songs that sound like other songs

*obligatory post about Elastica/Wire connection*

"Last" by Nine Inch Nails (on the BROKEN e.p.) recalls Queen's "Fight from the Inside" (down to a stolen riff). Trent's a big Queen fan, allegedly.

The first note of Cheap Trick's "Stop This Game" (on ALL SHOOK UP) is a slow fade-in that is purportedly the last note of SGT.PEPPER's.

The Sex Pistols' "Holidays in the Sun" ripped off The Jam's "In the City"

("Girl Like You" was Edwyn Collins, who's not shitty)

I hear a slight resemblance between the choruses of "Heaven is a Place on Earth" and Starz's "So Young, So Bad." Maybe it's just the chord changes.

I'm sure there are several other "Sweet Leaf" rip-offs that I can;t think of right now.

This is Smoke on the Water: Dun dun DUN, dun dun DUN-DUNN
This is Cat Scratch Fever: Dun dun DUN, dun-dun DUN

And hey, did anyone notice the resemblances between "Ice Ice Baby" and "Under Pressure"?

You're shitting me. :-)

(Sorry. Listening to Sabotage at the moment.)

dsico

(Not listening to Sab right now.)

more terribly, the offspring's "get a job" and "o bla di o bla da" by the beatles have very similar choruses (try singing one over the other sometime, it's horrifying).

Furthermore, for the record: an obvious choice, perhaps, but Pulp's "A Little Soul" and Smokey R. and the M.'s "The Tracks of My Tears".

Other than that, the similarity of the intro to Cast's "Fine Time" and Guns'n'Roses "Paradise City" could be pretty confusing at indie discos in the mid-ninties, just when you're ready to blow the whistle and rock out with Axl, Izzy and Slash you get, "What's it all about? Do you really want to know..."

Shit.

I'm sure that's no accident, given Rick Rubin's appreciation for old school metal.

The Manic Street Preachers' "If You Tolerate This Than Your Children Will Be Next" was alleged to have ripped off the Stranglers' "Duchess," but I find that a bit of a stretch.....and I'm a much bigger fan of the Stranglers than I'll ever be of the Manics.

Then, of course, Nirvana stole the riff from Killing Joke's "Eighties" for "Come as You Are." Little known fact is that my beloved Killing Joke stole that very same riff from the Damned's "Life Goes On" (on the STRAWBERRIES album).

Big Black's "L Dopa" off SONGS ABOUT FUCKING is virtually indistiguishable from Killing Joke's "the Wait".

The Germs' "No God" ripps the opening riff off of Yes' "Roundabout," but that's more willfull desecration rather than theft (despite the fact that guitarist Pat Smear is an unapologetic Yes fan).

Oh, and dancing at Mother to retro-ironic white trash trailer rock last night, I realised that there's a Sloan song which is Foghat's Slow Ride down to a T, but I can't remember which one it is.

Butthole Surfers' "Human Cannibal" is "The Rose" by Bette Middler. Sing along. "Some say love..."; it's eerie.

I'm blanking right now....

A "Nico song," eh?

Regardless, that's a great version

Yes, their cover sounds more like Nico's arrangement than any others.

real lies - down & out (where e-girls dare)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jiFJPNMcgs

bruce springsteen - dancing in the dark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129kuDCQtHs

silkworm liberally quotes the solo from pavement's "in the mouth a desert" on their song "raised by tigers" (at the 4:30 mark)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FmuIFXYV28

I always took the riff in this song to be based on the same thing (start at 24:10 if it doesn’t jump there)

It struck me at about three o'clock in the morning what Bettie Serveert's "Silent Spring" reminds me of.

"Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top, and I'm not joking. You can sing the words of one over the chords of the other and it works. The verses have the same statement-statement-conclusion structure over descending chords, although ZZ Top's lyrics are more terse.

It's also a little bit like "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult. I've gone on a Youtube Bettie Serveert binge and it fair brought a tear to my eye. They sound like a pitch-perfect modern recreation of jangly 1990s indie, except that they actually were a jangly 1990s indie band.

Palomine, the debut, made a huge impression on me because I was desperately in love with a girl who gave it to me on a dubbed cassette. Those raggedy jangles get me, like the crescendo of "Under the Surface."

