< Suspiciously Similar Song

Suspiciously Similar Song/Other Media

Note: Musicians tend to draw from influences when writing music, so please list notable examples only.

Music

See, their song goes "ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding/ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding", and mine goes "ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding/ding-ding-ding-ding da-da ding-ding".

It's totally different.
—Vanilla Ice, comparing his "Ice Ice Baby" to Queen's "Under Pressure"
  • As seen by the page quote, Vanilla Ice tried to avoid paying royalties for "Ice Ice Baby"'s musical background by adding an extra note to "Under Pressure" (he later was forced to credit the band).
  • "I Missed Us" by SWV samples a Jimmy Hart Version of the Fairy Fountain theme from The Legend of Zelda.
  • "Lamb of God" by Marilyn Manson has a basically identical verse to the earlier "Climbing Up the Walls" by Radiohead.
    • Manson has done this more than once: "I Don't Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me)" (taken from the heavily David Bowie-influenced Mechanical Animals) is a dead ringer for Bowie's own "Fame".
    • "The Fight Song" is quite similar to Blur's "Song 2".
  • David Hasselhoff's "Crazy For You" all but shares its tune with, of all songs, "YMCA".
    • Disney's 1982 ecercise album Mousercise features a song called "Keep on Trying", which also sounds like a Jimmy Hart version of YMCA.
    • And another Disney album gives Sport Goofy an Image Song that was also used on TV and sounds an awful lot like ABBA's "Take A Chance on Me".
  • Abba's So Long is this of Waterloo, which was intentionally done to ensure another hit. It wasn't as successful.
  • Scooter's Roll Baby Roll featured a sample of Abba's Arrival which it turned out the band hadn't asked to use. As a result, the rerelease of the album it was on (The Stadium Techno Experience) features a remix of the song called Swinging In The Jungle, which has a Jimmy Hart version of the Arrival sample.
    • Scooter have done this so much that it has become a sort of trademark to expect certain songs in a particular style on each album. Maria (I Like It Loud) and One (Always Hardcore) are the most notorious and there is one song like them on every album since. Similarly, Break It Up and Leave In Silence are both techno ballads and have pretty much the same chord progression and laid back feel.
    • David Hasselhoff actually Jimmy Harted multiple songs... his song "Looking for freedom" sounds like very much like "Rivers of Babylon" by Boney M. But actually, David Hasselhoff's 1989 version of it isn't the original one... it was originally done by Marc Seaberg who released it back in 1978 when "Rivers of Babylon" was still in the charts. Other sound-alike songs by David Hasselhoff are "Do the Limbo dance" (sounding much like Boney M.'s "Hooray! Hooray! It's a holi-holiday") and "Hands up for Rock'n'Roll" (leaning heavily towards Pia Zadora's "Let's dance tonight").
    • Taiwanese pop singer Cyndi Wang's "Honey" is also another "YMCA" ripoff.
  • David Bowie tried to do a lyrically less-than-faithful glam rock version of "Comme d'Habitude," but Paul Anka took the rights from under him for "My Way." He changed the tune slightly (but not the chord progression), and the result was "Life on Mars." Note that on the back cover of the album the song is parenthetically noted as being "Inspired by Frankie" -- as in Sinatra, who made "My Way" famous.
  • "She's a Rebel" by Green Day lifts the majority of "Boxcar" by the little-known but influential Jawbreaker.
  • Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up" and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".
    • The opening riff to Audioslave's Cochise is pretty similar to Zeppelin's The Ocean too. And I'm Broken by Pantera!
      • Ironically enough, Cochise also sounds like a faster version of the main riff of Soundgarden's Get On The Snake. And Chris Cornell sings in both songs!
  • Iron Maiden's opening riff to The Wicker Man does sound an awful lot like Running Wild by Judas Priest...
    • Similarilya few of their songs' intros do this. on The X Factor, "Fortunes of War" and "Look for the Truth have a very similar chord progression. "Blood Brothers" from Brave New World and "Face in the Sand" from Dance of Death open with the same four chord progression, with the latter being slightly more upbeat.
    • Also; The Pilgrim's intro and When The Wild Wind Blows middle section have a similar Celtic sounding part, Brighter Than A Thousand Sunsmiddle section and The Legacy's exunt have similar four chord progressions.
  • Australian musical comedy group Tripod have, on occasion, included a version of the M*A*S*H theme in their concerts. When the concert was being recorded to be put on DVD, the song had to be changed - the last note of every phrase goes in a different direction (the final note in the first line, for example, goes up rather than down.)
    • This was incredibly amusing on the DVD- they sang it properly (crowd joining in) then stopped and said that if it was going to make it on the dvd they'd have to change it, so Scod gets the audience to sing said 'revised' version, which he's improvising, leading to a very confused chorus.
    • Apparently they did get the rights for the song anyway- a later performance has them telling the audience that the final stage was sending their version off to the guy who wrote it for his approval, so they wrote a song about him. Hunt it down, it's good fun.
  • Linkin Park's "Shadow of a Day" was rather heavily criticized for its uncanny resemblence to U2's "With or Without You".
  • Trivium is often reviled by metal fans for making songs that allegedly copy the notes from other metal bands' songs, primarily Metallica. In fact, most people see them as trying to "copy" Metallica.
  • Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and Megadeth's "Mechanix" bear a massive resemblence. The reason? Dave Mustaine while a member of Metallica wrote the song "The Mechanix" which is included in some of their early demos. However when he was kicked from the band's roster they kept the song and rewrote the lyrics and some parts and made "The Four Horsemen". Later when Mustaine formed Megadeth he dropped the "The" in the same and sped up the main riff and included the track on his debut album.
  • There's a YouTube series called "Metal that sounds like other metal" based all around this trope, pointing out the similarities between songs intentional or not.
  • The Cat Empire's song "Voodoo Cowboy" briefly pastiches the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
  • A techno song called "E" included the melody from a popular Eminem song. However, when that techno song got popular and got released in a larger scale, they changed the melody to the Jimmy Hart Version. The funny thing was that Eminem mocked techno in this song.
  • Two of Japanese singer Gackt's songs are Jimmy Hart versions of other songs; "Another World" is very similar to the Josie and the Pussy Cats song "Three Small Words", and "Emu~for my dear~" sounds very much like U2's "With or Without You".
  • The signature guitar riff for "I Feel Fine" by The Beatles is a very slightly altered version of the riff for Bobby Parker's minor 1960 hit "Watch Your Step". The drums on the two songs are also very similar. However, John Lennon himself freely admitted that he borrowed the riff. The riff was also borrowed by Jimmy Page for the Led Zeppelin instrumental "Moby Dick".
    • The same riff was then borrowed more-or-less untouched for Sugarloaf's "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You."
    • Sugarloaf's first hit "Green-Eyed Lady" sounds a lot like Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" which was popular around the same time.
  • The Beatles more or less admittedly used this technique to craft the song "Come Together" out of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me", even taking one of the lines ("Here come ol' flat top"). Berry tried to sue them; they settled out of court. The same thing is often alleged to have been done by George Harrison's solo hit "My Sweet Lord", which sounds a lot like "He's So Fine". That one wasn't settled out of court: Harrison was successfully sued.
    • In a similar vein, The Beach Boys' song "Surfin' U.S.A." inadvertently copied Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" and in re-issues is credited to Berry.
    • It wasn't Chuck Berry who tried to sue, actually. Morris Levy had snapped up the publishing rights to a score of songs from the 1950s and 60s, including "You Can't Catch Me", and jumped at the opportunity to extort a dollar from Lennon (and, eventually, an album - "Rock 'n Roll"). Lennon remained in good stead with Berry and performed with him on occasion.
  • Keith Richards has claimed that the guitar riff for The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" came to him in a dream in a Florida hotel room. But listen to Martha and the Vandellas' "Nowhere to Run" and tell me if that notion holds water.
    • Neil Young then swiped the same riff for Buffalo Springfield's "Mr. Soul" a couple years later.
    • The chorus of The Rolling Stones' "Anybody Seen My Baby" sounds a lot like kd lang's "Constant Craving": It's reportedly a coincidence, and since this came to the band's attention before Bridges To Babylon was released, they actually credited lang (and her co-writer, Ben Mink) as co-writing the song to help prevent any kind of lawsuit.
  • "Still Take You Home" by The Arctic Monkeys borrows a riff from "Out On Patrol" by The Offspring. They probably don't need to worry about getting caught, as "Out On Patrol" appeared only on the Offspring's first album, which was so terrible that no-one remembers it.
  • One of the The Residents' songs share the bass line of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". Which one? Their cover of Kaw-Liga. Funnily enough, The Residents usually avert this so hard that their covers usually only share the lyrics and the basic rhythm of the original song.
  • And then there was the time that John Fogerty got sued for "The Old Man Down The Road" ripping off Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle", a song written by... John Fogerty. (There's a lesson here about reading the fine print in your record contract.)
  • The power metal band DragonForce's music drew much inspiration from computer and video games, including the synths, complete with occasional SID-style arpeggios, ala Machinae Supremacy. The verse of "Through The Fire And The Flames", with it's 8-bit synth chords and its bassline, is reminiscent of the Dr Wily's Castle theme from Mega Man 2.
    • The solo section from "Black Fire" contains the beginning of the Double Dragon theme verbatim.
  • Afrika Bambaataa used a slightly altered version of the main riff from Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" in his popular song "Planet Rock"(you may know the Paul Oakenfold remix from the Swordfish soundtrack), and needless to say, got sued over it.
  • The opening of Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is clearly... ahem, inspired by Bach's "Air On A G-String", aka "The Hamlet cigar music" in the UK. Ironically, the authorship of the song (and thus the royalties) is now disputed between the band members...
  • Reel Big Fish's song "Suckers" features a little riff that sounds suspiciously like the Super Mario World theme played on horns.
  • Compare the opening riffs of Kiss' "War Machine", Danzig's "Snakes of Christ", and Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing".
  • Silverchair's "Suicidal Dream" is only a solo away from being a guitar cover of Alice in Chains' "Bleed The Freak".
  • The Village People's "Go West" has a... somewhat similar tune to the charismatic hymn "Give Thanks", released a year earlier, as many have noted.
    • "Go West" also sounds a lot like Pachelbel's Canon in D. The Pet Shop Boys's cover sounds even more like Canon in D, as Neil Tennant was a huge classical music fan.
