songs that sound like other songs

"This Time of Night" is also basically "A Forest".

This isn't a full song that sounds like another song, but since you brought up The Cure, one thing that hit me a few years back and I haven't been able to quite shake is that the synth line in Homesick sounds a lot like Led Zeppelin's All of My Love. It comes in slightly earlier, but is most noticeable around 4:00, right after "inspire in me the desire in me to never go home."

The Descendents - weinerschnitzel (1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6AHjEYX7YI

Clown Core - mcdonalds (2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KDdbzUyepA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY7S6EgSlCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlSoYzzhm04

That TMBG song sounds more like "Lay, Lady, Lay" to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npeYMJIbY8o

Karma police
And bring your friends

Ed Sheeran's "Overpass Graffiti" and Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer"

You know, for the longest time I thought this was Billy Bragg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs1qBJ7QEPs

The chorus of Chic's "26" and the coda of Sir Elton's "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" get blended up in my head sometimes

Chris Spedding - Plain Song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_6gr03cjJg
Crazy Horse - I Don't Want To Talk About It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBz_2EqJ5wI

Good one

The intro (at least) sounds like a rewrite of Jesus Lizard's 'Mouthbreather'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJnGl51lR4k

The resemblance of the chorus of Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" to part of the guitar solo in "Sympathy for the Devil" has always annoyed me greatly.

Can't stop hearing the old R&B classic "Fortune Teller" in New Order's "Blue Monday." I can even hear Sumner singing the lyrics.

"...the next day I discovered, the fortune teller told me a lie..."

all felt songs sounds like other felt songs

Decades ago I heard "Girl of My Dreams" by Bram Tchaikovsky, a minor new-wave hit in 1979. It was only when I reheard it recently that I realized that I had been superimposing the riff of that song over the hook of "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen in my head - they are the same chord changes at the same tempo with a similar arrangement, bu slightly different rhythmic emphasis.

This sounds like maybe 5 Big Audio Dynamite songs, I guess they were popular in Belgium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJqUheKhyU8

The resemblance of the chorus of Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" to part of the guitar solo in "Sympathy for the Devil" has always annoyed me greatly.

― ma dmac's fury road (PBKR), Saturday, December 11, 2021 9:13 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh snap

never noticed this before but it's clear as day

Dierks Bentley's "Drunk on a Plane" sounds a lot like countrified New Radicals "You Get What You Give"

Rewatched Michael Mann's "Thief," and it ends with this track by someone named Craig Safan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cDz6FW62E

1981 movie, moody scene, could it be more obvious that Mann must have given him "Comfortably Numb" as a temp track suggestion?

when I first watched that with my girlfriend I actually thought it was a synth version of Comfortably Numb, and didn't realize until after it was supposed to be a diff song

I saw Thief recently, and I guess I assumed that this was Tangerine Dream doing a Floyd pastiche (not for the first time).

Moon Taxi "Hometown Heroes" sounds like "Team" by Lorde.

The first line of Darlings by Susanne Sundfør sounds exactly like the first line of Razzle Dazzle Rose by Camera Obscura.

Guitar solo in Big Log sounds like the melody from Happy Together.

The first line of Darlings by Susanne Sundfør sounds exactly like the first line of Razzle Dazzle Rose by Camera Obscura.

the intro riff from slayer's "seasons in the abyss" sounds like "mo bamba"

close your eyes
look deep in your soul
I got hoeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssss
calling a young ******'s phone

Deftones 'Be Quiet And Drive' sounds like 'Monitor' by Siouxie And The Banshees.

Parts of Robert Wyatt's "Heaps of Sheeps" sound a lot like Blondie's "Heart of Glass"

I also hear a bit of "Shame, Shame, Shame" by Shirley & Company in there

gaelle - repetition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RxOTsUyKtk
janet - empty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9rIjjGmJhM

pointer sisters - "slow hand"
todd rundgren - "real man"

I watched this Slow Hand video, so now it's your turn too: https://vimeo.com/300406625

New Riders of the Purple Sage's "Kick in the Head" sounds like "Polythene Pam". Like, a lot.

Haha, damn.

Not exact match, but LCD Soundsystem's "Someone Great" sounds a bit like New Order's "The Village".

also not exact but the beginning of Lady with the Spinning Head (UV1) by U2 sounds like Everyday Should Be A Holiday by the Dandy Warhols

Animal Collective - Prester John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5iJ9wt4paY

Eloy - Horizons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ocq15y7ajw

The basslines for "Sittin on the Dock of the Bay" and "Have You Seen the Rain" are similar no?? For decades now I'd think there was some other version of Dock that I'd heard before the real one, cause my brain was finishing the pattern in a different way then the song actually goes. Eventually I thought nah it must instead be a deja vú type self-recursion false memory. But I've heard both songs in the past week (which prob has never occurred) and pretty sure that's the link my brain was making all these years.

Violent Femmes, "Blister in the Sun"

The Shadows, "Little 'B'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1GcHOJGGvo

... a track which renders Ginger Baker's entire career pointless.

Only recently found out that the reason Men in Black and Fastlove sound fairly similar is that they both sample Patrice Rushen's Forget Me Nots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtMHsNhQBvI

I may be the last one to know about this intro getting lifted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqp2h65BAs8

Has this one been done before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsMdy91B5CA

...sounds like "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

Lou Reed's Charley's Girl sounds like John Lennon's Bring on the Lucie

― ewoods, Sunday, April 3, 2016 11:06 AM (five years ago)

I don't know that Lennon song – but I realized today that "Charley's Girl" kinda sounds like "Franklin's Tower" by the Grateful Dead

The Primitives - Lead Me Astray (1992)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhUaNYwLi88

Even As We Speak - Falling Down the Stairs (1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGmuHgmcyc

This may be a stretch – but the Lou Reed song "Ennui" (from Sally Can't Dance) may sort of be a distant cousin to "Like a Rolling Stone"?

Interesting suggestion! "Like a Rolling Stone" was originally done in waltz-time as well, "Ennui" might well have been vaguely inspired by it structurally and harmonically.