Carole King Wrote This Catchy No. 1 Hit In 1962 — 26 Years Later, A Cover Took The Charts By Storm

Back in 1962, a single co-composed by famed singer-songwriter Carole King went all the way to the top of the charts, and more than two decades later it nearly repeated the feat. The story of Carole King as a major pop and rock figure includes a pivotal moment at music publishing house Aldon Music. King and her then-husband and collaborator Gerry Goffin were house songwriters with a newborn in 1960, and they hired teenager Eva Boyd to babysit. Boyd ran in the same circles as King; she sang with the Cookies, a group that had provided backing vocals for some of the stars who'd recorded the songwriter's pop compositions.

Songs that aimed to start or capitalize on a dance craze are among the most annoying smash hits ever recorded, but they were huge in the early 1960s. King and Goffin crafted "The Loco-Motion," a tune that vaguely instructs listeners on how to do a dance that mimics a speeding train, and had Boyd record the demo. Its intended target, Dee Dee Sharp, coming off the success of another dance fad record, "Mashed Potato Time," had the song declined by her handlers, but Dimension Records wanted to release it with Boyd's performance. King arranged the song and did some of the background vocals for her babysitter turned collaborator, who was presented under the name Little Eva.

And then, "The Loco-Motion" found its audience, and it never let go.

Carole King has watched the song she co-wrote in the early 1960s, "The Loco-Motion," make three separate chart runs in three decades and by three very different artists. Little Eva took it to No. 1 in 1962, and in 1974, hard rock band and '70s act we completely forgot about Grand Funk Railroad spent two weeks at No. 1 with its cover. "The Loco-Motion" was an American pop standard at that point, and in 1988, it would be reimagined as a giddy, frenetic dance-pop number that encouraged and instructed listeners to get out on the floor — essentially an updated version of what the song was originally all about back in the early 1960s.

Australian soap actor-turned-singer Kylie Minogue broke into the U.S. market in 1988 with her debut single, a synthesizer and drum machine-heavy take on "The Loco-Motion." Soaring to No. 3 on the Hot 100 in late 1988, it would be the biggest hit the pop star would ever have in the States — all with a song that was more than two decades old already.