15 Rock Songs Recorded in a Single Take

It’s not everyday that one is able to capture lightning in a bottle in the studio, but when it happens, the results are worth keeping.

In the below list, we’ve rounded up 15 Rock Songs Recorded in a Single Take. But we’d like to be clear: songs are very rarely made in one sitting. Unless a band is making a completely live album with the entire group miced at one time, instrument parts, including vocals, are typically separated out into different tracks to be layered and mixed together at a later point. The end product, of course, is one cohesive song.

So when we say “one take,” we don’t necessarily mean the full song — sometimes it’s the vocal that was nailed in one take, or maybe the guitar solo. In any case, it’s still awfully impressive, as you’ll hear below.

1. “The House of the Rising Sun,” The Animals
From: The Animals (1964)

“We were looking for a song that would grab people’s attention,” Animals singer Eric Burdon once told Rolling Stone. We’d say they succeeded at that with “The House of the Rising Sun,” recorded in one take during a May 1964 session. Producer Mickie Most later recalled the circumstances for the 2005 book 1000 UK Number One Hits: “Everything was in the right place, the planets were in the right place, the stars were in the right place and the wind was blowing in the right direction. It only took 15 minutes to make so I can’t take much credit for the production. It was just a case of capturing the atmosphere in the studio.”

 

2. “Twist and Shout,” The Beatles
From: Please Please Me (1963)

It isn’t that the Beatles didn’t want to do more takes of “Twist and Shout,” it’s that John Lennon physically could not. Technically, two takes of this song were recorded in February of 1963, at the tail end of a marathon recording session, but the second one was so strained that it immediately became clear the first take was going to have to be the one. “The last song nearly killed me,” Lennon later recalled. “My voice wasn’t the same for a long time after; every time I swallowed it was like sandpaper. I was always bitterly ashamed of it, because I could sing it better than that; but now it doesn’t bother me. You can hear that I’m just a frantic guy doing his best.”

 

3. “Sister Ray,” The Velvet Underground
From: White Light/White Heat (1968)

“Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground is perhaps one of the last songs you’d expect to have been recorded in one take when you consider the fact that it’s an incredible 17 and a half minutes long. And yet, this is what happened. Then again, the band purposely approached the song in a loose, improvisational manner — to the point where engineer Gary Kellgren had enough.  “I don’ft have to listen to this,” he reportedly told Lou Reed in the studio that day (via Mojo). “I’ll put it in ‘record,’ and then I’m leaving. When you’re done, come get me.”

 

4. “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” James Brown
From: 1965 Single

Today when you listen to James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” what you’re hearing is what the band thought was just a run through take. But it turned out so good it was decided that it would be the official release. It was, however, edited, with the tempo increased and the pitch raised by a half step.

 

5. “I Feel Love,” Donna Summer
From: I Remember Yesterday (1977)

We don’t know how else to explain this, but long story short, Donna Summer had to take care of something before she nailed the vocal to “I Feel Love.” She was, at that time in 1976, dating a guy called Peter Muhldorfer, but had recently met another man, Bruce Sudano. Summer was literally in the middle of writing the lyrics to “I Feel Love” when she told her cowriter, Pete Bellotte, that she needed to call her astrologer to figure things out before she could continue. “She called the astrologer because she wanted to go through Bruce’s star sign and charts,” Belotte recalled to Mixmag in 2017. “The astrologer had decided that she had to go with Bruce. She came down and said, ‘I’ve made my decision.'” When Summer got in the studio, she got the vocal down in one take.

 

6. “Losing My Religion,” R.E.M.
From: Out of Time (1991)

Sometimes everything just works out swimmingly. R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” was both written and recorded swiftly, with Michael Stipe doing just one take of the vocal. “The music was written in five minutes,” guitarist Peter Buck said in the liner notes for the In Time compilation (via Songfacts). “The first time the band played it, it fell into place perfectly. Michael had the lyrics within the hour, and while playing the song for the third or fourth time, I found myself incredibly moved to hear the vocals in conjunction with the music. To me, ‘Losing My Religion’ feels like some kind archetype that was floating around in space that we managed to lasso. If only all songwriting was this easy.”

 

7. “Bodysnatchers,” Radiohead
From: In Rainbows (2007)

The word “atmosphere” rears its head again. In October 2006, Radiohead decamped to a condemned mansion in the English countryside to work on new music, staying there for three weeks. It was in that space that they recorded “Bodysnatchers.” Thom Yorke, who was sick at the time, sang it exactly one time. “The vocal is one take and we didn’t do anything to it afterwards,” he relayed to NME in 2007. “We tidied up my guitar because I was so out of it, my guitar playing was rubbish. My best vocals are always the ones that happen there and then.”