    • Pachelbel's Canon has been Jimmy Harted countless times, of course, even by classical musicians.
  • The main guitar riff of Weezer's "Take Control" is almost the same as that of "Children Of The Revolution" by T Rex.
  • Nine Inch Nails' "A Warm Place" has a very similar keyboard melody to "Crystal Japan" by David Bowie, as well as the same overall ambient feel. Reznor himself admitted inspiration from Bowie, but specifically cited the album Low, which doesn't include the song (it was added to Scary Monsters as a bonus track much later on), so it seems to be a bizarre coincidence.
  • This video tells us about how Nirvana (with "Come As You Are") ripped off Killing Joke ("Eighties"), who ripped off The Damned ("Life Goes On"), Who ripped off The Beatles ("Day Tripper", though this one is debatable).
    • Also from Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was considered similar to Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and "Debaser" by The Pixies. Kurt Cobain himself agreed: "It was such a clichéd riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or [The Kingsmen's] 'Louie Louie'", but admitted only that he was "trying to write a Pixies song". So it's more likely he Jimmy Harted the Pixies than Boston.
    • In turn, Diamond Dallas Page's WCW theme music "Self High-Five" is a Jimmy Hart version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
  • Journey's song "Faithfully" sounds awfully similar to "Working Class Man" - with good reason. They were both written by Jonathan Cain, keyboardist for Journey.
  • Asher Roth's "I Love College" was originally based around a sample of "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer. Once it got an official release, he couldn't get the sample cleared, so it became a Jimmy Hart version... which accidentally made it sound a little like "Waiting On The World To Change" by John Mayer instead.
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic used to do this early in his career, especially with non-vocal orchestrations. But as he got famous enough to ask direct permission from artists, these got closer and closer to the originals. He also continues to do "style parodies" that sound a lot like a specific song or artist, but are not actually the same. For example, "Dare to be Stupid" riffs on the style of Devo, while "Germs" parodies the style of Nine Inch Nails.
    • On occasion, Al's "style parodies" have been so close to actual songs that fans began to consider them as true parodies. The most obvious examples are "Traffic Jam" (Prince's "Let's Go Crazy"), "The Night Santa Went Crazy" (Soul Asylum's "Black Gold" - in fact, a mash-up exists to prove that the songs are nearly identical), and "Albuquerque" (The Rugburns' "Dick's Automotive"). "Albuquerque" comes so close to its source, in fact, that a handful of fans accused Al of flat-out plagiarism. After this occurred, Al began crediting style parody inspirations in his CD booklets.
    • Al's soundalike skills actually landed him in legal trouble once - the incidental music for the 'Gandhi II' scene in UHF is a spoof of the Shaft theme; and the copyright owners for that song weren't amused.
    • A strange example is "Buckingham Blues," the lyrics of which seem to fit perfectly with John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane." In fact, the song was written as a Mellencamp parody, but legal issues prevented Al from recording it this way. For the final version, he matched the lyrics to a completely different tune that in no way resembles Mellencamp's song.
    • "I'm So Sick of You" not only parodies the style of Elvis Costello, but also has similar chorus patterns to that of "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" by The Monkees.
    • The verses of "Virus Alert" might sound similar to those of Gao Silver's theme music from Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger.
  • Zilch's "What's Up Mr. Jones?" pretty much an English version of X Japan's "Drain".
    • Explained by the fact that Zilch was founded by hide, who wrote the original version and owned the rights to it.
  • The tune of a Chinese pop song seems to be The Jimmy Hart Version of "Wakareuta" ("The Parting Song") by the Japanese folk rock artist Miyuki Nakajima. You can listen and compare the two songs here.
  • Jim Steinman, the songwriter-producer most commonly associated with Meat Loaf, tends to recycle certain musical hooks in songs written for different artists. Compare the intro to the song "Stark Raving Love" off his solo album, Bad For Good, to the intro of Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out For a Hero", which he wrote, and you'll note that aside from the drum track the two are note-for-note identical.
  • Gary Jules' "Mad World" (also known as the Gears of War commercial theme that sad song from the climax of Donnie Darko) sounds like a slow, calm version of The Offspring's "Gone Away". Of course, Tears for Fears performed it two years before The Offspring even existed.
  • The choruses to Bonnie Tyler's "If You Were a Woman (and I Was a Man)" and Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" are Jimmy Hart Versions of each other. Probably because they were written by the same guy...
  • Justin Timberlake's "Nothin' Else" sounds like the Jimmy Hart Version of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black."
  • The beginning of Sublime's "What I Got" is an acoustic "Lady Madonna" with different lyrics and a note changed here and there.
  • The chorus of Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" is Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" reset in a major key.
    • Also Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer" chorus.
    • That's Desmond Child at it again, and he does it yet again with FM's Bad Luck.
  • The guitar riff of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" is similar to that of The Rolling Stones' "Rock and a Hard Place."
    • Which is itself extremely similar to that of the Stones' own "Brown Sugar."
    • It actually sounds a lot more like the riff to John Mellencamp's "Hurts So Good." In fact, some listeners born after about 1980 might hear "Hurts So Good" nowadays and think, "Hey, 'Black or White'!"
  • An intentional, parodic example is The Offspring's "Why Don't You Get a Job?", which is patterned after "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."
