Cat Stevens Wrote This Classic In 1970 — 25 Years Later, A Hit Cover Catapulted It Up The Charts

Folk singer Cat Stevens, now known by the mononym Yusuf, was responsible for "Father and Son," a ballad about the distance between generations — and one of the most tear-jerking songs of the '70s. It's a masterful narrative that shifts perspectives between the father and the son in the title, with a change in octave for each character that lets Stevens inhabit the different points of view. The melodic emotional exchange hit on something raw and often unspoken between children and their parents, demonstrating Stevens' unique sensitivity for tapping the root of one of life's most significant puzzles.

Despite its universally resonant theme and poetic folk-song soul, "Father and Son" wasn't released as a single when it appeared as part of Stevens' 1970 album "Tea for the Tillerman"; it was included as a B-side of the Top 40 hit "Moon Shadow" instead. But in similar fashion as the Cat Stevens song that became a hit for five other artists, the songwriter's work exploded once it landed in the hands of the right performer. In the case of "Father and Son," it took 25 years — a whole quarter of a century — to have its moment in the spotlight. And it was all thanks to Ireland's Boyzone, a group of musicians who weren't even born when the song was written. Talk about a generation gap.

Irish boy band Boyzone (which only sounds like a "30 Rock" spoof of a real band name) launched a cover of "Father and Son" in 1995. It promptly sailed up the charts and gave Cat Stevens a burst of renewed attention at a time when he was reinventing his musical career. It was the fourth single from Boyzone's debut album, "Said and Done," and it gave the austere folk ballad a glitzy makeover, complete with drums, a string section, and a laughably earnest video that looks more like a photoshoot spoof than the message of the song would call for.

It's not necessarily a case of a cover song that was better than the original, yet thanks to Boyzone's reimagining of the tune for a different audience, "Father and Son" became a No. 1 hit in Ireland and a No. 2 smash in the U.K. in December 1995, spending a total of 16 weeks on the charts. The song had been used by singer Ronan Keating when he tried out for the group and was subsequently chosen for the album and as a single. Fifteen years after its success, Keating re-recorded the song with Stevens himself for a retrospective album in 2020, adding yet another generational layer to a song that never sheds a scrap of its emotional heft.