A while later, I had it on CD, and a guy I know (semi-famous musician) said that it didn't sound like it had really been mastered at all. It is true that the levels are spiky AF.

I read that she got singing lessons before Private Suit, and you can kind of tell. But the magic aura was a bit punctured and I didn't follow their subsequent work at all.

"Brain Tag" rocks, that is all, carry on.

If you gave up after Private Suit, you missed Log 22, their best album by far imo.

"A while later, I had it on CD, and a guy I know (semi-famous musician) said that it didn't sound like it had really been mastered at all. It is true that the levels are spiky AF."

I can relate to that as well. The studio version of "Silent Spring" has masses of reverb on the lead singer's voice, which is mixed louder than everything else, but conversely on "Under the Surface" she's in danger of being buried by the instruments. I keep wanting to ride the volume control, and then I get worried I'm turning into an audiophile. I'm going to start complaining about excessive pre-ringing and inner groove distortion.

If ever there was a band scientifically designed to appear on one of those 1990s Volume CD+book things alongside Salad and Tripping Daisy, Bettie Seervert were it.

It only really occurred to me after seeing TOTP the other day, but Kylie's Did It Again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDKPvy-ZXC8

has some similarities to INXS' Back on Line

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtM792GFczY

"Runaway Trains" by Tom Petty sounds like he heard "Red Rain" by Peter Gabriel and tried to square peg that round hole.

Not any specific song, but the first time I heard Peter Gabriel's vocal on "Red Rain," I figured he'd been listening to The Blue Nile A Walk Across the Rooftops.

So when Hats came out a few years later with a quote from Gabriel (and Rickie Lee Jones) stickered on the front, I took that as confirmation that I was correct.

Gabriel himself always sounded a lot like the guy from Procol Harum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOj3kJKy-_U

That REM thread has me listening to Out of Time. I assume this is a common one, but "Belong" sounds exactly like Dancing Queen by Abba

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIkTg9y2psw

As an R.E.M.-head, I've certainly never heard that mentioned... I hear what you mean, in the opening chords of the ABBA song.

Meanwhile when Mike's bass comes in on the intro it reminds me of the intro to "Pretty Green"

Eric Church's "Hands of Time" reminds me a lot of Keith Urban's "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16"

The verse of B-52’s “Channel Z” sounds like The Vels “Private World”. The parts that go, “Getting nothing but static/Static in my attic” and “Got myself a mirror/Place to fix my hair now”.

The overworld theme to the o.g. Legend of Zelda video game sounds like the theme song to the Brady Bunch.

hearing a new(ish) pulp song a bit recently, "got to have love" & i'm thinking this sounds a lot like "begging" by the 4 seasons. anyone else reckon?

As discussed on the John Stewart - "Gold" thread, it appears that FM gave Stewart carte blanche to take the instrumental of "Sisters Of The Moon" and turn it into "Gold".

"Atlas" by Battles sounds like Ween's "So Many People in the Neighborhood"

the human league's "darkness"/blue öyster cult's "don't fear the reaper"

speaking of the Human League, that reminded me of something I could sing along with Fascination a few months ago. Spent ages trying to remember then saw that I posted it here in January, ha

Sorry, I have a couple that I can't figure out exactly what they sound like - is there a more appropriate thread? The problem could be that they don't actually sound like specific other songs, but something more generic.

"Time Will Be The Only Saviour" by Bill Ryder-Jones (from 'Yawn') reminds of something by The Cure, especially during the opening, but I can't quite place it. Maybe it's just Cure-esque?

"Spike Island" from Pulp's latest 'More' reminds me of something by Arcade Fire from the later albums, but I'm loathe to go back to listen to the latter enough to work out what.

"The Village Green Preservation Society" - The Kinks (1968)
"O-o-h Child" - The Five Stairsteps (1970)

two debut singles -- the chorus of "soda pop" by the saja boys is note for note the opening verse of "jealous again" by the black crowes

tate mcrae's "sports car" sounds like ciara's "oh"

For a Nashville song, interesting that Maren Morris's Circles Around This Town starts out a lot like Bob Dylan's "Most of the Time."

