One of the biggest hits in the US by a Dutch artist is still Venus by Shocking Blue in 1969. It got re-popularized by the English girl-group Banarama when they covered it in 1986. In 1990 a ridiculous remix of Venus was released. The remix itself featured a few overused samples like Get up, Get Into It, Get Involved (1970) from James Brown, Think (1972) by Lynn Collins and Bring the Noise by Public Enemy (1987).

Besides Bananarama it was also covered by Kirka in Finnish (1970), over-dramatically by Mina (1986), as a song about Jesus by ApologetiX (1998), by Singaporean singer Stefanie Sun (2002), by another Dutch band Krezip (2005) and even Jennifer Lopez did it for a razor blade commercial in 2010.

But is Venus by Shocking Blue this week’s original? Nope, the song’s music is largely based on The Banjo Song by The Big 3 which included ‘Mama’ Cass Elliot who would later play in the Mama’s & the Pappa’s. But it goes even deeper. The Banjo Song itself is a very different musical arrangement around the lyrics of Oh! Susana by Stephen Foster which was originally released in 1848.  So in the end, Venus was based on the music from The Banjo Song which was based on the lyrics of Oh! Susana.