How can I check that the groovy new tune I just came up with isn't just a rehash of 'She Loves You' or whatever...?

So many times inspiration for a song will seemingly come out of nowhere. I'll spend a long time knocking it into shape until months later I'll realise I was simply parroting the music I'd been listening to that week. For example, I have a yelpy post-punk tune that I like very much but recently discovered is very similar to Pulled Up by Talking Heads.

Anyone done this? How do you stop it?

You don't?

soundhound bro

I guess you could shazaam yourself

just cover the floor with newspaper first, if you do

i just "wrote" something that turned out to be an allman brothers song i halfremembered from classic rock radio...the "gonna buy a taco...down by the station" one

just don't write music

just don't listen to music

post it here and ask for helpful advice.

Take inspiration from Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.

my bandmate just played me a new song he'd written, which just happened to be a slightly faster version of a song I wrote and played him six months ago.

You've influenced him. Congratualtions.

yeah i was actually kind of honoured!

ahah. embarrassing ! how did you tell him ?
I've always found it very hard to tell my co-songwriter I didn't like a new song after he played it to me... so it would have been VERY difficult to tell him he actually ripped me off !

ahah. embarrassing ! how did you tell him ?

I heard him playing the song to our drummer from the other room, came in and said 'hey you, stop ripping off my song'. He took it well, thankfully.

And yeah, it's very difficult to say you don't like an idea. I have to do it an awful lot (and the others to me), so we're cool. We generally have a "not precious, the song is the band's" policy, so once an idea is pitched to the band it becomes the band's business rather than the songwriter's. Can be tough though when the drummer insists on adding intrusive backing vocals all over a delicate piece of strumming/singing. We just have to have hard shells about it.

It's funny because now we've been playing and writing together for a year and a half we're kind of used to each other's stylistic tropes. The guitarist suggests "how about we do this as an acoustic track" on pretty much every song we ever play. The drummer has to be reeled in from showboating a lot and wanting to add as many melodies and harmonies as humanly possible to a piece. I'm not sure what my schtick is, but I know I've got one. It probably involves constantly trying to recreate Stop Making Sense.

i was listening to madonna's "everybody" and realized i unconsciously snagged one of the synth lines for a track i did

I had this happen to me a few years ago. Wrote what I thought was this gorgeous melody line, only to hear it a year later in a song played in the piped-in music at a McDonands i occasionally eat at if i'm desperately hungry. I then realized that's where i probably heard it and subconsciously remembered it when I needed a better melodic hook for my song. The annoying thing is that I still have no idea what song it was or what artist.

ugh bands are the worst

xp