Recycling hits has become an increasingly popular past time for producers and here are 5 of the biggest hits that sampled other big hits!
Sampled: Soft Cell - Tainted Love
How many of the people listening to Rihanna's huge hit know it was lifted from 1980s English synth pop duo "Soft Cell"'s number 1 charting hit "Tainted Love" - itself a cover of a song by Gloria Jones. The original was written by "Ed Cobb" in 1964 - it's gone from motown to electro pop to... uh... even electro-er pop?
Sampled: Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
Jason Derulo's debut hit the number 1 spot in America, but that was in no small part attributed by many to the heavy sampling of Imogen Heap's minimalistic "Hide and Seek".
Sampled: Jackson 5 - I want you back
The song that brought the words "Shizzle" and "Sheezy" to wannabe gangsters the world over samples the hit from the king of pop's original band. While this version discusses Jay's career as a drug dealer in earlier life, the original was slightly more upbeat story.
Incidentally, this was produced by Kanye West - a guy who has a tendency to heavily sample other hits to make even bigger hits as we'll soon see...
Sampled: Dido - Thank You
Eminem's critically acclaimed song "Stan", a song about a disturbed and scarily obsessive fan was made considerably more accessible by the addition of Dido's verse lyrics from her song "Thank You".
Stan became a number 1 before Thank You became a massive hit, making this one of the few songs to become a hit after the song that sampled it!
Sampled: Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Kanye struck it big, going from rap megastar to pop megastar with his smash hit "Stronger", which sampled Daft Punk and even featured them in the video.
However, Daft Punk can't exactly talk since they sampled "Cola Bottle Baby" by Edwin Birdsong for their song - so this is actually a sample of a sample, clearly meaning it should be at number one on this list.
