Every song tells a story, from banal nursery rhymes to sweeping soprano arias. Some songs tell stories about each other, from the inspirational to the outright insulting, and sometimes those stories are fascinating reflections of the history of popular music.Sometimes these songs are deeply political, sometimes they’re painfully personal, but always, the stories linking them together are fascinating.
No pop song exists in a vacuum, not in an industry where songs can have millions of listeners at a time. So here are ten songs (notten covers)that are phenomenal responses to other songs– conversations that happen sometimes across years of time, and sometimes only a day or two.
10David Bowie - “Life on Mars?”
Response To Frank Sinatra - “My Way”
In 1968, before Bowie’s career blasted into the stars with “Space Oddity,” he was a struggling singer-songwriter amid a sea of other British musicians. His publisher, David Platz, had been asked by another publisher to find a writer to translate a French song, “Comme d’habitude,” into English, and Platz recommended Bowie, who had done similar translations before.Bowie’s translation was entitled “Even a Fool Learns to Love,“and he recorded a demo in February of ‘68.
The French publishers rejected it, feeling Bowie was too obscure a songwriter to capitalize on the song’s potential. Instead, they went with Paul Anka, a musician who had charted well in the U.S. and Canada, who rewrote the song as “My Way,” which exploded onto the international charts in 1969 whenit was recorded by a somewhat well-regarded lounge singer named Frank Sinatra. So when Bowie headed into the studio in 1971 to work on the albumHunky Dory, he was already tinkering with the idea of parodying Sinatra’s version of the song.
Over the course of recordingHunky Dory,“Life on Mars?” grew into so much more than a jab at Sinatra’s crooning, but the bones of “Comme d’habitude” are still audible in the chromatic bass lines and majestic piano. In place of the introspective lyrics from Sinatra’s version, “Life on Mars?” is unbridled Bowie weirdness. WhileHunky Doryhad a disappointing initial release, the success of 1972’sThe Rise and Fall ofZiggy Stardustresulted in “Life on Mars?” being released as a single in ‘73 – one that did better than “My Way,” at least on the UK Singles chart.
9Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Sweet Home Alabama”
Response To Neil Young - “Southern Man” and “Alabama”
When Neil Young doubled down on his criticism of Southern racism by following his 1970 song “Southern Man” with the equally aggressive “Alabama” in 1972,it drew the ire from Southerners nationwide. The most public of that ire, though, didn’t come from anyone from Alabama - it came from Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose songwriters were from Florida and California. They all still felt slighted by Young’s aggressively anti-Southern lyrics, and with the help of a catchy riff from guitarist Ed King, they wrote a response.
Released in 1974 on the albumSecond Helping, and again as the album’s second single, “Sweet Home Alabama” became Lynyrd Skynyrd’s most successful song, and only track to crack the top ten on the charts. Calling Young out by name in one verse,the song was a staunch statement of Southern prideand an earnest plea for Northerners to not paint the entire South with the same dismissive brush.
8Kendrick Lamar - “Not Like Us”
Response To Drake - “Family Matters”
While no rap feud has yet eclipsed Tupac and Biggie back in the 90s, the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake might be about to change that. Lamar and Drake have been swapping digs since Lamar first dissed Drake with a verse on Big Sean’s “Control” back in 2013, butthings really got wild in early 2024 when Lamar took shots at Drakeon “Like That.” Things escalated until May 3, when Drake released “Family Matters,” where he explicitly accused Lamar of domestic abuse and of being a cuckold.
Less than an hour after “Family Matters” dropped, Lamar responded with “Meet the Grahams” (Graham being Drake’s legal surname), which accused Drake of being a sexual predator and running a sex trafficking ring out of his Toronto mansion. Then, before the dust even settled,Lamar took another shot with “Not Like Us,” and this one was meant to kill.“Not Like Us” is one of the greatest diss tracks in history, doubling down on the accusations of Drake being a pedophile and also outright calling Drake a colonizer who exploits other Black artists.
Drake Vs Kendrick Lamar: Everything You Need To Know About The “Not Like Us” Legal Battle
The biggest rap battle of 2024 has turned into a court battle as Drake is a part of a lawsuit over Kendrick Lamar’s record of the year, “Not Like Us.”
