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

[darquegk]

Posted: 6/11/19 at 10:43pm

There’s a lot of pastiche in Jesus Christ Superstar where the songs are written in the style of popular rock songs of the day- the title song is a riff on the Stones, with a musical structure and progression (and lyric) inspired by “Sympathy for the Devil.”

The upbeat Priest theme for the second half of “This Jesus Must Die” is a style pastiche of The Doors in their jaunty cabaret mode, most notably the song “People are Strange.”

[jbp1232]

Posted: 6/11/19 at 10:57pm

Not exactly what you're going for here, but the chime notification on iPhone always sounds like the start of Old Friends from Merrily we roll along to me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1SeVASNM8M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ZeYu434sA

[CATSNYrevival]

Posted: 6/11/19 at 11:23pm

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.

[little_sally]

Posted: 6/13/19 at 10:01am

I'm not sure if it's intentional (since she mentions Eva Peron in the song) but "It's Not About Me" from The Prom sounds like "And the Money Kept Rolling In" from Evita, and the beginning of "Tonight Belongs to You" sounds like "My Strongest Suit" from Aida.

I am surprised nobody mentioned that "What's Gonna Happen" from Tootsie sounds like "Model Behavior."

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 6/13/19 at 10:18am

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.

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 6/13/19 at 2:41pm

Elfuhbuh said: "This whole video, lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW5wwi4ahLc"

I'm not convinced that every ALW song isn't at least partially plagiarized (at least the catchy hooks that everyone remembers) and I just don't recognize the less popular pieces he stole from. He's like the kind of DJ who just remixes other people's songs (vs. the kind that write their own music).

[NightMusic3]

Posted: 6/14/19 at 2:01am

Just remembered how similar "The Five-Fifteen" from Grey Gardens is to Cole Porter's "The Leader of a Big-Time Band" from Something For the Boys.

[ChairinMain]

Posted: 6/14/19 at 2:53am

QueenAlice said: "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."

I'll quibble with this: "What's Gonna Happen" and "Model Behavior" share very little actual melodic similarity; there are obviously similarities in the speed, rhyme structure and temperament but that comes from the emotions of the songs rather than any direct self-borrowing. I actually find my enjoyment of What's Gonna Happen in part stems from the fact that it proves Yazbeck is capable of writing very different songs within the same comedic style.

This is veering off-topic but I GOTTA take a second and rant about this because man oh man do these two songs prove that Yazbeck listened to Sondheim's maxim of "Content dictates Form". "Model" is free-wheeling stream of consciousness ranting with comparatively little internal rhyme - Candela is too panicked to be doing a lot of wordplay. She is all over the place, the rhythms and subject matter shift wildly and when rhymes do occur they often provide an excuse for her to tangent. 

"Gonna Happen", by comparison is a monologue that is VERY stritctly rhymed; it's ALL about wordplay because Sandy is overthinking every possible aspect of her situation. The song breaks out of it's straight "ABAB" rhyme structure only when Sandy's self-loathing and anxiety gets the better of her. My favorite thing about it is that at several points when she gets overwhelmed she crams way too many words into a phrase BUT STILL STICKS THE RHYME. For example: "No sooner have I got my note and opened up my trap/then some mealy-mouthed assistant director thumbs all over his iPhone and I know he's probably tweeting LOL this girl is crap". That's a brilliant structural deviation.

Oh, but your observation about "Unstoppable" and "The Microphone" being WAY too similar? 100000% accurate.

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 6/14/19 at 6:17am

I agree with your statements- notice in my post that I said l think “What’s Gonna Happen” feels like “Model Behavior”- I specifically avoided saying it sounds like it. 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.

[Shh_413]

Posted: 6/14/19 at 8:53am

I've always thought "Bottom's Gonna Be On Top" from Something Rotten! sounded like a weird combination of the intro to "Not the Boy Next Door" from The Boy From Oz and "Suppertime" from You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

[ChairinMain]

Posted: 6/14/19 at 11:16am

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".

[Robert Andrew Molinari]

Posted: 6/16/19 at 4:06pm

The accordion in Way Down Hadestown from Hadestown sounds so much like the one used in the Prologue for Great Comet both songs have a similar feel to me  

[Jamie Pierce]

Posted: 6/16/19 at 9:16pm

I Love To Cry At Weddings 

We Need A Little Christmas 

[bk]

Posted: 6/16/19 at 10:22pm

GavestonPS said: "broadwaybabywannabe2 said: "I always thought it interesting that Jerry Herman's BEFORE THE PARADE PASSES BY from Hello Dolly, and Stephen Sondheim's A PARADE IN TOWN, from Anyone Can Whistle, cover the exact same theme!"

And we know Adams and Schwartz also wrote a "parade" song for DOLLY that wasn't used.

Then there's "Don't Rain on My Parade" from FUNNY GIRL.

All from roughly 1963-4. For awhile I wondered whether David Merrick had four different teams all auditioning to write the Act One finale of DOLLY. But Charles Schwartz only mentions his and Adams involvement (and, of course, Jerry Herman's final version)."

Man, you're on a roll :)  Who on earth is Charles Schwartz?  It's Strouse.

[springwillcome]

Posted: 6/21/19 at 3:29pm

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]

Posted: 6/23/19 at 10:51pm

A little off-topic because it’s an entire show rather than just a song, but the plot of Hadestown is almost identical to the first act of the obscure Schmidt/Jones flop “Celebration” (which, in my opinion, is severely ahead of its time and is due for a revival while Jones is still around to possibly make some revisions to the book).

[John Adams]

Posted: 6/23/19 at 11:50pm

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

[mailhandler777]

Posted: 6/24/19 at 12:55am

The beginning of "Soul Of A Man" from Kinky Boots sounds like "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper. Possibly because she wrote it.

"What Baking Can Do" in Waitress sounds a lot like "Door Number Three" did in Waitress.

Updated On: 6/24/19 at 12:55 AM

[MollyJeanneMusic]

Posted: 11/30/19 at 8:47pm

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).

[Emmaloucbway]

Posted: 11/30/19 at 9:16pm

MollyJeanneMusic said: "Reviving this thread after I noticed that the repeating motif in "Maybe" fromNext to Normalsounds very similar to the beginningof "Something's Missing" fromCome 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 noticed this too!!

[KnewItWhenIWasInFron]

Posted: 12/2/19 at 11:51am

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

[LYLS3637]

Posted: 12/2/19 at 1:16pm

Another JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR one... 

"Damned For All Time" is essentially the 1960s BATMAN television theme song.

[Demitri2]

Posted: 12/2/19 at 1:27pm

Since THE MUSIC MAN is being revived...

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

[Plannietink08]

Posted: 12/2/19 at 6:56pm

A lot of JAGGED LITTLE PILL sounds like DOGFIGHT and DEAR EVAN HANSEN. Nothing in particular just the overall sound of the shows. 

[Enjolras5]

Posted: 12/2/19 at 7:44pm

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!