Songs That Sound An Awful Lot Like Other Songs — Page 4

I've been thinking about "Invisible" from Beetlejuice. It reminds me of something. Maybe a bit of "No Matter What" from Whistle Down the Wind.

I enjoyed TOOTISE, despite Yazbeks's shockingly lazy score which, yes, seems to borrow (from all things) multiple tunes and themes from WOMEN ON THE VERGE. "Unstoppable" is uncomfortably close to "Microphone" and "What's Gonna Happen" does indeed feel like "Model Behavior." Maybe TOOTSIE should have been set in Spain.

QueenAlice said: "...But I do think structurally, rhythmically, and content wise, the two songs are uncomfortably close. It’s as if the composer found one way to create a comedic number that worked in a very specific setting and couldn’t be bothered to build something that speaks to the very different setting of TOOTSIE."

I'd disagree, partially because of the reasons I outlined above, and partially because the song is so clearly a riff on the neurotic energy Teri Garr gives in the movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eqp0Ks1IEU I would accept that the choice of a samba in the accompaniment figure DOES make it resemble "Model Behavior" in a superficial sense, but I just don't hear any deep similarities in the rhymthic structure or the lyrics.

Hard to break down "Gonna Happen" without access to sheet music (Boy that D in college music theory is coming back to haunt me today) but it's built around a syncopated four-bar phrase that drives the entire song. When Sandy strays from this phrase (ie at the "Guilty" bridge), she tends to get back right back on it which makes the song very linear and focused. Model has a straight, 8th-note- based rhythm where Yazbeck keeps subtly changing her phrases to keep the character off kilter - for example, her first line is a two bar phrase with a cadance on the first beat of a bar, her next phrase cadances there again but has two extra syllables that trail off into the next beat, then her third phrase goes from a 2-bar phrase to a four-bar phrase. Then the pattern repeats, gets broken up by abrupt changes in rhythm or spoken passages that elongate the phrases still further. You never know what's coming next.

Rhyme wise: "Gonna happen" is essentially a list of rhymed couplets (AABB) and even when Sandy tangents and lengthens a phrase (definitely a trick Yazbeck uses in both songs) she sticks the rhyme. "Model" is way more complicated and the more I look at the lyrics the more I admire them. Yazbeck keeps alternating rhymed couplets with lengthy non-rhyming phrases that start a new rhyming pattern rather than resolving the rhyme we expect. IE: "Okay you're not there but we need to talk,
My stomach's aching like I swallowed some enormous rock.
I'm on the phone booth on the corner and I only got a minute
Cause I'm running out of change, cause I've been lending all my money to Malik". When rhymes do come they are very closely packed together (Malik/freak/week, what it's for/matador/metaphor) before Candela looses focus and is off on a new tangent. The rhymes are happening almost accidentally. And with Sandy, the rhymes drive the song because she is laser-focused on her misery and she is going to hit that rhyme even if she has to cram in extra lines of text to do so.

...So yeah I might really love David Yazbeck's panic songs. And we haven't even talked about "Pepi Hears the Ocean".

I Love To Cry At Weddings

We Need A Little Christmas

Here's a fun one: "Lovely ladies" from Les Mis and the Oompa Loompa song

Not the whole song and not the same tempo, but the choruses of Memory from cats and Agony from into the woods

cougarnewtin said: "[...] the plot of Hadestown is almost identical to the first act of the obscure Schmidt/Jones flop 'Celebration'"

I find similarities to Schmidt/Jones' long-running showThe Fantastiks.

i.e., the young and somewhat naive lovers, the wall (and its maintenance throughout the show), a kidnapping (...of sorts in Hadestown. Although Eurydice follows Hades of her own free will, she is initially lured by Hades. Once there, she can't leave without Hades' permission, like being kidnapped), hero's descent into the underworld (although one is literal, the other figurative), how the characters of Hermes and El Gallo function as narrators (the first time I heard Hermes' line, "A lot can happen behind closed doors" I thought of El Gallo).

Updated On: 6/23/19 at 11:50 PM

Reviving this thread after I noticed that the repeating motif in "Maybe" from Next to Normal sounds very similar to the beginning of "Something's Missing" from Come from Away (specifically, the lines "Maybe I've lost it at last" and its corresponding lines within the verses and "Back to the way that things were," respectively).

"I've Decided to Marry You," from "Gentleman's Guide," sounds a LOT like "Kiss Me" from "Sweeney Todd."

Since THE MUSIC MAN is being revived...

If you speed up "Goodnight My Someone" it turns into "Seventy Six Trombones."

With the release of the Mr. Rogers movie, I thought I'd point out that "Bring Him Home" and the Mr. Rogers song "Tree Tree Tree" are the exact same tune. Look it up. It's freaky. Wonder who stole from who, and if it was at all intentional.



The beginning of "Only Us" from Dear Evan Hansen is also exactly like the beginning of "Beautiful City" from Godspell!