As mentioned earlier, sequel songs were fairly common in the 50s and early 60s, when there were a lot of small independent labels, and many artists didn’t release albums, only singles. The general practice was to follow up a hit single as fast as possible, and often the goal was to make it sound similar to the earlier hit.
Some examples (for the U.S. charts): The Midnighter’s 1954 #1 R&B hit, Work With Me Annie, had a follow-up with a similar tune, Annie Had A Baby. The follow-up to LaVern Baker’s 1957 tune, Jim Dandy (To The Rescue) was Jim Dandy got Married, which was a nearly identical tune. (The first song got to #17. the second to #76, so there were limits to how much you could milk the same tune). In 1964 the Drifters got to #4 with Under the Boardwalk, and the thematically similar follow-up was I’ve Got Sand in My Shoes (#33).
I started a thread in IMHO, “Song Sequels?”, a few months ago asking for other song sequels (besides “Judy’s Turn To Cry”, the one I knew). Dopers came up with a lot of song sequels (way, way more than I thought there were out there).
I think generally that’s true, but I think it might depend on what’s being re-used, and from what stage in their career it’s from. I can think of two examples, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Meat Beat Manifesto. Both had songs from early in their careers that were half good and half sucked, and they took the non-sucky parts and put them in amongst better accompaniment (‘zat a word?) when they got to be better song writers. For the Jesus & Mary Chain at least one song, but maybe more (it’s been a while) from their first album Psychocandy got used in subsequent albums. For Meat Beat Manifesto, the early Armed Audio Warfare (which sucks for the most part) provided several melodies for 99% several years down the road when they could put lyrics to them that weren’t derivative of the worst of 7th graders’ style of poetry. So in this regard you can look at it not “as a sign of staleness and lack of inspiration,” just earlier inspiration that was good but they were at the time unable to have it pan out nicely. However, I’d say this is the exception to the rule.
I knew I should have left that out. But, Paul Mc, his own self, said on a TV interview/ bio that they did. So our band (and I use that term loosley) listened to and found a couple of songs with the same melody line and did them as sort of a medley. Now that was about 18 yrs ago so my memory is kinda fuzzy there since we covered hundreds of songs in-between. But I think one was ‘You never give me your money’. I know you shouldn’t post without cites.
Ah, that would be Skeeter Davis. Country music did this frequently in the 50’s and 60’s. Probably the best and well known was Kitty Wells’ song, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, a reply to Hank Thompson’s song, “The Wild Side Of Life”. So far there have been four popular country songs using that tune. The tune was first used in the Carter Family song “I’m Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes”, then in the Roy Acuff song, “Great Speckled Bird”. Skeeter Davis also sang an answer song to Floyd Cramer’s instrumental hit, “Last Date”, called “My Last Date”. There were so many others, I can’t even begin to list them here, but there were a LOT!
I’m not aware of Paul McCartney ever acknowledging that the Beatles re-used melodies. I HAVE read interviews in which Paul freely admits that he and John Lennon often stole licks from Chuck Berry, Little Richard and others. He points to “I Saw Her Standing There” as a song he stole almost completely from Chuck Berry.
Mind you, “stole” was PAUL’s word, not mine! Paul likes to say, “Mediocre artists borrow. Great artists steal.”
You’re gonna laugh but the actual name of the song was “Sequel”!
Originally posted by warmgun
There is at least one case of an actual sequel. ‘Snoopy vs the Red Baron’ (sorry, can’t remember the group) had a follow up. Can’t remember the song name but it continued the Snoopy/Red Baron story.
That would be Snoopy’s Christmas.
The song “Stagger Lee” (or Stacker Lee, Stag-O-Lee, Stack-O-Lee) is a traditional song that has been interpreted by many artists, each adding their own twist.
The Grateful Dead did a version in which the main character, Billy DeLyon is murdered. His wife, Delia, seeks justice through the local sheriff, who is too scared to act. Delia takes matters into her own hands and eventually delivers the murderer, Stagger Lee, to the chickenshit sheriff for hanging.
Here’s a cool link that offers a pretty thorough history of the various incarnations of the Stagger Lee story:
This sequel business is common practice in rap music. “Roxanne” by UTFO received several responses by female rappers. Furthermore, many rap artists “remix” their original song, adding guest rappers or a new beat.
This isnt exactly a song sequel, but when The Offspring released that “Why Don’t You Get a Job” song a year or two back, it sounded exactly like The Beatles “Ob La Di, Ob La Da”. The Music is different, but you can hum the Beatle’s lyrics over the Offspring tune perfectly. Even the bridge. Probably unconciously done, but a suspicious coincidence nonetheless.
Adam Sandler milked Hanhukah TWICE!
I would offer that the Song “Baby Love” inspired a sequel many years later about the return of the baby in the film “Baby Got Back”
