Are these songs covers?

[Leaper]

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" - Green Day
"Underneath it All" - No Doubt

(These two strike me as extremely familiar sounding, especially in their choruses, but I find it difficult to Google without getting mostly hits on the modern version, if indeed there are more than one.)

The other song I was wondering about was one I hear on the radio quite a bit, but never caught the title or artist. The chorus goes something like: "Well, somebody told me you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year..." (Which makes no sense to me.)

Can anyone help? Anyone else got questions of this nature for Dopers to answer?

[Anastasaeon]

Originally Posted by Leaper

The other song I was wondering about was one I hear on the radio quite a bit, but never caught the title or artist. The chorus goes something like: "Well, somebody told me you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year..." (Which makes no sense to me.)

Can anyone help? Anyone else got questions of this nature for Dopers to answer?

The Killers - "Somebody Told Me".

Looking up the other ones now...

[Anastasaeon]

I can't find anything about the first two songs you listed being covers, however, there are many other artists who have used the same titles for their songs, if that helps.

The chorus in the No Doubt song reminds me of something the Specials might have written - if you get rid of Gwen's voice, that is.

[WordMan]

Nope - not covers.

[RealityChuck]

There is an older Boulevard of Broken Dreams (written by the great Harry Warren), but Green Day isn't playing that.

[SmackFu]

A good place to check this kind of thing is on allmusic.com. They list songs by composers, which makes it easy to see if they're covers.

[mojave66]

Another good place is www.coversproject.com. Not only does it tell what songs are covered, but who originated it and everyone who covered it.

[chefjef]

cool site. I've wondered about a site like that and could never find one.

[FriarTed]

I will say the BOULEVARD and SOMEBODY do sound very reminiscent of previous songs, but I can't put my finger on which ones. Anyone have any ideas?

[AskNott]

My old guitar teacher was in a country rock band. When somebody would request a song, he would often say, "We don't know that song, but we'll play this other song that has the same chords." That was a tad sarcastic, but in 3-chord rock you get a lot of songs that sound like other songs.