9 Popular Songs That Were Originally Written for Someone Else

It’s difficult to imagine some of our favorite songs being sung by people other than the ones who made them famous. Yet some of the biggest musical hits of recent times were actually originally designated for musicians other than the ones that defined them.

From a Beatles classic to some of the biggest hits of the 2010s, here are nine songs that were originally intended for artists other than the ones who came to define them.

“Umbrella” Was Offered to Britney Spears
“...Baby One More Time” Was Meant For TLC
“Hungry Heart” Was Meant For The Ramones
“Call Me” Was Offered to Stevie Nicks
“Total Eclipse of the Heart” Was Meant For a Nosferatu Musical
“Since U Been Gone” Was Offered to P!nk and Hilary Duff
“The Long and Winding Road” Was Offered to Tom Jones
“All About That Bass” Was Offered to Beyoncé
“How Will I Know” Was Written For Janet Jackson

“Umbrella” Was Offered to Britney Spears

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It’s difficult to conceptualize the song “Umbrella” without Rihanna’s distinct vocals and undeniable charisma. The track was a smash hit, hitting number one on the Billboard Charts in 2007 and launching Rihanna to superstardom.

Yet surprisingly, writers Terius “The-Dream” Nash and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart first asked Britney Spears if she’d like to cover the song. When Spears—who was then working on her comeback album Blackout—declined, they next approached Mary J. Blige, whose team bid on the song, though Blige turned it down. “It’s not something that got away from me, it’s just that I know what’s for me and what’s not for me,” Blige later said of the decision. Then Island Def Jam secured the song for Rihanna, and pop history was made.

“...Baby One More Time” Was Meant For TLC

“...Baby One More Time” is inextricably linked to Britney Spears, from her high-pitched vocals to the accompanying music video that helped cement Spears’s star power. Yet the track was originally supposed to be sung by another band: TLC.

The band rejected it, though, largely because they took issue with the lyric “hit me baby one more time,” which they believed sounded like it referred to domestic violence. “Do I think it’s a hit? Do I think it’s TLC?” member T-Boz said in 2013, per The Guardian. “Was I going to say, ‘Hit me baby one more time?’ Hell no.” Apparently, the lyric was initially the result of songwriter Max Martin and co-producer Rami Yacoub's mistaken belief that “hit” was an American slang word that meant “call,” but TLC didn't take it that way. The song was also offered to Robyn and The Backstreet Boys, but eventually went to a newer artist named Britney Spears, and the rest was history.

“Hungry Heart” Was Meant For The Ramones

Bruce Springsteen’s husky vocals and distinct persona make the track “Hungry Heart” what it is. Yet apparently Springsteen was actually inspired to write the song after a chance meeting with the band the Ramones, and he initially envisioned the song for them. “I saw the Ramones in Asbury Park,” Springsteen said in an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “We were talking for a while, and I was like, ‘Man, I’ve got to write the Ramones a song.’”

He went home and scribbled down the track “in about the time it took for me to sing it,” and brought the demo to Johnny Ramone. Yet when the frontman heard the track, he immediately recognized that it belonged to Springsteen. “‘Nah, you better keep that one,’” Springsteen recalled Ramone saying to him, though other reports say it was Springsteen's manager Jon Landau who wound up finally persuading him to keep the track for himself. Regardless, “Hungry Heart” later became the lead single on Springsteen’s fifth album, The River, and is an iconic contribution to Springsteen’s discography.

“Call Me” Was Offered to Stevie Nicks

It's hard to confuse Stevie Nicks—who embodied witchy California pop-rock—with Blondie’s Debbie Harry, who was the queen of New York and new wave. Yet one of Harry’s biggest hits was actually originally dreamed up for Nicks.

In 1979, songwriter Giorgio Moroder wrote the theme for the movie American Gigolo that would later become the song “Call Me.” Seeking a singer who could write the lyrics, he first reached out to Nicks, but she was in the middle of launching her solo career and was unable to take on the track.

