“One Love/People Get Ready” by Bob Marley

Bob Marley had been singing "One Love" since the ska days. He wrote it and cut it with the Wailers for The Wailing Wailers, their 1965 debut, then reworked it as reggae inside the 1970 medley "All in One". The version everybody knows came in 1977, recorded for Island and placed on Exodus as "One Love/People Get Ready", credited to Bob Marley and the Wailers.

That new title owns up to a borrowing. The song works in a piece of the Impressions' "People Get Ready", so Curtis Mayfield now shares the writing credit with Marley, partly because Island wanted to steer clear of copyright trouble; the Jamaican original never credited him, since copyright went unenforced on the island's records back then. The single finally arrived on April 16, 1984, timed to promote the upcoming Legend collection, and it became one of Marley's biggest hits.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.