bands who rip off their own hit songs

Four that come to mind immediately: the Kinks, Elvis Costello, Morrissey, and Belle and Sebastian.

Both Motown and Phil Spector hit factories made this a principle. If a band had a hit with a song, they were expected try the same formula at least twice more. You can hear this in their catalogues, in the hits that come subsequently. I suppose that other product bands still do this, although I can't think of anything obvious.

What about bands not being able to abandon their images? Another lucrative thread. Snoop Doggy Dogg tried to drop the killing and murder theme (embarrassing to him, after attempted murder trial) then went back to it when his record sales declined. His successful (3rd?) album called - check it - DA GAME IS TO BE SOLD NOT TO BE TOLD - features the subtle and complex 'Kill kill kill (murder murder murder.)'

And of course, all the musicians who tried to be more serious, then gave up. Or was that actors?

Another potential thread: funniest song title including brackets. My vote: Asian version of Bread album with song title 'Soap (I use the).'

Remember Men at Work? "Who Can it Be Now" and "Overkill" had the same descending chord structure, in the same key, the same tune, one had a sax riff and the other didn't. I'm embarassed to know this.

Another potential thread: funniest song title including brackets. My vote: Asian version of Bread album with song title 'Soap (I use the).

yeah but i found that song on a regular english-language copy & that is the real title of that song.

oh I meant to say 'Soap (I eat the)'

Maryann - have you perchance heard (MC) Hammer's 'Funky Headhunter'?

Wasn't John Fogerty sued by his former label for "ripping off" Creedence songs and the "swamprock sound" when he went solo?

Technotronic's follow-ups to "Pump Up The Jam" are so blatantly the same song that it becomes hilarious.

tarden: "Who can it be now" and "Down under" are completely different but then again all I can remember of the former was that sax riff.

Britney Spears:

Baby hit me one more time....

Oops...I did it again

Mike, he said "Overkill not "Down Under". While "Overkill" and "Who Can it be Now?" are the exact sames ong, "Down Under" is VASTLY different from both of them. Get it right!!

Oh. My. God. I just finished reading this thread, and then heard perhaps the worst example ever of this.

On the Tomb Raider soundtrack, there is a track called "Illuminati," by Fatboy Slim (featuring Boostsy Collins). First, this combination is obviously meant to capitalize on the recent U.S. success of "Weapon Of Choice," but the ickiness doesn't end there. The song is just "Going Out Of My Head" cut by a few minutes, with Bootsy saying "Illuminati, a secret society do exist" about four times. So ... awful! Why not just call it "Going Out Of My Head (Illuminati Remix)"?

oops, actually, that was "michael jackson." but still!

Um, every U2 song ever?

The Britney Spears tip goes like this:

...Baby, One More Time (You Drive Me) Crazy Oops!...I Did It Again

Don't leave out that important middle song that sounds just like the others.

I always thought Sugar Ray really blatantly did this. They had that song Fly, which was totally different from their "sound", then they put out Every Morning, which didn't sound like Fly but it had the same vibe (and was actually not as bad as it should've been, being it was by Sugar Ray). But then they put out like 3 other songs that sounded exactly like Every Morning! I mean, Someday has the exact same opening bits. What the hell? Did they not realize they had released that same exact song with different lyrics like 3 months earlier?

Masses Against the Classes is a very bad retread of Motown Junk, though it's quite possibly an intentional retread by a band trying to shake a sell-out taunt, so it might not count. But they even do the shout out at the end! Except it's just really not very good at all, and sounds like old men trying to be cool.

DAMN.

I was going to list that Fatboy Slim example. The only reason I'm not organizing a lynching party is because "Michael Jackson" is a song that should be played repeatedly in every imaginable circumstance.

Staying on that soundtrack, "Deep" has Trent Reznor attempting to re-record "The Wretched" as a pop song. He almost gets away with it, too...

don't forget britney's pepsi song. that sounds like all her other songs too.

This was the common practice among Euro-dance acts of the early to mid-90s: Ace of Base's "All That She Wants" beget "Wheel of Fortune" and "The Sign", while Rednex's "Cotton Eye Joe" beget "Old Pop In An Oak".

And then of course Culture Beat copied their own "Mr Vain" for "Got To Get It", but I actually far preferred "Got To Get It" at the time. Not that anyone could remember it, surely, it's been discarded as one of those "soundalike Euro-dance follow-up hits" ...

Tadeusz: I don't know what you're on about. Costello, for instance, has made a point of genre-hopping. (Reynolds bemoaned it in his MM review of Glastonbury 1989.)

Lloyd Cole refers back to his own earlier songs, in later work like the tremendous 'Past Imperfect'.

Sting - of all people - quotes himself, doesn't he? Isn't there a song where he sings lyrics from 'Every Breath You Take' - yes, I know, it was 'Love Is The Seventh Wave'.

cf also McCartney, Harrison.

Still, this is getting off the point. The question is a good one.