  • MOD/demoscene example: Purple Motion's "Fracture In Space", one of his earliest songs, was a Jimmy Hart version of Dr. Awesome's "Space Deleria".
  • Three 6 Mafia's "Late Night Tip" song sounds an awful lot like Lisa Fischer's "How Can I Ease The Pain". They never mention whether it was sampled or not.
  • Many cheaper compilations during the nineties were full of Jimmy Hart versions. One label (Mecado) is credited with killing an entire genre of music by over saturating the market with subpar copies in the Netherlands and was succesfully sued over misleading customers.
  • The tune most commonly used for the Christmas song "Away in a Manger," typically called "Mueller", was written by James R. Murray. Some hymnals also use the less-familiar "Cradle Song" by William J. Kirkpatrick, which sounds much like a Jimmy Hart version of "Mueller". (Both tunes are in F major and 3/4 time with virtually identical phrasing, and both even end on the same four notes.) This is yet another example of this trope being Older Than Radio.
  • Hatsune Miku's version of "Ievan Polkka" has a very similar opening to The Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da".
  • The national anthem of Bosnia and Hercegovina (MP3 file) sounds very like the theme of Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn without being exactly the same melody.
    • Bedrich Smetana's Die Moldau (the melody in question begins about a minute in) is a tweaked version of the Italian song La Mantovana, which is best known as the tune for Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem (about thirty seconds in on that video).
    • Calixa Lavallée, in composing a national anthem for Canada, borrowed very heavily from a march in The Magic Flute.
      • Conversely, Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream" (the 1958 fanfare most commonly associated with the Olympics) shares the same first six notes as "O Canada".
  • DJ Tiesto's "Forever Today" is a Jimmy Hart version of the Terminator theme.
  • The main riff from Green Day's "Warning" is a Jimmy Hart Version of the main riff of The Kinks' 1968 song "Picture Book". The melodies are different but the verses of the two songs also have some structural similarities.
    • The Kinks' "Catch Me Now I'm Falling" has a guitar riff similar to The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash", while the ending of "U.K. Jive" recalls The Who's "My Generation".
      • The Who's "I Can't Explain" has a similar feel and guitar tone to The Kinks' "You Really Got Me". Both were produced by Shel Talmy. Townshend himself pretty much admitted that he just churned out a Kinks copy with that song.
  • The main melody of Solar Stone's "Solarcoaster" is a faster tweaked version of "Marwood Walks" from Withnail & I.
  • Tom Lehrer's "That's Mathematics" was originally intended to use the tune from "That's Entertainment" but it had to be changed. Still pretty much the same rhythms though.
  • Velvet Acid Christ's "Fun With Drugs" copies Purple Motion's "Second Reality" almost verbatim.
    • Tenth Planet's "Ghosts"(original mix), Darude's "Music"(original mix), and Aura's "Project Soar" also bear resemblences to Second Reality.
  • Rihanna's "Unfaithful" is very similar to Rob Thomas's "Lonely No More".
  • Not only does the riff of Fefe Dobson's "We Went For A Ride" strongly resemble that of Anouk's "Nobody's Wife", the song also includes the lyrics "Here we are alone together." Anouk's album was called Together Alone.
  • As rife with Jimmy Harting as the Eurodance genre may be, the chorus of Swedish act La Cream's "Say Goodbye" (1999) still sounds eerily similar to that of Fun Factory's "Take Your Chance" (1994).
  • Raheem Devaugh's I Don't Care sounds suspiciously similiar to Kanye West's Touch the Sky, itself a song that was sampled from Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield.
  • The Eurobeat tune "Livin' In The Night" by Pamsy is a Jimmy Hart version of Maggie Reilly's "Everytime We Touch".
  • Mariah Carey's "Emotions" sounds very similar to "The Best of My Love", a song by... The Emotions... as well as "Got To Be Real" by Cheryl Lynn.
  • As of April 1st 2010, the PPCA AKA Phonographic Performance Company of Australia, a group organisation representing the interests of record labels and recording artists, will force places such as fitness centres to either pay a large licence fee to play any original music or be only allowed to play The Jimmy Hart Version. Any club caught playing the original stuff will be fined.
  • Ever notice how you never see (hear?) New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" in the same room together...?
  • So many songs copy the chord progression (or variations thereof) of "Louie Louie" that it's not even funny. An exhaustive list would be insanely long, but just to mention a few notables: "Wild Thing," "The Joker," "Get Off Of My Cloud," "Good Lovin'," "Hang On Sloopy," "Walking on Sunshine"...
  • Opeth has listed the 70s prog-rock band Camel among their inspirations, which would explain why "Benighted" sounds extremely similar to "Never Let Go".
  • Hall & Oates wrote Kiss on my List and then Jimmy Harted themselves with Private Eyes!
  • The trance tunes Green Court - Moonflight, and Digital Plexus - Into The Blue, are both Jimmy Hart versions of System F - Out of the Blue.
  • "Clint Eastwood" by Gorillaz is a subtle one because the entire arrangement was changed, but it got its name from its melody being a JHV of the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
  • Barclay James Harvest's song "Poor man's moody blue" sounds very much like "Nights in white satin" by The Moody Blues (not totally unexpectedly given the song title!)
  • Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" and Katy Perry's "California Gurls."
    • And before those, Lady Gaga's "Just Dance"
    • Ke$ha also has "Your Love Is My Drug" to Gaga's "Poker Face".
  • "Jump" by Van Halen, "Jump (For My Love)" by the Pointer Sisters, and the Alvin and The Chipmunks Theme Tune.
  • "Seven Tears" by Goombay Dance Band sounds similar to "Auld Lang Syne"
  • "Magic Joe" by Shonen Knife has a riff that sounds more than a little like the one from "Hey Bulldog" by the Beatles.
    • "Riding On a Rocket" similarly has one that resembles The Who's "Boris the Spider" quite closely.
  • "Hang On" by Plumb (particularly the Dave Aude remix) is a carbon copy of "As the Rush Comes" by Motorcycle.
  • Brazilian band Charlie Brown Jr.'s most recent song is way too similar to Pearl Jam's "Daughter.
  • Veracocha - Carte Blanche(1999), and Syntone - C'est Syntone(2000).
  • We The Kings' "Heaven Can Wait" is blatantly a steal from Kelly Clarkson's "My Life Would Suck Without You".
  • The Jackson Five's "Blame It On The Boogie" sounds very similar to their earlier "I Want You Back".
  • Frontline Assembly's "Hostage" sounds similar to the mini-boss theme (Dark Beasts as Black as Night) from Ys III: Wanderers from Ys.
  • Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me, and Owl City - Fireflies. The latter title may also be a Shout-Out to the line "make the fireflies dance" from the former.
  • Is 98 Degrees - My Everything not a ripoff of R Kelly - I Believe I Can Fly? Also compare MG - What Do You Remember.
  • "Heaven" (no relation to the Bryan Adams song) by Dune was a tweaked version of "Piece of Heaven" by A7 (later remade by Akira). They didn't get away with it, as its release (and in effect, that of the entire album it was supposed to be on) was blocked by a Plagiarism injunction.
    • Ironically, "Piece of Heaven" was a (less obvious) JHV of Dune's early hit "I Can't Stop Raving", as well as using the instrumentation of Alice Deejay's "Better Off Alone", which the lyrics contain a Shout-Out to.
  • "Star Runner" by mindxpander (at the end of this clip) sounds like the ending theme from Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and "Floating Spaceport" is reminiscent of "Planet Latis" from Salamander.
    • "Escape Velocity" by Anders Lundqvist, another space-synth artist, JHV's Ice Cap Zone from STH 3. The synth brass intro of "Escape Velocity" also resembles the Epic Riff of Europe's "The Final Countdown", which the title may be a reference to.
      • "Star Dust", another Anders Lundqvist tune, sounds similar to "Nosmo King" by Myvoice, whose real name is Jukke Lundqvist(no relation).
      • "The Search for Otherland" rips off Laserdance's "The Challenge".
    • mindxpander's Town Circus [dead link] appears to have been inspired by Cirque Du Soleil, particularly Kaze from Saltimbanco.
  • "Monster" by Skillet has been compared to "Animal I Have Become" by Three Days Grace. Ironically, both songs have been in a Smackdown vs. Raw game (2010 and 2007 respectively).
  • Common practice by a number of classical composers, for a variety of reasons. Many borrowed heavily from themselves, others stole from whatever sources were available - folk tunes, other composers' works, ideas brought to them from afar... George Handel was a master of the art, to the point that movements from his early works sound like JHVs of his later works.
    • This also happened frequently when great works would become popular, inspiring whole droves of Follow the Leader-type works. Many of those composers aren't even mentioned any more except in relation to the leader that they followed - Sigismund Thalberg, for example, is never talked about except as having Jimmy Harted Franz Liszt, much to Liszt's dismay.
      • Many of a composer's early repertoire, before they find their own "voice," sounds like the Jimmy Hart version of another composer. Early Mozart sounds like weak Haydn; early Bach like his lesser-known predecessors (and slightly later Bach like his lesser-known teachers), Dvorak like Brahms, Holst like Elgar; even more modern composers aren't immune, with the "second Viennese school" composers (Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg) pre-atonality sounding a lot like Brahms and Wagner.
  • The verses of Miley Cyrus' "See You Again" resembles Corey Hart's "Sunglasses At Night".
  • The synthesizer riff in Muse's "Uprising" Jimmy Harts the melody of the Doctor Who theme tune.
  • The guitar riff that begins Shel Silverstein's "A Front Row Seat to Hear Ole Johnny Sing" is a JHV of the Epic Riff intro to Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues".
  • Nothing Wrong by Jimmy Eat World, and New Divide by Linkin Park.
  • The intro to "San Franciscan Nights" by The Animals includes, among other things, an obvious but brief JHV to the Dragnet theme.
  • "Bad Girlfriend" by Theory Of A Deadman really doesn't hide being copied from The Cult's "Fire Woman" to the point that people have noticed
  • "Dreamin'" by KISS compared to "I'm Eighteen" by Alice Cooper. It went to court when Cooper's old record label with the rights to the song sued with KISS settling out of court. This might have also been yet another point of argument against those who claim KISS copied Alice Cooper's makeup, too.
  • First, PM Dawn sampled Spandau Ballet's "True" in "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss", then later, did a self-JHV of that titled "Faith in You".