I'm unfamiliar with The Eurythmics' debut album, but "Belinda" has a guitar riff that's the spitting image of "Public Image", and a strangely familiar vocal melody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLNRGHFDlzQ

It has Elvis Ramone on drums! The rest of the album also has Can's rhythm section. Wikipedia says that Holger Czukay mimed the flute solo in the video for "Never Gonna Cry Again", but if that's Holger Czukay, I am Holger Czukay (I am not):
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EnzfkX6H9lE/hqdefault.jpg

My hunch is that it's Tim Wheater, who is the credited flautist. He's the spitting image of Rowan Atkinson. The band also performed the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test, with Annie Lennox also playing flute - she can play flute, which is something I was shockingly old before I learned it - and Czukay on French horn.

That is today's random dump of Eurhythmics facts. In the Garden is a good album that famously didn't chart anywhere because it was just too good.

"Ahead by a Century" by The Tragically Hip and "Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)" by John Mellencamp which came out only a few months later.

the way adrienne lenker sings “incomprehensible” in that song sounds just like the way paul westerburg sings “here comes a regular”

I was struck by a general vibe similarity between the theme song from Barbarella and the theme song from The Love Boat, and both feature a climax of sorts with the word "love" spread over two bars - sung by Bob Crewe and Jack Jones respectively.

Just realized Charles Fox was a co-writer of both songs.

mike oldfield's "incantations" part 1 is a direct homage to side 2 of tales from topographic oceans

I think Hammer Room by Mogwai really sounds like the daytime theme from the Tiny Wings game app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nzDi2V6BOI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShLX-4dfQfg

There's a minor Italodisco classic called "Over the Sky", credited to Alyne, but it's really a bunch of session musicians and a model:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVqvfjLfsfI

The chorus bugged me for a while until it dawned on me that it's basically the same melody as Madonna's "Cherish", mixed with a bit of Mike Oldfield's "Moonlight Shadow". Only it came out four years earlier so that's okay. It sounds simple enough - dah, dah-dah-dah / dah, dah-dah-dah - that it's probably ancient though.

my kid pointed out a weird one today when we were listening to Mirror Ball by Neil Young on the way to school —

Neil Young - “Act of Love”
Underworld - “I Exhale”

not sure if it counts as the verse or the chorus, but the bit of depeche mode's 'damaged people' that's all like 'when you're in my arms/the world makes sense/there is no pretense . . .'

brought to mind 'i don't know how to love him' from jesus christ superstar ('should i bring him down/should i scream and shout/should i speak of love/let my feelings out?')

Hello/Ace Frehley - "Back in the New York Groove"

Lou Reed - "Charley's Girl"

This barely counts - it doesn't count at all - but the 90s Heardle yesterday was Divinyls 'I Touch Myself', and although I got it on the first second or two, I also considered that it could've gone into Morrissey - Every Day Is Like Sunday

the chorus to the verve’s “on your own” kinda reminds me of “I touch myself”

haha it's true!

today's was Guns n Roses "Don't Cry" which sounds like Miley's "Flowers"

which also sounds like Ace of Base "Beautiful Life"

Jorge Ben Jor's "Fio Maravilha" aka "Filho Maravilha" sounds like "All Along the Watchtower."

acid mothers temple "pink lady lemonade"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gVzqxH4qag

r.e.m. "life and how to live it" (first 15 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wbJbr6CaUw

Here's one - watching 70s Dr Who episodes and noticed the music suite for "City of Death" may have been subliminally stuck in Howard Jones's mind until the 80s when he added a nice piano intro to "Everlasting Love"

Particularly 1:50 to 2 minutes and a bit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kppa8Trnhoo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWPhbwYQlB0

huh, just heard the Jim Croce song and was like "This sounds familiar!"

Jim Croce - Operator (That's Not The Way It Feels)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb85NvjbBm8

Pavement - Trigger Cut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nEs3vODGrE

Rosalia "Reliquia" and His Name is Alive "Cornfield"

Heard this terrible song on the radio - it's from a Paddington Musical -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO-4_BjoIig

but it sounds like Torn (Natalie Imbruglia) and also Photo of a Photograph by There I Ruined It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmKc0OhsnU