Madonna bursts into "Vogue" near the end of "Deeper and Deeper" ...

Reznor's Deep is very Wretched-like. Of course, he also sampled his own song "Down In It" on "Kinda I Want To." And they're even on the same album.

The Psychedelic Furs did this once, really embarassingly close to a previous hit, but screw me if I can remember which two songs I'm talking about.

But, hey, I bet that both songs were *brilliant*.

Of course in some genres - country for instance - repetition or sounding like yourself is not such a bad thing. The imperative of 'originality', continual invention of new material, seems to differ across genres. As I have said before, the endless repetitiveness of the Boss seems to me to require placing in a 'non- pop' context - it's as though he's trying to be as repetitive as possible and isn't ashamed of it.

Isn't "Bad Medicine" a cross between "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Social Disease"?

Listen to "Jumpin' Jack Flash" back-to-back with "Satisfaction". Subtle, but it's there.

Every Fleetwood Mac album has an close-to-identical "Stevie Nicks song", if you ran them all together you could have an extended Mega- Nix-Mix and not even change any of the BPMs. "Rhiannon Dreams Sara Gypsy Seven Wonders."

Aeroshit's "Cryin'," "Crazy," and "Amazin'" make a horrific medley of sameness.

The chorus of George Micheal's Father Figure is kind of similar to Wham's Battlestations.

Pretty much every solo Tina Turner single has the same horrible, metallic synth-flute sound on it. I know that doesn't really count as an answer to the question, but I felt I had to get it off my chest.

Corollary to this thread, inspired by the Sting reference above:

What about instances of a band or artist electing *not even to pretend* they've created a new product, and instead re-recording a previous track with up-to-the-minute technology that will sound hideously dated in about six months?

I'm thinking, of course, of "Don't Stand So Close to Me 86'," a track whose only excuse is that it charted way higher with all the synths (although after a band's already ridden the charts for a several years, we probably shouldn't congratulate them for being able to market old tunes more effectively; that would be to assume that songs don't chart because they're "not good," which is quite clearly untrue). The last example of this phenomenon I can think of was the Violent Femmes' truly unfortunate "Blister in the Sun 2001" from the _Grosse Point Blank_ soundtrack.

The Seeds made a live album on which the crowd goes wild when the band launches into one of its many "Pushin' Too Hard" soundalikes (can't find the album now--I want to say it's "No Escape"), fans obviously mistaking it for the hit. And I've noticed that the Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose used the same chord progression for all their hits, which all came from the same album.

hey & you know what, that's actually a FAKE LIVE album (overdubbed crowd sounds over studio recorded songs) - so they faked the crowd doing that? WHUH? i wanna go & listen to it now too but most of my rec's are at my mum's house, damn. but yeah the SEEDS, thee classic example of this syndrome. (Yes it is "No Escape" which is the exactly the same as the hit one , down to having the same electric-piano solo. )

Serge Gainsbourg - Ford Mustang draws heavily upon Initials BB

like ethan would say, "rap"

Prince Paul took a pretty good line from one of his old Stetsasonic songs (can't remember name; from In Full Gear I think) and made the best song on Handsome Boy Modeling School out of it - "Rock 'n' Roll Could Never Ever Hip Hop Like This"

The Kinks "You really got me" and "all day and all of the night"

where's that Nickelback mp3 where two of their hits are played simultaneously? That one's really blatant.

Van Halen's "Standing On Top Of The World" or whatever it's called sounds like a very precise and deliberate mashup of 75% "Dance the Night Away" and 25% "Jump."

As for the "remake with the year at the end" genre, my favorite has to be George Michael's "I'm Your Man '96," which manages to actually sound more dated than the original song - a strangely common pattern in these things...

I feel like Everclear made a whole career out of this type of thing but I can't think of two specific songs that really indulge in it. One of them will have to be "I Will Buy You A New Life," though.

Modern Romance made an entire career out of ripping off their initial hit.

"That's the Way Love Is" by Marvin Gaye is virtually the same as "I Heard It Through the Grapevine".

I remember the first time I ever heard "Oops...I Did It Again"...I was in middle school and I downloaded a leaked mp3 of it, and about two seconds into it I went "hey, this is exactly like Baby One More Time!!". In some sort of primitive mashup, my friend got an instrumental version of one of the songs (don't remember which one) and sang the lyrics of the other over it, and it worked perfectly. We were ASTONISHED.

Both songs still rock though.

Bel biv devoe

“Poison” = “Dope”

Reel 2 Real feat. the Mad Stuntman:

"I Like to Move It" followed by "Can You Feel It" followed by "Go on Move".

I think Red Hot Chili Peppers are the most blatant practicioners of this. They have had like three versions of "Under the Bridge," all of which have been their lead singles. Plus, they are deceptive, since I would imagine most people who bought their albums take them home and wonder why they are filled with loud, boring white-guy-funk with crappy sophmoric lyrics.

I agree with that, I think ever since the Californication LP every RHCP single has sounded exactly the same.