  • Lady Gaga's new song "Born this Way" sounds an awful like Madonna's "Express Yourself" Also, when GaGa sang at the Grammy's, she wore an outfit that looks like Madonna's signature tight ponytail and cone bra during the Blond Ambition tour. YMMV, of course
  • "Informer" by Snow compared to "Chori Chori" by Indian artist Aneela
  • The bass line of Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative" compared to The Time's "Jungle Love", both of which JHV'd it from Michael Jackson's Thriller.
    • Which itself was based on Rick James' "Give It To Me Baby".
  • The Chemical Brothers 2007 song "Do It Again" is the Jimmy Hart version of Justin Timberlake's 2006 song, "Sexyback"
  • Alesha Dixon's "The Boy Does Nothing" is the Jimmy Hart version of Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5".
  • The bridge of Katy Perry's "Firework" sound similar to the bridge of Erasure's "Always".
  • Cascada's "Bad Boy" sounds similar to Groove Coverage's "Runaway", then in turn, Cascada later did a JHV of "Bad Boy" also titled "Runaway".
  • Forbidden Broadway has occasionally used ersatz tunes by Gerald Alessandrini for songs they couldn't get permission to parody.
  • Lady Gaga's I Like It Rough JHV's the instrumental from Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me, which itself was a JHV of the synthesizer instrumental of Pigs by Pink Floyd.
    • Part of Danity Kane's "Damaged" also sounds a little like "Somebody's Watching Me."
  • Finger Eleven's Paralyzer and The Cars Moving In Stereo both JHV the golden Earring song Mad Love's Comin'
  • The chorus melody of Shakira's "Las de las Intuicion (Pure Intuition)" sounds similar to Gigi d'Agostino's "L'amour Toujours (I'll Fly With You)", and the harmony and instrumentation are lifted almost straight from the theme of The Neverending Story.
  • Nelly's new song "Just a Dream" Sounds suspiciously like Wyclef Jean's song that got released before "Sweetest Girl"
  • Perfect by Princess Superstar is basically just a bit off from being (1, 2, 3, 4) Sumpin' New by Coolio.
  • TI & Rihanna's "Live Your Life", in addition to interpolating/ripping off "Dragostea din Tei"'s refrain, has a strings riff similar to Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise".
    • Which itself took from Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise".
  • Persecution, from Judas Priests's 2 CD album Nostradamus has a section which sounds a bit like one of the songs from Revolutionary Girl Utena.
  • Megadeth's cover version of the Duke Nukem 3D "Grabbag" theme is supposed to be a straight cover, and is on a Duke Nukem soundtrack CD, but so many notes were changed that it sounds like a JHV.
  • The opening verse of Alexia's "Me & You" is a JHV of the verse of A-ha's "The Sun Always Shines on TV".
  • From the opening to some of the lyrical structure, Kiss From A Rose by Seal is a JHV of To The Last Whale by Crosby, Stills & Nash.
  • It's quite common for Eurobeat songs to do this, but the verse and bridge of Katchy Core - Crazy For Your Love sound uncannily similar to The Corrs - So Young, along with the "yeah yeah yeah" vocal hook in the intro.
    • In the same genre, FCF's "Bad Desire" was Jimmy Harted at least twice, in "Relight My Fire" by Delta Force, and "Love Desire" by Macho Gang.
    • Cherry's "Yes I Will" uses most of the tune from P!nk's "U & Ur Hand" with a few tweaks.
  • Compare the opening of Queensryche's Eyes Of A Stranger to Pink Floyd's Empty Spaces - even more noticeable when compared to the remade What Shall we Do Now? from the film version of The Wall. It is literally slowed down and one note off from Empty Spaces complete with talking at the beginning.
  • Airbourne's Running Wild sounds similar to Judas Priests's You've Got Another Thing Comin. The mashup people have noticed.
  • Pink Floyd's Brick In The Wall Part 2 has some instrumental stylings reminiscent of the disco era, specifically the Bee Gees. It's not gone unnoticed.
  • The beginning of Papa Roach's Lifeline sounds exactly like that of Keane's Everybody's Changing, only played on a guitar.
    • Speaking of Papa Roach, you can't listen to "Last Resort" without thinking of "Because the Night."
  • Vangelis - Light and Shadow and Gouryella - Tenshi.
  • Jean-Michel Jarre - Souvenir de Chine, Armin van Buuren - Serenity, and Airbase - Escape.
  • Jamiroquai's Soul Education borrows the bass line of the theme from Shaft
    • Black Capricorn Day has a horn segment that sounds like it was taken from bunny Link's dark world theme in Legend Of Zelda: Link to The Past
  • The chorus of Green Day's "21 Guns" sounds suspiciously similar to that of Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes".
    • Are you sure that's not ELO's "Telephone Line" they copied?
  • Electric Hellfire Club's Book Of Lies rips its guitar instrumental straight from Monster Magnet's Dinosaur Vacuum
  • Skillet's Monster is a basically a faster version of Three Days Grace's Animal I Have Become.
  • Rod Stewart got a plagiarism lawsuit (leading him to agree on donate all royalties from the song to UNICEF) because "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" is mostly based on Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor's "Taj Mahal".
