Singers who made their careers by singing cover songs

Who cares

Bette Midler

Anne Murray!

Bette Midler

Who cares

Whitney Houston Saving all my love for you Greatest Love of All All the Man I Need I Will Always Love You I'm Every Woman

Tiffany

Whitney Houston owns this fucking thread. The bulk of her discography is nothing but covers. Then again, she did most of those songs better than the original (except I'm Every Woman) and made them standards.

To be fair, most of Laura Branigan's were rewritten from European songs in other languages. Then others covered her songs, and oddly did a worse job on the song than she did, but had more success with it.

Aretha.

Olivia Newton-John. I was amazed at how many of her album cuts were covers until I got older and realized they were sang first by someone else. I still prefer Olivia's version's though.

The best singers can make other people's songs their own. Aretha Franklin certainly falls in that category but so does Michael Buble.

Barbra Streisand owns this thread.

Who really owns this thread: Whitney, Barbara or Aretha.

[quote] Olivia Newton-John. I was amazed at how many of her album cuts were covers until I got older and realized they were sang first by someone else. I still prefer Olivia's version's though.

That's not "making a career" on them, dear. That's called filler.

Not to defend Celine, but she's hardly made a career on covers. Not writing your own songs is very different than recording "cover versions."

Linda Ronstadt was the Queen of dover songs.

Everybody used to sing covers of songs other people wrote before The Beatles came to America.

Frank Sshenatra

R18, A cover is a song that someone else RECORDED first, and the Beatles had plenty of those on their early albums: Anna, Chains, Boys, A Taste of Honey, Kansas City...

Those mop-topped muttonheads even sang our love song!

The Beatles did nothing but cover songs for the first few years of their existence, and before the were even The Beatles.

What you guys fail to realize until 1965 it was very common for many singers to release the same song. Billboard and Cashbox were full of "wars" to see which version would go highest up the chart first.

This slowly died off by the middle 70s. Virtually every band was making "covers" of songs from previous years.

Songwriters as careers declined sharply in the late 70s, till now you have who? Dianne Warren, probably the last of the career songwriters and she has been rewriting the same song for the last 30 years.

Linda Ronstadt did a lot of covers and originals, but she stands out that all of her hit singles in the 70s were covers, except for "How Do I Make You," (which launched Billy Steinberg who also wrote, True Colors, Like A Virgin, So Emotional, The Eternal Flame, I Touch Myself, and many others)

Olivia Newton-John did a lot of covers early on as did everyone else, but her singles outside of "Come On Over," and "He Ain't Heavy...He's My Brother" were original. (One might include "Please Mr Please" but that was by her ex-boyfriend and no one heard it originally anyway).

Donny Osmond....

Bette Midler Owns This Thread

Her Greatest Hits Album is almost entirely covers: Hello In There, Do You Want To Dance, From A Distance, Chapel of Love, When A Man Loves A Woman, Miss Otis Regrets, Wind Beneath My Wings, Shiver Me Timbers, Friends, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, One For My Baby, In My Life

The entire Beaches and For The Boys albums

And of course the entire Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney albums

In addition, she covered: Old Cape Cod, For Free, Strangers in the Night, Under The Boardwalk, Night And Day, Every Road Leads Back To You, Just My Imagination and about 20 other songs I'm too tired to think of.

Who cares

Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" was not the original version. I just recently learned this.

Every Elvis Impersonator would like to serenade you, OP.

Cilla Black

Manfred Mann

David Lee Roth. And most of them were better (at least the ones with VH).

Funny, R29.

David Lee Roth's "I Ain't Got Nobody / Just a Gigolo" is not bad but it's a carbon copy of the Louis Prima version, even the scat.

[quote]The Beatles did nothing but cover songs for the first few years of their existence

That's quite the exaggeration.

Their first album had these Lennon/McCartney originals:

I Saw Her Standing There, Please Please Me, Love Me Do, P.S. I Love You, and Do You Want to Know a Secret.

Dusty Springfield

The Carpenters

Roberta Flack

Nina Simone