Songfacts®:

• Rod Stewart's cover is the most popular, but "Some Guys Have All The Luck" was originally recorded by The Persuaders, a New York City group signed to Atlantic Records. Their first single, "Thin Line Between Love And Hate" in 1971, was their biggest hit.
  
  The song is very lonely, with the singer wondering what it would be like to have a girl that loves him. The Persuaders give the song an R&B treatment that extracts the heartache; Stewart's version is more bouncy.
• The song was written by Jeff Fortgang, who became an acclaimed clinical psychologist after changing lanes out of a career in music. In 1971, he graduated from Yale, where he was part of their the musical director of their renowned a cappella group the Whiffenpoofs. He had a band called The News (not the one with Huey Lewis) that played around Connecticut, mostly doing cover songs. Fortgang also wrote songs, and sometime in 1972 or 1973 he found inspiration for "Some Guys Have All The Luck" on a trip to visit a friend.
  
  "Although I was by then probably involved with my then girlfriend (who had a great voice and sang in our band), I was apparently in a single mindset as I visited a happily married college friend in Cambridge," he told Songfacts in 2023. "It felt as if he, and many of my peers, had their lives worked out. It was in the spirit of feeling alone and envious that, as I drove back to Connecticut, this song took shape in my head, and I probably jotted it down at a rest stop. In retrospect, I think my best songs came to me while driving alone. This was quite a while ago – at present, I've been married 42 years."
  
  He made a demo of the song with The News, hoping it would land them a record deal. It didn't, but their manager, Marty Kugell (who had managed The Five Satins and produced their classic song "In The Still Of The Nite"), shopped the song to Wally Gold at Don Kirshner Publishing, who placed it with The Persuaders.
  
  "'Luck' was the only song of mine that we ever sold, other than some musical public service radio spots," says Fortgang. "Some time after Kirshner had assumed the publishing (which was later acquired by other publishers), we got a call from Wally Gold, who had arranged for it to be recorded by the Persuaders. He played their version of it to us over the phone, and apologized for the fact that they had modified some of the lyrics. This was without my permission, but I got over that, pleased to have it become an actual record."
  
  The song cracked the Top 40 at #39 and reached #7 on the R&B chart.
  
  "I rarely met anyone who'd heard it, and the royalties were tiny," says Fortgang. "My recollection, which could be a slight exaggeration, is that some of the period checks were for less than the cost of the postage. In contrast to what people had told me, having one song hit the charts did not create any kind of interest in my other work. Three years after my foray into the music business, I wanted a more predictable and less me-focused career, and went to grad school in clinical psychology (playing piano in dive bars on weekends to help pay my way). I continued to write for a while, but there was no interest, and I realized I'd been lucky on that one song."
• After The Persuaders recorded it, "Some Guys Have All The Luck" became surprisingly popular in Jamaica, where the reggae artists Derrick Harriott and Inner Circle both covered it in 1974. These versions got the attention of an American reggae group called The Shakers, which released their version in 1976.
  
  Robert Palmer, a British singer who recorded at Compass Point studios in the Bahamas, came across the song and did his own cover in 1982, taking the song in an electro/new-wave direction miles away from the original. Palmer's version was a UK hit, reaching #16, and got the attention of Rod Stewart, whose 1984 cover removed all the pathos but injected loads of pop sensibility. His cover was the first to chart internationally, reaching #10 in America and #15 in the UK.
• A curious cover is by the female singer Nikki Wills, whose 1981 version went to #109 in America. She changed the verse lyrics to convert it to a female perspective ("The girl next to me has a guy on his arm...") but left the chorus and title as "Some Guys Have All The Luck," using "guys" in that "hey guys" sense where it's gender neutral.