  • Milk Inc's "Sunrise" and Justin Bieber's "Somebody to Love" both rip off September's "Cry For You".
  • The American version of The Beatles' "Help!" album (as well as the title track when it appeared on American issues of "1962-1966") began with a brief, unlisted orchestral piece, universally credited as "The James Bond Theme" by Monty Norman - even though it's just a vague soundalike.
  • The end credits theme from Sonic The Hedgehog 3 bears a startling resemblance to Michael Jackson's "Stranger In Moscow," which led gamers to speculate that the tune may have been a MJ composition. Brad Buxer, who collaborated with Michael around this time, revealed after Michael's death that the speculation was correct.
    • Likewise, although not confirmed by Buxer, Carnival Night Zone resembles "Jam," and Ice Cap Zone resembles an accelerated version of "Who Is It?"
  • Poonanny's "Puddin 'N Tang" is interesting
    • The instrumental is mostly Joe Cocker's "Woman To Woman", although it sounds more like the redone version from Tupac Shakur's "California Love". Even so, it's one note off and the musician seems to improvise it a bit.
    • The title and chorus JHV "Puddin 'N Tain by Alley Cats
    • at one point in the song, the a piano starts playing which plays snippets of Mary Had A little Lamb, Pop Goes The Weasel and Shave And a Haircut
  • You will probably not be able to listen to The Romantics' "Talking In Your Sleep" or Falco/After The Fire's "Der Kommissar" without hearing some elements of Rick James' Superfreak (and obviously, a certain MC Hammer song) in them. Definitely true with Der Kommissar.
    • The Romantics' "What I Like About You" has its similarities with John Cafferty's "On The Dark Side"
  • The chorus of Alexandra Burke's "All Night Long" and the bridge of Survivor's "The Search Is Over" (the particular section starts about 3:10). They might not be exact, but the similarity between the two is noticeable.
  • Cody Simpson's "All Day" alludes to the Nursery Rhyme "This Old Man" in the verses.
  • The Cars borrows many parts of "Let's Go (Pony)" by the Routers for their single, "Let's Go".
    • The riff of "My Best Friend's Girl" alludes to "I Will" by The Beatles (itself nicked from Eddie Cochran), while the intro refers to "Wild Weekend" by the Rebels.
    • The Intro to "Just What I Needed" sounds similar to "Yummy Yummy Yummy" by the 1910 Fruitgum Co.
    • And, as noted above, "Moving In Stereo" is a slower version of Golden Earring's "Mad Love's Coming"
  • The chorus riff to "Hey Man Nice Shot" by Filter is exactly the same as the chorus riff of Stabbing Westward's "Ungod". However, this is because guitarist Stuart Zechman was working with both bands at the same time and used the same riff twice for some reason. The bands mutually agreed not to sue over it, and Stabbing Westward pretty much stopped playing "Ungod" live after "Hey Man Nice Shot" became a hit single.
  • This troper mistook "Wonderwall" by Oasis for "Jumper" by Third Eye Blind.
  • Lady Gaga's Bloody Mary, Heavy Metal Lover and Electric Chapelsound alot like most of Madonna's Confessions On A Dancefloor album, Isaac and Get Together is particular.
  • VNV Nation's "Control" steals the bass riff from Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'".
  • ACDC's "Rocker" is so much like Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti", this troper can almost hear the "Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Lop A-Lop Bam Boo" in the AC/DC song.
  • Can't Help Falling in Love With You" (Elvis Presley) has basically the same melody as the French folk song "Plaisir d'Amour", but the rhythm is slowed down and syncopated.
    • The tune was sped up and slightly tweaked for the happy hardcore song "Techno Wonderland".
  • Joss Stone's "You Had Me" is pretty heavily inspired by Stevie Wonder's "Superstitious".
    • Also, "Superstition" itself sounds similar to Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music."
  • Listen to this piece of music. Now listen to this one. Even to this day, people are still confused as to who ripped off whose music. (If only they checked out the dates: Leviathan came out in 1989, whereas Record of Lodoss War came out in 1990.) And to even ask if the veteran composer like Jerry Goldsmith ripped off music from an obscure (at that time anyways) anime film is kinda unthinkable.
  • Albert King's Love Shock is essentially a more upbeat rendition of Peggy Lee's Fever.
  • "Posthumus Zone" by E.S. Posthumus Zone, which have been used as a theme song for the NFL on CBS, sounded similar to some piece of background music from Dexter's Laboratory.
  • Compare Drops Of Jupiter by Train to Drift Away by Dobie Gray.
  • Helalyn Flowers did this with at least two of their songs. "Your Killer Toy", particularly the chorus, is similar to P!nk's "U & Ur Hand", and "Crystal Bullet" is this to Duran Duran's "Rio".
  • Lazerhawk's Arrival JHV's two songs. The main backing riff sounds like the first part of the Mother boss theme from Turok 2, and the melody in the second half, along with the bassline, echoes Purple Motion's part of the Second Reality music. Another one of LH's songs, Distress Signal, is a Jimmy Hart version of Shadow of the Wind by Stephen Falken(real name unknown).
  • Mark Astley(Luca Torchiani)'s Super Rider sounds like the Garage music from San Francisco Rush 2049.
