What bands or singers do you often or have you mistaken for others?
- I consider Snow Patrol, Coldplay, and The Fray to be essentially the same band.
- Before I knew who Billy Joel was I thought his songs were from some classic 1950s rock n roll band.
I frequently mistake local band Seether for Nickelback, which would irritate the fuck out of them because the lead singer prefers to think he’s the reincarnation of Kurt Cobain or something.
For a long time I thought Aimee by Pure Prairie League was by the Eagles.
On my Windows Media Player I confuse Sherwood and Forever the Sickest Kids with each other when it’s playing random songs in the background (can’t even tell which is which sometimes.) Same thing with Alkaline Trio and Hotwater Music, although they are not completely similar, they are more similar than any other two bands I own songs by, and HWM covered AT’s “Radio”, so when a random song comes on I just think “that’s the ‘Radio’ band” and just roll with it.
Jack: do you also mistake Snow Patrol for Keane or Jimmy Eat World? I’m not familiar enough with Coldplay or The Fray but Snow Patrol is indelibly linked in my mind with Keane because of their general sound , although I don’t mistake the two, and their singing is close enough to Jimmy Eat World that I did wonder upon first hearing SP on the radio if it were actually JEW.
MrDibble: again, I don’t confuse the two, but every time The Black Maria comes on my Windows Media Player I think “gee, that’s not too bad for a Nickelback-sounding song.”
[hijack]The Black Maria are one of the examples of Bands That Sound Exactly Like I Thought They Would. I noticed them in a used CD store and gave them a free sample run at the stores CD player (one of the reasons I still go there sometimes instead of digitally shopping,) just because of the name. I was wondering if they were named not only for the hearse but also for the line from My Chemical Romance’s album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Well, they sort of sound like a mixture between TC4SW-era MCR and Nickelback so I congratulated myself on a nice catch. Then when I found out that The Black Maria is Canadian like Nickelback, it jumped into a Totally Appropriately Sounding Band[/hijack]
In the mid to late 90s there was a glut of crappy but radio-friendly “alternative” bands with numbers in their name, which are all essentially the same band to me:
Blink 182
Sum 41
Eve 6
Matchbox 20
Maroon 5
Third Eye Blind
Seven Mary Three
Three Days Grace
3 Doors Down
The first time I heard Mark Knopfler singing “Sultans of Swing” with Dire Straits, I thought it was Bob Dylan.
When I first heard “Gemini Dream”, by the Moody Blues, I thought it was Electric Light Orchestra.
I can’t tell Korn from Tool from Disturbed.
Also, in the early 2000s there were a bunch of teenybop-boy band-punk acts that all sounded exactly alike. And I can’t remember a single one of them.
As a Tool fan, that hurts.
I wouldn’t call them crappy and they don’t have numbers, but can I add The Wallflowers and The Gin Blossoms to your excellent list?
Foreigner, Journey, and REO Speedwagon (and to a lesser extent, Kansas) might as well be the same band. I listen to classic rock stations, and all three have songs that regularly pop up in my daily soundscape, but I could not tell you who sings what songs or what the differences are. For a long time, I honestly didn’t even know that Foreigner and Journey were different bands.
I think Kansas and Boston are the same band.
All the yound dudes is by Mott the Hoople.
For years I just assumed it was by David Bowie. He did pen the song so maybe that is why.
Wow, really? Their respective singers sound nothing like each other (Foreigner’s Lou Gramm: raspy-voiced, similar to Bob Seger; Journey’s Steve Perry: clear-voiced tenor crooner; REO’s Kevin Cronin: no rasp, extreme enunciation, somewhat nasal). The three bands had distinctly different styles as well (Foreigner was straight up hard rock, REO Speedwagon was guitar- & piano-driven party rock, and Journey was more jazz-influenced rock. Of course, MTV turned all three into power ballad bands (and thus ruined them all), so if all you’ve heard is their MTV-era stuff, I can sort of understand your confusion.
My contributions:
I thought Van Morrison’s Brown-Eyed Girl was by the Rolling Stones.
I still don’t know who sang Eighteen, but I also thought that was the Rolling Stones.
Van Morrison sounds awfully like Mick Jagger in many of his early records. It was especially noticeable when he was the lead singer for Them. However, I don’t think it was so much Morrison trying to imitate Jagger as it was both Morrison and Jagger trying to imitate Howlin’ Wolf.
Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say they confused Maroon 5 (basically a boy band that plays their own instruments) with Three Days Grace (a hard rock band that frequently screams their lyrics).
For years, I thought of “Peace of Mind” by Boston as “that song by Kansas whose title momentarily escapes me.” Finally, I got around to Googling a snippet of the lyrics and found out whose song it is.
Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd are almost indistinguishable to me. I get Great White and Skid Row mixed up all the time, too. There was also an obscure one-hit-wonder in the 80s called Giuffria which I thought was Triumph.
Can’t agree with this. Blink & Sum 41, perhaps. Shouty, three-chord power punk-pop.
Eve 6, Matchbox 20, 3EB - a little emo-y, college/alt rocky with catchy lyrics.
7M3 - I think they’re a little grunge-y, when I first heard them I thought it was Pearl Jam. They might match better with Creed.
3DG - dunno about them.
3DD - might fit in the category with Eve 6 et al.
Wallflowers and Gin Blossoms are similar, and it pains me to include a band that I absolutely hate in this number, but prolly also Counting Crows. But they are a little different than the bands listed here, methinks.
To clarify, it isn’t the band’s styles that sound alike, although some of them do. It’s the fact that their names all have numbers in the title. I couldn’t keep them straight then and I still can’t now.