Drake’s response track, “The Heart Part 6,” was released on May 5, and it rapidly flopped, amassing over a million dislikes on YouTube within less than a week. Lamar’s own “heart pt. 6” came out in late November on the surprise albumGNX.Drake’s response to that was to file suit against UMG, the label both artists are signed to, alleging the label used illegal tactics to boost “Not Like Us” on streaming services.
7Joy Division - “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Response To Captain and Tennille - “Love Will Keep Us Together”
Ian Curtis, frontman of Joy Division, was struggling personally in 1979, with a failing marriage, the stress of trying to keep his band afloat while working a day job, and his recent diagnosis with epilepsy.“Love Will Tear Us Apart” was written as a way to encapsulate all of those feelings, with a title that was an ironic riff on “Love Will Keep Us Together,” the global smash 1975 single from soft pop husband and wife duo Captain & Tennille.
“Love Will Keep Us Together” wasn’t an original song for Captain & Tennille; singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka wrote it for his 1973 albumThe Tra-La Days Are Over. Ironically, Joy Division recorded “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in the same studio Sedaka recorded “Love Will Keep Us Together.”
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” tore up the charts when released in 1980, and British music magazineNMEnamed it 1980’s Single of the Year. Unfortunately, Curtis’ epilepsy was worsening, and he had several major seizures during live performances. His wife had filed for divorce because of his alleged affair. All that stress combined into something too painful to bear, and in the small hours of the morning on June 26, 2025,Ian Curtis took his own life. His grave in his hometown of Macclesfield, England simply bears his name and the words “love will tear us apart.”
6Roberta Flack - “Killing Me Softly with His Song”
Response To Don McLean - “Empty Chairs”
Roberta Flack’s recording of “Killing Me Softly with His Song” is an R&B classic that won her two Grammys in 1973. Yet before she recorded her version of it, the song was written by the trio of Charles Fox, Norman Gimbel, and singer-songwriter Lori Lieberman. In 1971,Lieberman saw Don McLean perform his ballad “Empty Chairs” at LA’s legendary folk nightclub Troubadour, and she was inspired to scribble notes on a bar napkin before the song was even over.
Fox and Gimbel produced Lieberman’s version of “Killing Me Softly,” but the single completely failed to chart. WhenFlack recorded and released her version in 1973, it became the definitive version of the song; in 1996, hip-hop group Fugees released a cover with Lauryn Hill on lead vocals, which became equally popular, and Flack has since performed the song with the Fugees.
Response To Elvis Presley - “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”
The last song written for Meat Loaf’s 1977Bat Out of Hellwas inspired by a conversation songwriter Jim Steinman had with a cast member in his musicalRhinegold,who told him his songs were too complicated. A nearby radio was playing Elvis’ 1956 single “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You,” which inspired him to write something similar. In his struggles to find simplicity, he stumbled onto the line, “I want you, I need you, but there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you, but don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad.”
The ballad was released as the second single forBat Out of Hell, and was widely popular,spending 23 weeks on theBillboardHot 100 in 1978. It was Meat Loaf’s biggest hit until 1993’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” fromBat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell.
4Woody Guthrie - “This Land Is Your Land”
Response To Irving Berlin - “God Bless America”
Great American Songbook composer wrote “God Bless America” in 1918 while serving in the US Army at the end of World War I; he revised the lyrics in 1938 in hopes of using it to spread peace on the eve of World War II, and the song was released as a performance from singer Kate Smith, getting extensive radio play at the time.After growing extremely weary of hearing it repeated on the radio, folk singer and labor activist Woody Guthrie wrote his sarcastic response.
Guthrie, notorious for emblazoning his guitar with the words “this machine kills fascists,” wrote “This Land Is Your Land” as a mild criticism of the United States. As a longtime labor advocate and his experiences as one of those who fled the Dust Bowl that ravaged his home state of Oklahoma in the 1930s,he had strong opinions on the severe wealth inequality that gripped the U.S. at the time(and still does).
