tier followup by releasing both a Spanish and an English language record in the same year. The Spanish one, "Fijación Oral Vol. 1," proved to be a surprise smash, with her Alejandro Sanz-featuring lead single "La Tortura" even hitting the U.S. Top 40. Her big English language followup single for "Oral Fixation Vol. 2?" Dead on arrival. Panicked, her label hired Wyclef Jean to work his magic, and he ended up pulling a song he already wrote for the "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights" soundtrack called "Dance Like This" and reworking it with Shakira, adding in new lyrics. The result? Her first-ever U.S. chart topper.

Does anyone remember "Head?" Released in 1968 and co-written by a drug-addled Jack Nicholson, The Monkees basically spit on their tween audience with this psychedelic, borderline-nonsensical polemic about growing tired with fame. There were Frank Zappa cameos and songs aplenty ("The Porpoise Song" was used in a fairly remarkable "Mad Men" episode), but perhaps the most memorable sequence was Davey Jones's  alternating black-and-white dance number, a strange little thing that, in fact, was a tucked-away Harry Nilsson tune (this was definitely not the first time they'd covered Mr. Schmilsson). The Monkees' rendition is a bit easier on the ears, but Nilsson's rendition has his gorgeous multi-tracked voice hitting those impossibly-high notes with astounding ease. Both versions were very memorable for very different reasons.

The story on this one really isn't all that sexy: Rihanna heard a song and she liked it. What's unusual are the actual forces at play. The original artist? Tame Impala, the critical darling psychedelic rock troubadours from down under. Closing out their 2015 album "Currents," "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" was a weird, minor-key electro jam that rode those synth grooves with "Umbrella"-like cymbal hits driving the deep psych home. Rihanna's rendition from her 2016 album "Anti?" Basically the exact same thing.

There is no getting around the fact that this is one of the weirdest damn things to ever happen. In 1977 and at the peak of their commercial powers, the Carpenters released this sci-fi themed mid-tempo song about intergalatic peace replete with lush strings and all the trappings of a standard Carpenters hit. The twist? The original version was released a year prior by Canadian group Klaatu, featuring all the sounds you'd expect from a group who were infamously considered to be a quietly-reunited Beatles only for it later to be revealed that nope: it was a group of some pop-minded dudes from Canada. The Carpenters' rendition was still a hit, making the U.S. Top 40 and even going Top 10 in the U.K.

Netflix's adaptation of the acclaimed young adult novel "13 Reasons Why," which deals with teen suicide in truly dramatic terms, had an early champion in the form of Selena Gomez, who was slated to star in it when it was initially considered as a movie. When it got turned into a TV series, Gomez stayed on as executive producer and contributed this very dramatic tune to the soundtrack. Some young fans, however, may be surprised to find out that her emotional coda of a track was in fact a cover of English synth-pop group Yazoo's cult hit of a debut single. Both versions hit all the right notes: emotional and desperately romantic with a nice layer of uplift applied to the whole affair. Yazoo — who are in some regions just known as Yaz — should be proud that their otherworldly anthem has found a new new audience.

Topping the charts in the U.K., "Tainted Love" has managed to become one of the things that ended up defining the entirety of the '80s (along with Rubik's Cubes and a-ha's "Take On Me"). No number of Marilyn Manson covers can take away its association with a truly crazy decade, but even fewer people know that Soft Cell's calling card was itself a cover. The original artist? Gloria Jones, a Northern soul singer who was herself given the song by Ed Cobb of The Four Preps. Her rendition is a little bit more slinky than Soft Cell's cold electro — neither of those dudes have anything on Jones' 1965 original, full of strained and pointed vocals and a few horn runs for good measure.

Even to this day, some think of Salt-N-Pepa as a one hit wonder — at least until you remember how many hits they had. "Push It," "Shoop," "Let's Talk About Sex" — the list goes on. Yet their dynamite collaboration with En Vogue "Whatta Man" remains their highest charting U.S. entry, even though it is actually a cover. Released in 1968 on the small Volt Records label, singer Linda Lyndell gave a powerhouse performance for a song that didn't fare particularly well when initially released. Amazingly, Lyndell stopped performing after "What a Man" came out due to threats from white supremacist groups, retiring until Salt-N-Pepa revived it some decades later. Lyndell finally performed it live for the first time in 2003.

