Manfred Mann’s Earth Band — the progressive-rock group led by South African keyboardist Manfred Mann — released their cover of ‘Blinded by the Light’ in 1976, and it became so definitive that it eclipsed Springsteen’s original entirely. Their reworked arrangement reached No. 1 in America in early 1977; it is genuinely their record and genuinely a hit, and the only error is chronological, the assumption that a chart-topper must be where the song began. It began in 1973, on a debut that sank. The Earth Band’s version is also home to one of pop’s most famously misheard lines — a mondegreen so widespread it has its own folklore.
Who recorded it
Songs credited to Manfred Mann's Earth Band that are covers