In 1970, Cat Stevens' Wild World Inspired This Genre-Busting Cover — And It's A Classic

Cat Stevens' "Wild World" is arguably his most well-known song, but in 1970, Jimmy Cliff put out a reggae version of the track as a single ahead of Stevens' release. As the story goes, Cliff heard Stevens' (who now goes by Yusef/Cat Stevens) early demo of "Wild World" while Stevens was putting together his album "Tea for the Tillerman," and he knew instantly that he wanted to record it.

Cliff was born in 1944 and raised in Jamaica, where he heard the ska music on the radio that sparked his desire to become a musician. He had a local hit with "Hurricane Hattie," but to have the kind of career he wanted, he realized he had to move to London where there was a robust music scene, and in 1965, he did so. Cliff and English singer/songwriter Stevens were on the same label, Island Records, and a publisher played the demo of "Wild World" to Cliff.

Stevens had already released a few records by 1970, and Cliff told Mojo, "I felt an affinity with Cat Stevens. They tried to market him as a rock act and, like me, he was more than that ..." Cliff said after hearing the "Wild World" demo in 1970, he "loved it right away," and he reached out to Stevens, who was not only gracious about it, but even wanted to help Cliff record it. They got to work the very next day.

Jimmy Cliff told Mojo that Yusuf/Cat Stevens wasn't too keen on his original version of "Wild World" in its early inception. In 2011, producer Paul Samwell-Smith confirmed that the song wasn't a priority for Stevens, explaining to Total Guitar (via Music Radar), "The implication was that he was going to produce it with Jimmy Cliff and therefore that was where the main focus went, and the one he did with me was a bit of an also-ran. Then towards the end of 'Tea For The Tillerman,' when we were finishing up, we realized that we had this good song and we went back to it, looked at it and overdubbed on it."

By the time Cliff's genre-busting recording was released, he'd already had two big hits in the U.K. with "Wonderful World Beautiful People" in 1969 and "Vietnam" in February of 1970. In August of 1970, his version of "Wild World" went to No. 8 on the U.K. charts.

Though Jimmy Cliff's "Wild World" single was a hit in the U.K., it didn't make any waves across the pond in the U.S. — at least not on the Billboard charts. However, in 1971, Stevens' version went to No. 11 on the Hot 100, but it didn't appear in the U.K. charts until 2007. No matter, there was enough "Wild World" love to go around, whether people preferred Cliff's island-tinged delivery or Stevens' folk-rock take.