songs that sound like other songs

Just listened to 'Spitting off the edge of the world' by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and couldn't place what the main 4-note riff sounds like.
It's the 'I will love you till the end of time - I would wait a million years' bit of Blue Jeans by Lana Del Rey.

Every time I listen to Hearts on Fire by John Cafferty (which is a lot these days), I wonder if it somehow inspired the melody to Can You Feel the Love Tonight by Elton John.

Compare the descending melody 0:57 in Cafferty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swo51-CG9Ss

with 1:11 in John

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

Oh hey this thread began on the day I started school, didn't spot that til now.

“The Loco-Motion”
“Mashed Potato Time”

not songs that sound alike and more songs that have a similar vibe (and are maybe in the same key?)

iggy pop - “neighborhood threat”
neil young - “southern man”

No one will care about this - but relistening to Use Your Illusion I a few times, I was struck that:

a) the chorus melody of "Bad Apples" faintly reminds of Royal Trux's "Sewers of Mars"; and
b) the acoustic opening verse of the next track ("Dead Horse") sounds a LOT like a solo Hagerty jam... right down to Axl's vocal stylings (at least before his voice gets more recognizably Axl-y in the last few lines).

Some Funkadelic song - on Cosmic Slop? "March to the Witch's Castle"? sounds like Donald Byrd's version of "Cristo Redentor."

― Three Hundred Pounds of Almond Joy (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, April 19, 2020 10:26 AM

Which is probably the original version, written by Duke Pearson.

― Three Hundred Pounds of Almond Joy (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, April 19, 2020 10:28 AM

feel like 'cristo redentor' owes an awful lot to 'summertime'

but don't we all, i guess

"curiosity killed the cat" by curiosity killed the cat sounds to me like a slower version of "hip to be square"

The James song "Low Low Low" is playing quietly in the background, and the chords sound extremely similar to R.E.M.'s "Crush With Eyeliner" (released the following year)

Klex - lifting (@ 1'25'')

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKS-F4nU7bA

John Carpenter - assault on precinct 13 (main title)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb4hc1a7Vio

Steve Miller Band 'Big Old Jet Airliner' instrumental chord changes was a carbon copy of the very same chord changes from the Velvet Underground's 'What Goes On'. Don't know if it was a conscious thing or not on Miller's part, but it's the entire song.

paul pena wrote that song!

here to say that greenwich & barry definitely lifted portions of jerry butler and curtis mayfield's "he will break your heart" when they were writing "i can hear music"

"I Was Neon* by Julia Jacklin sounds quite like "The Sprawl" by Sonic Youth

“Ghost Town” by The Specials has a part that sounds very much like “In Walked Bud” by Thelonious Monk.

― Ask Heavy Manners (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 20 July 2019 03:45 (three years ago) link

The theme music of The Lady Vanishes sounds like “St. James Infirmary.”

Petula Clark's "Don't Sleep in the Subway" (melody from 0:37 to 0:52 and again from 1:46 to 2:01)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ISX9mW78Dw

... sounds awfully like "Focus III" by Focus (melody from 2:02 to 2:19 and again from 4:55 to 5:12)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCqDZMqd4XY

The Fall - How I Wrote Elastic Man
Pavement - Folk Jam
The Fall - The Classical
Pavement - Elevate Me Later

The Focus one is absolutely a quote, but good catch, never noticed that one before even though I have that CD

Amy Grant - “Baby Baby” and Talking Heads - “This Must Be the Place”

Ooh, good one. I like to do TMBTP in G (G Am Bm G) throughout. The verse of Baby Baby is G Am. I iii.

george michael might've been listening closely to jeff beck's "cause we've ended as lovers" when he wrote "careless whisper"

leonard cohen's "bird on the wire" is just this lefty frizell song from '51

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

Old Dominion "Never Be Sorry" and Graham Parker "Get Started, Start a Fire"

...and Santana "Hold On"

I'll be damned if Careless Whisper doesn't sound like Jeff Beck's "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" off Blow by Blow.

ha i am glad we independently arrived there, somehow never noticed it before he died

thank you!

This might be the version of the song that George Michael was listening to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKt-zMH8c3c

Ok, that makes it much more obvious.

New P!nk sounds like "Dancing On My On" and Body Talk era Robin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2KE2a5qo0g

The theme music of the Fassbinder movie, "Wildwechsel", by Peer Raben is very reminiscent of the end section of "Odessa (City on the Black Sea") by the Bee Gees. Unfortunately you'll just have to take my word for that as the former is not on YouTube!

checking out the au suisse album and the synth riff from "pain & regret" is basically "teardrops" by womack & womack

I've been listening to My Bloody Valentine's mbv album – in the track "New You," one bit of the repeating organ (or whatever) line keeps reminding me of the keyboard part in Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark."

Has it been mentioned that Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby" and U2's "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" share more than a little DNA?

there is a disco song that sounds a bit (maybe a lot) like “rollercoaster of love” by ohio players

i forget who it’s by, someone semi obscure like edwin birdsong or labi siffre. it was sampled by idjut boys for their track “corrective surgery”

ring any bells?

I’m crazy about the “new you” melody, it has some vague shepard tone esque-ness goin on.

Wrong thread. doh, please delete mods :)

but if we delete the mods who will mod

the rockers, obv

(I think I make that same joke every time)

Rocker request

Came to post
Away in the Manger
The Streets of Laredo

the theme song for the Nickelodeon cartoon show Doug sounds like the organ/backing vocal melody from Elvis's "I've Got a Thing About You Baby" (originally by Tony Joe White, but his version doesn't have the doo-doo-doos). I'm guessing a handful of boomer parents (and the one '90s kid in the world who had a deep knowledge of Elvis's early '70s country hits) picked up on the resemblance

Nice find!

As a "Doug" who had those doo-doo-doos sung at me enough times to provoke my ire, this will at least give me something to redirect my mind toward when the Doug theme song inevitably pops into my head again.

lol, you have my sympathy there

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157743525/todd-rundgren-on-the-song-that-changed-his-life

Todd draws the connection between Louie Louie, More Than A Feeling, & Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Lady Gaga - Speechless, and Westlife - Swear it Again

In the pub the other day, shuffle transitioned seemlessly from "All Right Now" by Free to "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads and now my world has been turned upside down

^ never noticed, and can't unhear now.

u2’s “vertigo” is basically suede’s “we are the pigs” at 1.5x speed

Is the guitar line from Tortoise's 'TNT' meant to be identical to the melody from Fiction Factory's Feels Like Heaven?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJdv2DGu-qc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQBoeBgb0uk