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....

No Age - "Send Me" sounds like My Bloody Valentine (or weirdo-era Colin Newman?) covering Fugazi's "Glue Man"

Same descending chorus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2DLw__HemM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XwKk_LmwTI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5TIjr15p1A

Has this one honestly not been done before:

Talking Heads, "Swamp"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15UWm0okgvA

Chicory Tip, "Son of My Father"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWI2L1g76Jg

Michael Hurley - I Painted A Sign (1995)
Bob Marley & The Wailers - Buffalo Soldier (1983)

I listened to Neu! for the time today and there's a little riff in the middle 'Im Glück' that resembles the melody from GYBE's 'Storm' imo

is there a thread for songs that remind you of another song, but you can't remember what that other song is?

I've never heard Chicory Tip before, that's a nice song. While watching the video, I was convinced it was a stylish 2000s pastiche of 70s glam, but nope it's the real thing!

Ginormous hit in the UK on 1972. Written by Giorgio Moroder no less!

R.E.M. "Driver 8"
Neil Diamond "Solitary Man"

I think that's the first time I've heard the original Son of My Father even though everyone knows it very well - I must have only ever heard it at football before!

Someone on Reddit pointed out that the melody of Shania Twain's "Man! I Feel Like a Woman" follows the contours of Aerosmith's "Uncle Salty". Of course, Steven Tyler shows much more compassion for an abused girl than Ms. Lange does.

I'd not heard the Chicory Tip song either but it's really fun in a specifically TOTP2 way

There should be a name for this kind of music. Carboot Glam? Terrace Pop?

People should sing Swamp at the football match "Hiiiii! Hi hi hi hi HIIIII!"

They've been singing "Son of My Father" in various guises for years. They used to sing "Spot the looney" to it but I don't imagine they do that anymore. "Spot the Looney" from the Monty Python sketch thus making it one of the most 70s terrace anthems imaginable.

Imperial Teen "Baby" and Pretenders "The Phone Call"

maria somerville - "violet"
ml buch - "working it out"

I picked up a 12" of Rita Lee's "Lança Perfume" and it is at times a sound alike (the music, not the vocals) to The Doobie Brothers "What A Fool Believes"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYpXGRz87SA

That song was apparently a giant hit all over Latin Americca.

I noticed some similarities between these two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzTCR8S9vvk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YXc0Zrcsx0

Additonally the intro to "Mr. Skin" has always reminded me of "Mamma Mia".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unfzfe8f9NI

(I've probably already mentioned that on this thread).

The bit around 3:25 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3_c21scQs

And bits of Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkB4qTpRx_E

The opening chords and first line of this new Blondshell song reminded me so much of another song, it was driving me nuts...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxwZl7_xIm4

...then I finally figured it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2XamJx35M

Warren Zevon - "Werewolves of London" (1978)
John Cale - "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend" (1974)

^lol, never would have occurred to me

the verses of Bettie Serveert's Silent Spring (1995) sound like the verses of Tasmin Archer's Sleeping Satellite (1992). and it's funny that the Betties' singer is backed by John Cale in that clip, because the guitar solo in The Ocean My Floor quotes 'Lady Godiva's Operation' but doesn't credit Lou Reed. Christgau notes the song's similarity to VU in his review ('Seven minutes of "The Ocean, My Floor" could inspire Lou Reed to a cutting contest.') but doesn't mention the 'Lady Godiva' quote because he's never actually listened to a VU album in his life

That Bettie Serveert song is incredibly familiar. It also raises the question of why I've never heard of Bettie Serveert. Digging into my brane the verse reminds me a bit of "If I Were You" by K D Lang.

I'm not a musician but the statement-statement-conclusion lyrical structure over descending chords probably has a name.

Never saw that Carol/Cale performance, but it should be said that Bettie Serveert made a long career of incorporating the VU universe into their songs, to the point of a cover/tribute album:

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

but my favorite is their Nico cover (the solo from 2m50s - 3m27s is quite HOT):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u83Qy1FBahI

^this

Even the name of the band is almost that of Lou’s first wife.

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".