In the aftermath of my post on most important composers of popular song of a few days ago, I began researching the statistics on which songs have been the most “covered”, i.e. most professional recordings by different performers. My first reacton is that I don’t believe a lot of the reports. For example, I don’t believe there are as many covers of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” as are claimed.
However, the importance of John Lennon and Paul McCartney can hardly be exaggerated. While I don’t believe the claims of millions of covers, I do believe that “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yesterday” have each been covered more than 150 times.
I also think that any article that doesn’t include “Silent Night” among the songs that are most covered is probably a fraud. Just about every recording artist of any significance records a Christmas album (some do many of them) and nearly every Christmas compilation includes “Silent Night”.
Well, there are covers and then real covers. There is no real cover of Satisfaction
As I commented, the 31 songs by Robert Johnson basically define blues, and led to all of R&B rock and roll. That’s influence, and not bad for a poor guy with a cheap guitar.
re Satisfaction,
I would speculate that a lot of the recordings are live. When a band is trying to balance new material it wants to promote with old favorites, covering a famous song can avoid getting burned out on some of the band’s own material.
Also, seems like a lot of 60s albums relied more on covers than when the album format became more dominant. So I wonder how many of the non-live covers are weighted early.