Anyone else see any similarities between Morrissey’s Angel, Angel Down We Go Together and Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water?
I know… two songs that couldn’t be more far apart, but I get the same feeling from them. “I care about you and I’ll be there for you, no matter what.”
Anybody have any other comparisons like this?
I didn’t know the Morrisey song, so I youtubed it. The only connection is lyrically, but I’d guess that there are many, many songs based on the ‘when you’re down and out, I’ll be there for you’ theme. But you could pick any topic and it wouldn’t be too hard to find a pair to it. Well, apart from Alice Cooper’s song about Dead Babies or Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade Of Pale. In fact, it might be more fun to find unpairable lyrics. 
Here’s some more “different but the same”: James Brown released a song called “Mother Popcorn.” It has allegedly been covered by Aerosmith and the Blues Brothers, but I sure don’t hear any similarity, lyrically or rhythmically. WTF?
When I was younger I had a girlfriend who thought our song was “More than Words” by a Climax (or some other name, I forgot). I didn’t like that kind of music so I said it was “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode sortof as a response. They were both new songs at the time. It was basically the same song from 2 different genres.
I don’t know the James Brown song and I can’t remember the Aerosmith version, but I know that kind of thing is common with blues songs. I have a whole album of songs called Catfish Blues and Rollin’ Stone (they’re basically the same song) and a lot of them bear little or no resemblance to each other. The music is the same in some versions, but the lyrics change a lot. Often - this might be the case with Aerosmith, but not with Catfish Blues - white artists who were covering older blues tunes would rewrite the lyrics, possibly because they didn’t understand the original ones. The music usually didn’t change too much, but they would make it heavier. For that matter the opposite is also common- taking a song someone else wrote, changing the name, and covering it without giving credit. 
La Bamba and Laid
No, I can’t really explain it.
In bluegrass and mountain music, there are a number of songs that all involve a guy (although I can think of a couple where it was a woman) taking a woman to a body of water (although sometimes it was up a mountain) and murdering her, usually for understood but unsung reasons. Knoxville Girl, Ellen Smith and Rose Conley are just a few.
And Nickelback, too.
Don’t Stop and Waterfall by the Stone Roses.
Man, I’m getting a lot of use out of this link lately: Axis of Awesome - “Four Chords”