Moroder then asked Harry, who agreed as long as she could be in charge of the lyrics—and Moroder was thrilled with what emerged, as were legions of fans who embraced the song. “As soon as I heard Deborah singing a rough version of ‘Call Me,’ I knew we had a hit,” Moroder said of Harry’s version.

“Total Eclipse of the Heart” Was Meant For a Nosferatu Musical

Bonnie Tyler’s emotive vocals make “Total Eclipse of the Heart” the ultra-romantic power ballad that it is. But the song was originally meant for a very different audience than the one it ended up reaching. Writer Jim Steinman penned the original version of the song for a musical theater adaptation of Nosferatu, and titled it “Vampires in Love.” But the musical never came to be, and the song remained shelved for a while before Tyler met up with Steinman and lent her vocals to the track, which became one of the most iconic singles of the 1980s.

While the Nosferatu musical may have been shelved, the song eventually made its way to another vampire musical—Steinman’s 1997 adaptation of Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers—and if you listen closely, you can find some vampiric elements in Tyler's version. “If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines,” Steinman said in an interview with Playbill. “It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in dark.”

“Since U Been Gone” Was Offered to P!nk and Hilary Duff

Kelly Clarkson’s stratospheric yet silky-smooth vocals are at the center of “Since U Been Gone,” the epic power ballad from her second album Breakaway. Yet songwriters Max Martin and Doctor Luke originally intended the song to be sung by P!nk, another powerhouse vocalist who turned the song down. It was then declined by Hilary Duff before it found its way to Clarkson, who made it a smash hit.

“The Long and Winding Road” Was Offered to Tom Jones

“The Long and Winding Road” is a beloved staple in The Beatles’ discography. The wistful tune will forever be associated with Paul McCartney’s dreamy, timeworn vocals—but if McCartney's original vision had come to be, it wouldn't have been a Beatles song at all.

McCartney originally penned the tune while imagining someone else singing it, saying, “I just sat down at my piano in Scotland, started playing, and came up with that song, imagining it was going to be done by someone like Ray Charles.” He then offered the completed song to the Welsh musician Tom Jones, on the condition that it would be Jones’s next single. Jones already had a new single planned, though, so the song was shelved—until it found its way to the Beatles’ Let It Be.

“All About That Bass” Was Offered to Beyoncé

If you’ve ever been in a waiting room or grocery store in the past decade, you likely have heard “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor playing over the speakers. The track was written by Trainor and producer Kevin Kadish, but was originally pitched to a dozen other artists, including Beyoncé, per The Guardian, before Trainor wound up releasing the song herself.

“I’ll bet some of them didn’t even know the song was being pitched to them,” Trainor said when asked if she thinks the artists who turned the track regret it. “Some artists get thousands of songs pitched and they never know, so Beyoncé herself probably never heard it. Most of these other artists’ A&R teams said they couldn’t do anything with the song because they didn’t have [the right] artist. That was the problem—there weren’t any singers at the time [who fit the song]. Adele was the only one, but she wasn’t rapping and singing sassy songs with swears in them. But I’m down,” she continued. “I get all the performing royalties!”

“How Will I Know” Was Written For Janet Jackson

Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” is an infectious, charming hit defined by Houston’s soaring vocals. Originally written by songwriting duo George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam, it was actually specifically envisioned for Janet Jackson.

“‘How Will I Know’ was written in our funky little Venice, California garage, roughly 1984,” the duo recalled in a press release, per Music Radar. “Written for Janet Jackson (she passed on it as she was about to release her groundbreaking Control album), Brenda Andrews at Irving Music played the demo for A&R icon Gerry Griffith who was songhunting for a ‘new young singer.’” That singer wound up being Whitney Houston, and the song was selected for her first album. When Merrill and Rubicam first heard Houston's finished version, “I think we about fell on the floor!” they added.