The original version of “This Land Is Your Land"contains verses that are critical of American domestic policy, which later more popular recordings of the song, particularly those used for nationalist reasons, omitted. For posterity, as the complete version isn’t currently available for streaming, the omitted verse is:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.
3Warren Zevon - “Play It All Night Long”
Response To Lynyrd Skynyrd - “Sweet Home Alabama”
LA rock legend Warren Zevon’s career was on the rise in the late 1970s, with his 1978 albumExcitable Boyhaving been his greatest commercial and artistic success yet. Unfortunately, his follow-up, 1980’sBad Luck Streak in Dancing School, failed to replicate the same degree of success, even withguest appearances from friends and fellow rock legends Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt.
One of the songs onBad Luck Streakthat did endure was “Play It All Night Long,” a tongue-in-cheek homage to Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” which had become ubiquitous on the radio. With backing vocals from Jackson Browne, a droning synthesizer riff, and a chorus calling “Sweet Home Alabama” a “dead band’s song” (as two of Skynyrd’s members died in a 1977 plane accident),“Play It All Night Long” is a scathing critique of romanticizing the struggles of rural living. It’s also likely the only pop song to ever refer to brucellosis, a bacterial infection caused by ingesting unpasteurized milk.
2Fleetwood Mac - “Go Your Own Way”
Response To Fleetwood Mac - “Dreams”
The recording of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 critical smash hitRumorshas been the subject of a significant amount of rock journalism, and for good reason. Aside from it being a phenomenal record, it’s also the reasonFleetwood Mac as a band is as renowned for their inner conflict as for their music.
VocalistLindsay Buckingham would eventually leave Fleetwood Mac twice, but in 1977 he was in the thick of it, writing and recording material forRumorseven in the midst of breaking up with fellow bandmate and lifelong friend Stevie Nicks,who is the target of “Go Your Own Way”’s raw and unbridled resentment. Nicks’ contribution toRumors, the more subdued and ephemeral “Dreams,” provided her side of the story. Regardless of the bitter feelings on display, both songs were smash successes as singles and helped, for a time, put Fleetwood Mac on top of the world.
1The Mountain Goats - “No Children”
Response To Lee Ann Womack - “I Hope You Dance”
In late 2001, John Darnielle was driving to the airport in Des Moines, Iowa,when Lee Ann Womack’s hit “I Hope You Dance” came on the radio in his car. Darnielle’s reaction was that of abject disgust. In a 2021 interview withVariety, he described his thought process:
I hated this song, a lot. I really try not to be as big a hater as I used to be, but I just hated everything about this song. So I was driving, and I let it play. … I just thought it was a bunch of platitudes.
And so I’m driving to Des Moines and I ad-libbed “I hope you die” over “I hope you dance.” … And then I patterned the whole composition of it after that, because “I Hope You Dance” is a bunch of “I hopes,” and that’s the whole song. Well, that’s what “No Children” is, too, but from a spiteful perspective. But nobody wrote about it at the time, because we didn’t put it in the press kit, and if you don’t say something like that in the press kit, nobody even notices, which is very depressing. But it seemed so obvious to me at the time! It’s essentially an answer record. People don’t even make that many answer records any more, but this one kind of is.
The mutual loathing of “I hope you die” fit perfectly with the overall narrative of songs forTallahassee, the album Darnielle was working on at the time,which told the story of a painfully toxic couple going through a divorce. The characters in the album had featured in Mountain Goats songs ever since Darnielle began recording with 1991’s cassette,Taboo VI: The Homecoming, butTallahasseewas to be a full album telling the story of Darnielle’s enigmatic “alpha couple.”
Ever sinceTallahasee’s release, “No Children” has been a mainstay of Mountain Goats sets and an anthem for dying relationships everywhere. It also saw a sudden spike of popularity in 2021 when the refrain became a viral TikTok with accompanying dance. With its jaunty, 6/8 swing, the song sounds nothing like the death throes of a marriage, and yetfew things in this world contain as much joyful spite as a venue full of Mountain Goats fans singing alongto that final “I hope you die; I hope we both die.”