To date, Amy Winehouse's highest-charting song is a Mark Ronson collaboration called "Valerie," rife with horns, strings, a quick drumbeat, and lyrics about asking whether or not you got a good lawyer. It reached #2 in the U.K., and comes from Ronson album called "Version." That title should be a giveaway, as that album is filled with reimaginings of both classic and contemporary songs. In this case, Ronson and Winehouse gave their touch to a tucked-away little number released just one year prior by fellow English rockers The Zutons, whose 2004 debut was once nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. Their version is a bit slower and rock-oriented, resulting in the brisk pace of the Ronson/Winehouse rendition becoming the now-definitive ...version.

Wait, really? One of the most iconic Madonna songs of the late '90s was a cover? "Zephyr in the sky at night / I wonder / Do my tears of mourning / Sink beneath the sun?" the song "Sepheryn" by Curtiss Maldoon goes, and, yep, those are the exact same lyrics to "Ray of Light." Admittedly, the two tracks sound nothing alike sonically, leaving the chorus to the 1998 chart-topping version as a pure concoction of both Madonna and electronic producer William Orbit. However, the folk duo of Dave Curtiss and Clive Maldoon are credited co-writers, saving a song that otherwise would've been lost to the sands of time.

For a track that hit the U.S. Top Five, it's pretty amazing how poorly "Don't Turn Around" has aged for Ace of Base. The production is dated, but the song nonetheless has surprisingly personal power and some ferocity behind the lyrics, painfully noting how hard it is to keep your emotions to yourself. As big as it was, it nonetheless came from an unexpected source: a Tina Turner B-side. Written by Albert Hammond and the songwriting icon that is Diane Warren, Turner's take is expectedly anthemic, more power ballad than tropically-infused pop number, but even in Tina's world, one artist's throwaway is another group's smash.

Joan Jett is a rock-and-roll pioneer in every single sense of the term, but, amazingly, her groundbreaking signature song was actually someone else's. Signed to the little-known RAK Records, The Arrows were small-bean hitmakers in the U.K., landing a couple chart entries in the mid-'70s. Their rendition of the song is more sneering than Jett's, but she brought an attitude that a bunch of boorish boys simply weren't able to muster, making it not only a hit, but an iconic track that still gets blasted from jukeboxes to this day.

To this day, some people still don't quite know what to make of Björk, and while her ever-shifting soundscapes and utter disregard for genre have taken her fans on quite the journey, it was her giant musical number "It's Oh So Quiet" (assisted by a glorious, Spike Jonze-directed music video) that helped cement her status as alternative pop queen. Perhaps it's not too surprising that such an idiosyncratic number is also a cover, originally released by singer Betty Hutton in 1951, and that the original itself was a B-side to her single "Murder, He Said." Her version isn't too radically different from Björk's, even down to the off-key screaming, proving that Björk knew exactly what she was doing when she wanted to make this song her own.

Poor Quiet Riot. The hair metal harbingers had been releasing singles since 1975, but no matter how hard they tried, nothing ever resonated with the charts. It wasn't until 1983 that they started finding real success, and while "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" was a low-key classic, it was their cover of Slade's "Cum On Feel the Noize" that cemented their status as the new flavor of the week among the headbanging crowd. Slade's original was one of many U.K. glam rock classics they penned, which is something Quiet Riot knew all too well. Afraid they wouldn't be able to re-create their one-off success, the big single push off their next album was ...another Slade cover.

It really doesn't matter which flavor you like on this one, 'cos it all tastes great. In one corner, you have inexplicable cult phenomenon Tiffany with her giddy, bubbly synth classic "I Think We're Alone Now." In other corner? Tommy James and the Shondells with a psychedelic garage-pop classic that hasn't aged a day. Both are classics in their own right, so take your pick.

Although it's hard to find a wedding DJ that doesn't have the sweet '80s reggae jam "Red Red Wine" by UB40 on their default playlist, the song's origins are all the more amazing, starting off as a slow-burning, low-charting 1967 single for songwriter Neil Diamond. If you get a chance, give a listen to Slate's Hit Parade podcast on the single, detailing how a member of The Pretenders and a revolt of radio DJs led this one-off album cut to later become UB40's signature number.

Of all the songs on this list, this one probably is the least familiar at first glance, but Kelly Clarkson's fourth full-length album was called "All I Ever Wanted," and the title track was unleashed as the album's fourth single. It didn't do very well, topping out at No. 96 on the Hot 100, but her rendition sounds virtually identical to the version released by Oklahoma hard rockers Aranda two years prior. Clarkson was clearly smitten with the group, as on that same record, she covered another Aranda song: "Whyyawannabringmedown."