 

8. “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” Bonnie Raitt
From: Luck of the Draw (1991)

The inspiration behind Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” was, according to cowriter Allen Shamblin, a news article that mentioned a homeless man who was picked up by his wife, only to be taken to court to get a divorce. It was his quote — “you just can’t make a woman love you” — that set the songwriting in motion. “It’s absolutely the saddest song I’ve ever sung,” Raitt said in a 2002 radio interview, explaining that she recorded her vocal in one take. “We’d try to do it again and I just said, ‘You know, this ain’t going to happen.'”

 

9. “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Sinead O’Connor
From: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990)

If you’d like to be precise about it, technically Sinead O’Connor sang two takes of her famous Prince cover, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” But that was only so that the two takes could be layered on top of one another as a double-track. “The control room had an SSL [mixing console], and there was a smallish live area next to the big room that was not too reverb-y,” producer Chris Birkett explained to Mix in 2007. “She went in and did a one-take vocal without stopping. And she said, ‘Oh, yeah, I like that. That’s good.’ And she went straight back in and did a terrific double-track in one take. The whole thing was perfect.”

 

10. “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” Bachman-Turner Overdrive
From: Not Fragile (1974)

Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” began its life as a kind of throwaway instrumental that Randy Bachman most definitely did not intend for the whole world to hear. In fact, Bachman wrote it as a joke of sorts about his brother, Gary, who had a stutter. The plan was to record one take of it, stutter vocal included, and send it to Gary only. Long story short, the band needed more material for 1974’s Not Fragile and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” came up. “We have this one song, but it’s a joke,” Bachman later recalled (as reported in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits). “I’m laughing at the end. I sang it on the first take. It’s sharp, it’s flat, I’m stuttering to do this thing for my brother.” Bachman did attempt another vocal take, but it was the original that made the cut.

 

11. “Shout,” The Isley Brothers
From: Shout! (1958)

Listening to a great song on record is one thing, but listening to it in a crowd of fellow fans who are all having the time of their lives is another. The Isley Brothers had already been developing “Shout!” during their concerts and they wanted to capture the exuberant energy it seemed to spark in audiences. So, they invited friends to the studio to act as an audience while they put “Shout!” to tape. “We went back to the studio, and we did it one time, just one time,” Ronnie Isley told Jennifer Hudson in 2023. “It felt like the world opened up.”

 

12. “Cum on Feel the Noize,” Quiet Riot
From: Metal Health (1983)

“Cum On Feel the Noize” was a No. 1 U.K. hit for its original writer, Slade, as well as for Quiet Riot, who covered the song in 1983. At the beginning though, Kevin DuBrow was strongly opposed to recording someone else’s material for their own album — to the point where the band purposely tried to sabotage the recording sessions by not taking it seriously. “We went in, there was no intro, no nothing at all,” Franki Banali told Songfacts in 2017. “There was a little bit of arguing as to how it was going to start. Finally, when I knew the engineer was rolling tape, I just started playing what became the intro. Rudy [Sarzo] joined in, and then Carlos [Cavazo] joined in. Kevin was sitting at the corner of the studio, just giggling, waiting for this massive train wreck, and the train wreck never happened.” And thus, Quiet Riot’s version of “Cum on Feel the Noize” was born.

 

13. “Maggot Brain,” Funkadelic
From: Maggot Brain (1971)

In 1971, George Clinton said something rather harsh to Eddie Hazel in the studio, trying to evoke a certain intensity out of the guitarist. “Eddie and I were in the studio, tripping like crazy but also trying to focus our emotions,” Clinton explained in his 2014 memoir Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You? “I told him to play like his mother had died, to picture that day, what he would feel, how he would make sense of his life, how he would take a measure of everything that was inside him and let it out through his guitar. I knew immediately that he understood what I meant. I could see the guitar notes stretching out like a silver web. When he played the solo back, I knew that it was good beyond good, not only a virtuoso display of musicianship but also an almost unprecedented moment of emotion in pop music.” Hazel did one take of the guitar solo and that was it.

 

14. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Gordon Lightfoot
From: Summertime Dream (1976)

For multiple days in the studio, Gordon Lightfoot refused to record “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” telling his band it wasn’t ready yet. Finally, he gave in, directing the band right then and there. “We all played what we felt,” drummer Barry Keane later recalled. “And we played to the end of the song – we had never heard the song, [it was the] first time we’d heard the song. And we finished, and it was actually pretty darn good, and Gord said ‘Okay, we’re done.'” A second take was attempted the following day, but it couldn’t top the first one.

 

15. “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On,” Jerry Lee Lewis
From: 1957 Single

Jerry Lee Lewis was working on a different song called “It’ll Be Me” when his producer, Jack Clement, suggested they shift gears for a little while. “That’s when Jerry’s bass player [JW Brown], who was also his first cousin and would soon become his father‑in‑law, said, ‘Hey, Jerry, do that thing we’ve been doing on the road which everybody likes so much,'” Clement recalled to Sound on Sound in 2011. “Jerry said, ‘OK,’ so I turned the tape machine on and he did ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ in one take. No dry run, nothing. That was the first time I ever heard it.””