Who doesn’t love a great pop hook — one so deliciously catchy, clever and (let’s face it) lucrative, maybe an artist couldn’t resist using it twice?
Today, Stereogum links to a splice (thanks, Final Cut Pro!) of laconic, Darth-voiced ’80s rapper Tone Loc’s two biggest hits, “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” — revealing that they are, essentially, the same song.
Clearly, he’s not the first to get stuck on repeat, as last week’s kerfuffle over Beyonce’s “Halo” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone” handily proved (for the record, I’m sticking with Not So Much Alike At All on this one — same generic backbeat + different chord progressions, divided by two entirely divergent flavors of belting diva); so did the various plagiarism lawsuits against Coldplay for “Viva la Vida.”
Mostly, this entire post is an excuse to run this vintage (i.e. circa 2007) treasure: See Nickelback’s hits “How You Remind Me” and “Someday” in stereo, below — your Canadian goose is cooked, Chad Kroeger!:
But you tell us, readers: Which artists do you think have accidentally (on purpose?) Xeroxed their own hits — or pilfered best bits from others?
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Well, though not completely carbon copies, Janet Jackson and (especially)Whitney Houston 80s songs all sort of sound the same when you listen to them now.
But no one is more guilty of recycling the same crap over and over than Mariah Carey, she’s been singing the same song for the last 19 years and no one seems to mind.
Oh, but I mind. (-_-)
ACDC and Nickleback both have one song many different ways…The difference is ACDC ‘ song rocks and Nickleback’s is terrible.
The Nickelback thing is hilarious – and so true. You don’t need to go to such drastic measures to know that they just sing the same song over and over again. Can I add another group to the list? Becuase I think every song by The Fray sounds like every other song by The Fray.
The new Muse song, ‘Uprising’ sounds very similar to alot of their other songs. ‘Knights of Cydonia’ comes to mind. You could even pick up a bit of ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ in there too.
First thing came to my mind is precisely that every song from nickelback sounds the same… Dude, they suck big time!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Beyonce’s If I Were A Boy lifts the backing track directly from One Of Us.
Neil Young’s Train Of Love and Western Hero, both from Sleeps With Angels album have the same tune.
The Kinks: You Really Got Me & All Day and All of the Night. They may sound like different versions of the same song, but they’re both incredible!
Believe it or not on one of the greatest rock albums ever released Pearl Jam’s Ten “Alive” and “Evenflow” contain the same guitar riff played slightly differently. It is almost unnoticeable unless you actually look at the sheet music / Tablature for the two songs.
They are not exact but pretty much all Ramones songs have the same guitar part.
Here’s the deal. The music industry is just as unoriginal as the movie industry. Somethings are knowing tributes, some are recycled for dollars, and others are “revisionings.” I think it is a 60/40 split between garbage and brilliance in both realms. Which is 60 and which is 40 is subjective.
The new Mika single, “We Are Golden” sounds exactly like Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth”.
For the classic rock fans: Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul” and the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction” – is that the same guitar riff? And then there’s the Kinks – “Destroyer” recycles “All Day And All Of The Night” (with a lyrical reference to “Lola”) and “Catch Me Now I’m Falling” steals from “Jumping Jack Flash”. Meanwhile, back over in pop – Whitney Houston’s new single sounds like every Clive Davis-approved ballad she (and other Arista artists) have ever recorded. Make it stop!
That Nickelback clip was such a discovery…. three or four years ago when it was first posted. A little late on this one, EW.
The only time I’ve deigned to sign a Britney Spears song was to prove that “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and “oops I Did It Again” were the same song.