Can You Cover a Song That Was Itself a Cover?

Yes, you can legally cover a song that is itself a cover — the fact that the version you know is already a cover recording does not change or complicate your licensing obligation. What matters is who wrote the song, not who recorded a particular version of it. Your mechanical license traces back to the original songwriter and composition, no matter how many artists have covered it in between.

This question comes up constantly because so many of the world’s most recognizable songs are covers themselves. ‘I Will Always Love You’ is more widely known through Whitney Houston’s version than Dolly Parton’s original. ‘Twist and Shout’ is associated with the Beatles far more than the Top Notes or the Isley Brothers, who recorded it first. If you learned a song from a cover version and want to record your own cover, understanding the actual rights chain will save you from a common licensing mistake.

Does it matter which version of the song you learned from?

No — legally, it does not matter whether you learned the song from the original 1962 recording or a 2019 cover on YouTube. Mechanical licensing rights attach to the underlying composition (the melody and lyrics as written), not to any specific sound recording of it. The songwriter who wrote the song owns the composition rights, and every subsequent cover — including the one that made the song famous to you — is built on a license to that same underlying composition.

This is the single most misunderstood point in cover licensing. Artists sometimes assume that if they’re covering a cover, they need permission from the artist who performed the version they’re inspired by. You don’t. You need a mechanical license tied to the songwriter and publisher of the original composition, full stop.

Who do you actually need to credit and license from?

You need to identify and license from whoever wrote the song — not whoever performed the version you know best. This sounds simple but gets genuinely tricky with older songs, standards, and folk material, where the writing credit can be buried under decades of re-releases.

Trace the songwriter, not the performer. Look up the original publishing information, usually available through PRO databases (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC in the US) or on the release itself.
Watch for rearranged or retitled versions. Some covers change the title, lyrics, or arrangement enough that a new writing credit gets added for the arranger — meaning there may now be two sets of rights to account for.
Check for public domain status separately. A song’s age doesn’t automatically mean it’s public domain everywhere; US and international public domain rules differ, and this matters more with older standards than with anything from the streaming era.

What if the cover you’re inspired by changed the lyrics or arrangement?

If the cover you learned from significantly altered the lyrics, added a new bridge, or substantially rearranged the melody, that version may itself carry a separate copyright as a derivative arrangement. This is uncommon for straightforward covers but does happen — Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ didn’t add new lyrics, so no new composition rights were created, but some jazz standards and reggae reinterpretations have introduced enough original material to warrant their own credit.

In practice, for the overwhelming majority of covers — pop, rock, R&B, country — the underlying lyrics and melody stay intact even when the arrangement changes dramatically. That means your licensing target stays the same regardless of how many artists have covered it before you.

Does covering a cover ever require licensing from the cover artist too?

Almost never, for a standard cover recording. The cover artist you’re inspired by owns the copyright to their specific sound recording (the master), not the composition. As long as you record your own performance rather than sampling or lifting audio directly from their track, you don’t need their permission or a license from them — you need a mechanical license for the composition itself, which is what mechanical licensing has always covered.

This changes only if you’re sampling the actual audio from a cover recording rather than performing it yourself. Sampling requires a separate master use license from whoever owns that specific recording, which is a different and considerably harder process than standard mechanical licensing for covers.

A worked example: three generations of the same song

Consider a song written in 1965, covered by a well-known artist in 1980, and covered again by a viral TikTok artist in 2023. If you want to release your own version in 2026 inspired by the 2023 viral cover, your license traces all the way back to the 1965 songwriter — not the 1980 artist, not the 2023 artist. All three cover versions, including yours, rest on licenses to the same underlying 1965 composition. This is why a song can rack up dozens of legitimate cover versions across sixty years: every one of them licenses the same original source, independent of each other.

How this works with automatic licensing on distribution

Globex Music includes automatic mechanical licensing with every cover song release, which removes the burden of manually tracing songwriter credits back through multiple cover generations yourself. You submit the song and artist information, and the licensing is handled as part of the release — starting at $1 per single, with moderation typically completed quickly rather than the multi-week waits some distributors are known for.

That matters most exactly in situations like this one, where a well-known cover has made the true source of a song less obvious than it should be. Getting the songwriter attribution wrong is the most common reason cover submissions get delayed or rejected industry-wide, and it happens more often with songs known primarily through a cover than with songs everyone associates with their original artist.

What this means for your release strategy

If a song became popular to you through someone else’s cover, that’s a strong sign that it has broad appeal across audiences and eras — which is often a reasonable creative bet. The licensing risk isn’t higher just because the version you’re inspired by wasn’t the original; it’s the same standard mechanical licensing process as any other cover, provided you correctly identify the actual songwriter rather than assuming the performer of your favorite version wrote the song.

With payouts starting from $10 USD, distribution to more than 200 platforms, and no annual fee to maintain your catalog, releasing a cover of a cover costs the same and carries the same licensing path as releasing a cover of the original — the only extra step is making sure you’ve correctly traced the credit back to where it actually began.