“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival took Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong's Motown song and stretched it into an eleven-minute slow burn for Cosmo's Factory in 1970. Where the Motown versions were built as singles, John Fogerty, who arranged and produced it himself, treats the tune as a place to camp out and jam.

Stu Cook's bass and Doug Clifford's drums lay down a low, grinding groove that barely changes and never lets up, while John and Tom Fogerty trade electric guitar lines that go from a mutter to a howl and back. John's lead vocal is pure gravel, and by the time the band stretches out into the long instrumental passages the song has turned from a soul lament into something closer to a swampy trance.

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