Have you ever wondered about the top 10 songs with the most remakes? Maybe not, but you certainly have thought about the most popular karaoke songs whenever someone hinted there would be singing at the party you were planning to go.
The majority of us have gone through the experience of hearing a specific song, and feeling something was definitely wrong because it wasn’t the original version, or we were just uncomfortable with how much different it was. But, sometimes covers can actually surprise us and be an amazing thing, others, not so much and it’s safe to assume that we rarely like them more than the original one, even if we do appreciate the changes.
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Looking for the songs with the highest amount of remakes, we searched the entire internet but couldn’t find any concrete results. We went through several blog posts, like the ones done by The Fire Wire, Salon, The Independent, amongst others, but they rarely agreed on their rankings. So, what we did was list all of the songs that appeared in these posts, searched each of them individually for the number of remakes they had and came up with our own unique list.
10. Cry Me a River (Arthur Hamilton)
To begin this list, we have “Cry Me a River”, released for the first time by Julie London, though you might be more familiar with Aretha Franklin’s version. This song has at least 225 different covers, besides Franklin’s, there are also the ones done by Joe Cocker, Barbara Streisand and Olivia Newton John.
9. Fever (Little Willie John)
This song has around 261 covers, but it might be better known for it’s remake interpreted by Peggy Lee. Some alternative versions are sung by Madonna, Elvis Presley and Beyonce.
8. Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)
“Eleanor Rigby”, which was almost called “Miss Daisy Hawkins” is Bill Clinton’s acknowledged favorite Beatles song, and has an estimate of 309 remakes. Both Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin made hit cover versions of this song
7. St. Louis Blues (W.C Handy)
Surprisingly, Handy was turned down by the publicists he approached with this song repeatedly, until he published it himself in 1914. “St. Louis Blues” has around 413 different versions, one of the most memorable ones is the one done in collaboration with Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in 1925.
6. Over the Rainbow (E.Y Harburg, Harold Arlen, Herbert Stothart)
The song interpreted by Judy Garland in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, won an Oscar in 1939 for Best Original Song. It has at least 449 covers. One of the best is the beautiful version done by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, mashed-up with “What a Wonderful World”.
5. Unchained Melody (Alex North, Hy Zaret)
At the middle of our 10 Songs With the Most Remakes List, we have a song that was originally written for the film “Unchained” (1955), and it regained popularity in 1990 when it was used in the movie Ghost, with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. Now the song has over 500 different covers.
4. Louie Louie (Richard Berry)
This song has allegedly over 1600 versions. The one done by “The Kingsmen” is considered to be the most famous. Iggy Pop also recorded a cover in 1993, but with different lyrics as the original’s were supposedly too offensive.
3. Yesterday (The Beatles)
“Yesterday” is the pop song with the most remakes of all time according to Guinness, the number apparently higher than 3000. McCartney claims to have woken up one day with the tune in his head, and doubting if he’d heard it from someone else. In fact, he was so worried that was the case, he checked repeatedly with people to make sure he wasn’t committing plagiarism before claiming it was his.
2. Amazing Grace (John Newton)
“Amazing Grace” was written in 1779 by John Newton, a former slave ship worker who then became a minister. This song has over 7000 remakes, including versions done by Mahalia Jackson, Destiny’s Child, Elvis and Whitney Houston.
1. Summertime (George Gershwin)
At the top of our 10 Songs With the Most Remakes list we have “Summertime”. A group of superfans of the song from all over the world have been working trying to collect all the recordings that have been made, the one sung by Janis Joplin may be the most recognized one, and the amount goes supposedly higher than 25000 different versions.
