10 Songs That Got To Number One By Two Different Artists

10. I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Gladys Knight And Marvin Gaye

In the early days of Motown, performers were basically recording different versions of every song they could get their hands on. As much as one person may have written the thing, there was no limit as to how many people could try to perform on it. Although people have exhausted songs like Please Mr. Postman time and time again, I Heard It Through the Grapevine is one of those rare instances where the smooth soul is worth hearing again.

For one thing, the gender roles are flipped. On Gladys Knight and The Pips original version, you can pretty much tell that this was the standard love and heartache song that the girl group scene thrived on. A couple of years down the line though, Marvin Gaye's version took the whole thing into the stratosphere, with a a murky sound that almost sounded swampy by comparison.

There is nothing dirty about Mr. Gaye's high vocals though, which are absolute perfection from the moment they start, taking all the pain and heartache of a jilted lover and making it sound almost seductive in its own weird way. Even though these are pretty much re-hashes of the exact same sound and style, there's no real expiration date on this kind of heartache.