Rick Springfield’s cover of Sammy Hagar’s “I’ve Done Everything For You” came up on an 80s mix. I was struck by how the up-down notes of the chorus was almost identical to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “The Impression That I Get,” specifically the latter’s lyrics “never had to knock on wood.”
Awhile back I was listening to the old REO Speedwagon Live album, and there’s this piano intro to “157 Riverside Ave” that it suddenly occurred to me was a shameless ripoff of the piano intro to “Locomotive Breath”.
Speaking of Little Shop…
Not being an ass, just curious. How do you know which came first?
Jethro Tull composed Locomotive Breath in 1971. And…REO Speedwagon composed their song the same year! Good point. Probably a coincidence, then (there’s only so much piano noodling you can do on a bluesy 7th chord and scale, to build tension leading into a guitar riff).
I had no idea the boys from Illinois were around that long. I assumed they came into being with MTV in 1981.
Huh - today I learned that lawyers for Bowie and Queen sued (or threatened to sue) Vanilla Ice for copyright infringement, and as a result the former were given songwriting credit and royalties. Until now I had assumed it was an acknowledged sample from the outset. I mean, it’s so blatant I don’t know how Vanilla Ice thought they might get away with it.
Wow, I didn’t realize REO had been around since '71. (I would have guessed '73 or maybe '74). Or that “157 Riverside Ave” was written the same year as “Locomotive Breath”. So yeah, let’s call that one a toss up.
Toss up sounds good. Both songs were supposedly composed in 1970 and released the following year.
Are you talking about the bluesy parts? I’m not familiar with the Speedwagon song, but just listening to it, it’s just standard blues riffing. I don’t hear anything specificly related to the Tull song there. Or is it a specific live album or another part or something?
Both songs have a soo\lo piano intro, with similar scales and feel. REO Speedwagon’s is 30 seconds long in the studio version. It’s pretty standard stuff.
The Escape Club’s “Wild Wild West” is musically just a rewrite of Elvis Costello’s “Pump it Up.” I remember it being noted in Rolling Stone’s one-star review of the Escape Club album. No idea if there was any legal pursuit, though.
A lot of ‘I Want’ songs end up sounding similar, but those two were written by the same pair of songwriters.
Compare “I Know” by Barbara George (1962) and “Everybody Loves a Lover” by the Shirelles (1963). Are the identical intros and bridges (start at about 1:05 on both) intentional?
“Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette)” is pretty much the same song as “Mother-in-Law” by Ernie K-Doe.
The Ramones were legendary at this. When they were cranking out songs in the beginning, “I Don’t Want to Walk Around With You” and “I Don’t Want to Get Involved With You” were two different songs. They’d also reuse melodies: “I’m Affected” off of End of the Century was recylced as “We Want the Airwaves” off of Pleasant Dreams.
Another one that sounds like “Where Did Our Love Go” - by the same songwriters, no less:
It may be intentional or subconscious, but maybe many songs are supposed to sound “similar”. It is not too surprising once artists choose to use identical musical traditions (scales and grammar and vocabulary…) and influences, popular riffs, “recycled” melodies, and standard chord loops. If there is no actual plagiarism talking place, what’s the problem?
If someone wants to sound completely different they can (and, in practice, do) do that too, but even squeezing in a Bohlen–Pierce scale or something is hardly uncharted territory.
Well, there may not be a problem, but that doesn’t mean an enterprising lawyer can’t create one…