I’ve been hearing a fairly new song “Out of My League” by Fitz and the Tantrums on the radio. To me, it bears a HUGE similarity to “Tenderness” by General Public. Does anybody else notice the similarity? I’ve googled both titles, and I’m shocked that I’m not seeing anything that says they’re similar.
Both songs also sound kind of like “Modern Love” by David Bowie.
Jackie DeShannon’s “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” sounds like the Beatles’ “Baby You’re a Rich Man.” (Jackie is well known as a Beatles fan.)
Three pages and no one mentioned Sara Bareilles’ Love Song and Michael Buble’s Haven’t Met You Yet?
Why has no one mentioned Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” and Genesis’s “Misunderstanding”? If there was ever a lawsuit…
“And you can tell everybody -”
A) This is your song.
B) I’m the man, I’m the man, I’m the man.
10cc’s “The Things We Do for Love” sounds kind of like the Clovers’ “Love Potion No. 9” at the beginning of the verses.
People all over the world, join hands . . . fuck you, and fuck her too!
I guess the change in my pocket wasn’t enough . . . start a love train, love train!
(as originally performed by Cee Lo and the O’Jay’s)
More Chopin. This Chopin Etude has yielded both this song and this tango.
It’s all quite deliberate, but I think it’s fun to hear the same beautiful melody across different genres.
“Puff the Magic Dragon,” by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrow, and “Celluloid Heroes,” by the Kinks. The resemblance is very strong in the verses.
Too late to edit, but here’s another one. “American Tune,” by Paul Simon, and the St Matthew’s Passion chorale, by Bach, are extremely similar - though Bach borrowed it without attribution as well, so hey.
Wilco’s Dreamer In My Dreams always sounds uncannily like a sped up Honky Tonk Woman to me.
This melody has a long history, and we’ve discussed it before.
Bach didn’t have to attribute his usage since it was SOP to include the standard Lutheran hymns in sacred works. But Paul Simon was pretty brazen to NOT include “Adapted by” in his authorship, especially since all the folkies knew “Because All Men Are Brothers”
“Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette),” recorded by Benny Spellman in 1962 and written by Allen Toussaint under a pseudonym is the same song as the 1961 “Mother-in-Law” recorded by Ernie K-Doe and written by . . . Allen Toussaint.
The Four Tops had a big hit with "Can’t Help Myself"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z59EVHU8MjI. But when they came out with “It’s the Same Old Song” - YouTube I thought they were taking the piss.
I was going to mention the Buffalo Soldier/Banana Splits similarity.
I may be the only one who hears this, but the intro to Iron Man sounds a lot like the intro to Zappa’s Who Are the Brain Police?
Also, the guitar solo in Iron Man reminds me of Zappa’s in Hungry Freaks, Daddy.
A good number of these seem pretty tenuous to me, but I’ve always kind of gotten a kick out of artists blatantly plagiarizing their own work. Chuck Berry’s School Days and No Particular Place To Go are pretty damned close to being identical, down to the intro lick and the key.
Of course last summer’s Blurred Lines sounds an awful lot like Marvin Gaye’s Got to Give It Up
Did that get settled?
Yeah, see, that’s one of those where I, as a sometimes musician, say, yeah, I can see the resemblance, but it’s substantially different.
Not different enough to duck a lawsuit.
http://www.hitfix.com/news/marvin-gaye-family-wins-victory-in-blurred-lines-copyright-case