Who Wrote Wild Thing is the question millions can answer by humming the riff, yet fewer can answer by naming the songwriter: Chip Taylor, who died Monday, March 23, at 86. His record label, Train Wreck, confirmed the death and no cause was given, while friend Billy Vera said Taylor had been in hospice care. The contradiction at the center of his legacy is stark: songs that became communal property, authored by a man most listeners never learned to recognize.
Who Wrote Wild Thing, and why did the name stay in the shadows?
Chip Taylor was best known for writing “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning, ” two songs that outgrew their origins and became fixtures of popular culture through other artists’ performances. Taylor was a Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, and he was born James Wesley Voight. He was the brother of actor Jon Voight and geologist Barry Voight, and the uncle of actress Angelina Jolie and actor James Haven.
That family proximity to on-screen fame sharpened an irony: Taylor’s most public work traveled the world, but his own public profile often lagged behind the artists who recorded and performed his songs. The public story of “Wild Thing, ” in particular, is frequently told through the voices and images of performers—while Taylor remained the person who built the song’s foundation and then watched it take on new lives.
What the documented record shows about “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning”
The verified timeline offered in the available accounts is clear on several points. “Wild Thing” was first recorded in 1965 by Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones. It later became a major hit in 1966 by the Troggs. A live rendition by Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967—where Hendrix set his guitar on fire—helped cement the song in rock mythology. The song continued to be covered, including by the Runaways, the Muppets, and X, underscoring its unusual range across eras and audiences.
Taylor himself described the song’s feel in remarks attributed to him in a 2023 profile: “A lot of people don’t realize what a beautiful thing space is in a song. ‘Wild Thing’ still gives me the chills; when I strike the chords and you know the spirit of it. It’s a nice feeling. ” Those words speak to craft—space, chords, spirit—rather than celebrity. They also point to the core of why the authorship question persists: the architecture of the song is invisible when the performance becomes the main event.
“Angel of the Morning” followed a different path while reaching a similar level of durability. It was first recorded by Sands in 1967, and it later reached the Hot 100 in 1968 through Merrilee Rush and the Turnabouts. Another version, by Juice Newton, later sold more than a million copies and reached Number Four. The song’s afterlife extended further: Shaggy interpolated the 1967 song in “Angel, ” a 2001 track that reached Number One in 12 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
In remarks attributed to Taylor in the same 2023 profile, he emphasized intention and misinterpretation around “Angel of the Morning, ” saying the song “wrote itself very quickly” and adding that listeners “thought it was just a roll in the hay” but that he “didn’t mean it like that at all. ” He described it as “the most powerful love of two people who may never see each other again, ” framing it as “a very serious song. ” The documented record therefore shows not only the commercial trajectory of his writing, but also the gap between what a songwriter intends and what an audience assumes.
Who benefits when the public forgets Who Wrote Wild Thing?
In the public marketplace of music, the most visible beneficiaries are often performers and brands built around performance. The documented accounts show Taylor’s biggest success came with songs performed by other artists. For “Wild Thing, ” the Troggs’ hit version became the signature recording for many listeners; Hendrix’s Monterey Pop Festival performance became a defining spectacle; subsequent covers carried the song into new formats and contexts. Each of those moments amplified the song while also shifting attention away from its author.
For “Angel of the Morning, ” multiple performers created successive peaks of popularity, and the later interpolation into Shaggy’s “Angel” extended the melody’s reach into a different era and global chart profile. The pattern is consistent: a songwriter’s work can be omnipresent, while the songwriter’s identity is optional to the audience’s experience.
Taylor’s own statements, preserved in interview remarks, add a second layer: he framed “Wild Thing” as a song with “honest energy, ” called it “therapeutic, ” and emphasized its simplicity—“It’s simple and it feels good. ” That simplicity, however, may also be what allows the performance to eclipse authorship. When a song feels inevitable, the public often treats it as if it emerged from the air, not from a particular person’s choices.
The accountability question: what should institutions clarify now?
Verified facts establish that Train Wreck confirmed Taylor’s death and that no cause of death was given. Another account states Billy Vera announced the death and said Taylor had been in hospice care. Taylor’s professional standing is also documented: he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and his brother Jon Voight appeared at Taylor’s induction in 2016.
Beyond that, the record presented here suggests a narrower but urgent accountability issue: attribution. Who Wrote Wild Thing should not be a trivia question dependent on the listener’s depth of fandom. Institutions that curate music history—such as the Songwriters Hall of Fame—hold an outsize responsibility to keep authorship legible amid the louder narratives of performance. Taylor’s death is a moment when those institutions can foreground the writer’s role using the simplest tool available: clear, consistent credit attached to the songs’ public story.
Verified fact: Chip Taylor, born James Wesley Voight, wrote “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning, ” died at 86, and was a Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee.
Informed analysis: The cultural afterlife of his songs demonstrates how easily authorship becomes secondary to performance, leaving the public to repeatedly ask, years later, Who Wrote Wild Thing—even as the work itself never stopped playing.
