Pass the Mic: 15 Big Hits Not Sung by the Lead Singer

Guitarist Dave Davies wrote and sang some of the Kinks’ most affecting tunes, but lead vocals on singles almost always went to his brother Ray. This song was an exception: It appeared both on the Kinks album Something Else and as a solo Dave Davies single (which reached Number Three on the U.K. charts). Why didn’t he try to further his solo career? “I was really depressed then,” Davies said. “I remember writing minor chords, very reflective of my melancholic period. Sometimes I would have liked people to leave me alone, so that I could just sit down and not have to entertain people socially.”

This pop-psychedelic L.A. band (including lead guitarist Ed King, later in Lynyrd Skynyrd) resented that their producer had commissioned lyrics from songwriter John Carter for one of their instrumental tracks. So neither of the group’s singers (Lee Freeman and Mark Weitz) put much effort into a song that was intended to be a B-side — and they didn’t object when Carter suggested the song be sung by Greg Munford, a teenage friend of the band who was hanging around the studio. Of course, “Incense and Peppermints” ended up being the group’s only track to top the charts.

“It was no Rolling Stones record,” Keith Richards said. He wrote and recorded “Happy” in four hours during the Exile on Main St. sessions, waiting for the rest of the band to show up in the basement of the Villa Nellcote — he remembered Jimmy Miller on drums, Bobby Keys on baritone sax and that he overdubbed guitar and bass himself. Richards generally gets one song per Stones LP, and this is the one that became a hit: Number 22 in the U.S. and Number Five in France, its country of origin. “I wrote the verses of ‘Happy,’ but I don’t know where they came from,” Richards said.

In a bar in Baton Rouge, Grand Funk Railroad got into a late-night argument with Humble Pie: Which was better, British rock or American rock? Grand Funk drummer Don Brewer touted Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard and Elvis Presley, then declared, “We’re an American band!” Once Brewer sobered up, he turned that nationalist sentiment into a song, and when the band went into the studio to record it with producer Todd Rundgren, Brewer — not the band’s usual singer, Mark Farner — did the vocals. The single hit Number One and became Grand Funk Railroad’s defining anthem.

The only Eagles single to feature original bassist Randy Meisner on lead vocals, this lush country ballad (principally written by Meisner) reached Number Four and became one of the band’s biggest successes. “It was our first gold single, maybe our only gold single,” Glenn Frey said. “I just remember being very happy for Randy. We had tried, unsuccessfully, to get a piece of material for him — or from him — that might be a hit single … We finally succeeded with ‘Take It to the Limit.’” Two years later, Meisner and Frey got into a blowout fight backstage in Knoxville when an ailing Meisner wanted to opt out of performing the song and its high notes — Meisner ended up quitting the band.

The biggest single Kiss ever had: a ballad with a string section and drummer Peter Criss on vocals. Criss said, “The day we recorded it, [producer] Bob Ezrin had everybody in tuxedos, the New York Philharmonic. When we went to the Record Plant to do the vocals, Gene [Simmons] and Paul [Stanley] were in the control room. I’ll never forget it, they were looking at me like it was one big fucking joke. And I couldn’t get into it and Bob knew it and threw them out. They left, I did it in five takes, and it was beautiful.”

The Miracles may seem to be synonymous with Smokey Robinson, but after the lead singer left the group, they recorded a concept album called City of Angels about a small-town couple who travel to L.A. to become stars. After the pair make it, “Love Machine” is how the boyfriend describes himself (over a supple disco beat). With Billy Griffin holding down lead vocals, the single hit Number One and spent 28 weeks on the Hot 100 — more than any other Miracles song.

“(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” became Blue Oyster Cult’s biggest hit, even though lyrics about the inevitability of death aren’t usually Top 40 fare. Although their lead singer was Eric Bloom, “Don’t Fear (the Reaper)” was written and sung by the band’s lead guitarist Buck Dharma (a.k.a. Donald Roeser, who, years later, also wrote and sang the band’s second-biggest hit, “Burnin’ for You.”) Recent research suggests, by the way, that the daily global death toll is close to 140,000 men and women, not 40,000.

By the time of their fifth single, the Sex Pistols had already broken up, with Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious leaving the band. But Steve Jones and Paul Cook went to Brazil and recorded this track with Ronnie Biggs, a Brit famous for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963 (he was living in Rio to avoid extradition). Biggs wasn’t much of a vocalist — he said he would have done better if he hadn’t been drunk — but the song was featured in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle and, astonishingly, the single went Top 10 in the U.K.