  • In Believing is Art by Spoon, the beginning of the bridge is suspiciously similar to the guitar riff of Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top.
  • On the subject of Klymaxx:
    • "The Men All Pause" is similar to a Midnight Star song, "Freak-A-Zoid".
    • The chorus patterns of "Meeting in the Ladies Room" are similar to the verses of Prince's "1999".
    • Compare "Kiss" by Prince with "Lock and Key".
  • Tiziana Rivale - Don't Walk Away is this to Berlin - Take My Breath Away(aka the Award Bait Song from Top Gun), especially the sparkle synth hook and chorus.
  • Reece Mastin's "Good Night" sounds rather familiar to P!nk's "Raise Your Glass".
  • Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" and Jessie J's "Domino".
  • The song to celebrate the release of OpenBSD 5.1 is a parody of the "Ghostbusters" theme with the melody slightly altered. It even switches in briefly at the end to "I Want a New Drug," which pokes fun at the controversy that "Ghostbusters" was a Suspiciously Similar Song of the former.
  • Miranda Lambert said that she unintentionally made her 2005 single "Kerosene" very similar to Steve Earle's "I Feel Alright" and willingly credited him as a co-writer.
  • Alan Jackson's "I'll Go On Loving You" has an intro very similar to the M*A*S*H (television) theme. A few notes are downright identical, just in a lower key.
  • The verse in Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For?" is sung in an almost identical melody to the one in Weezer's "Hash Pipe".

Radio

  • Dead Ringers managed to avoid this trope a surprising amount of the time despite being completely based on impressions and parodies, as most of its regular targets were also BBC productions. They did use Jimmy Harted theme musics for some of their one-off sketches, though, such as when they put one of the BBC's most well-known political interviewers into a superhero story to form The Continuing Adventures of Paxman [dead link] .
  • American Top 40: A Jimmy Hart version of "Afternoon Delight" (by the Starland Vocal Band) was used from 1977-1978 as a cue, while the ending bar of the show's ending theme from 1979-1984 sounded like Raydio's "Jack & Jill."
  • The radio countdown show Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40 uses bumpers that are Jimmy Hart versions of country songs. This carried over from when Kingsley hosted American Country Countdown, which uses original-tune bumpers now that Kix Brooks hosts it.
  • Mitch Benn's songs on The Now Show are generally to tunes that sound like the songs he's parodying, since the UK doesn't have a "fair use" exception for parodies.

Stand Up Comedy

  • Bill Hicks often started his shows with a Jimmy Hart version of "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix.
    • Although not a musical example, Denis Leary's entire act was a Jimmy Hart Version of Bill Hicks'.

Theatre

  • In the musical Dames At Sea, "That Mister Man Of Mine" has a melody mostly copied from "The Man I Love".
  • The "Nightingale Lullaby" from the musical Once Upon a Mattress includes an obvious pastiche of the Lullaby from Stravinsky's ballet music for The Firebird. It's even written in the same key (and since that key is E flat minor, this is actually significant).
  • "Sunday" from tick...tick...BOOM! is a parody of the song of the same name from the Sondheim musical Sunday in The Park With George, with the melody turned upside down.
  • Since its surprise appearance is in service of a gag, it probably needs spoiler tags: in Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere, an instrumental sound-alike of "Stayin' Alive" turns up.
    • The bungee music (Il sogno di volare) in Saltimbanco sounds similar to the intro of Mozart's Requiem.
  • The Victorian-melodrama villain's theme in the Show Within a Show in Show Boat sounds like the Russell Bennett version of Mysterioso Pizzicato.
  • In an Older Than Radio example, "With Catlike Tread" from The Pirates of Penzance cribs substantially from the Anvil Chorus in Verdi's Il trovatore.
    • This troper feels duty bound to disagree with this example (and I am a slave to duty!); whilst "With Catlike Tread" is a clear pastiche of Verdi, that's rather different to saying it's basically cribbed from the Anvil Chorus. Sullivan earlier did a fantastic pastiche of Handel in Trial by Jury, but again there's not a piece it's basically the same as, which is what this trope is surely getting at.
  • Used to dark comic effect in "My Psychopharmacologist and I" from Next to Normal, where a litany of antidepressant medications (and their side effects) is sung to the Jimmy Hart Version of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music.
  • Kit And The Widow show us here how to do this and make great deals of money in the West End, all while taking unsubtle shots at Andrew Lloyd Webber.
  • The final refrain of "Letting Go"("not letting go, not letting go, never letting go, never letting go... of you") from Vanities: The Musical resembles the ending of "Friend Like Me" from Aladdin. The verse and pre-chorus of Hey There, Beautiful are a JHV of Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra, although the latter has a longer verse melody. "Looking Good" ends similarly to "For Good" from Wicked.


Web Original

  • When a Web Animation series reaches a certain level of success (typically when it starts selling DVDs), the creator often goes back and removes any copyright infringement that was safe when the series was unknown. Bonus Stage is a good example: Matt eventually removed a multitude of unauthorized cameos from his earlier episodes (such as one by the Homestar Runner cast) and replaced the ska song in the credits with an instrumental facsimile called "Total Soundalike."
    • Speaking of Homestar Runner, one of the earliest Homestar toons ("Marshmallow's Last Stand") featured a snipet of the theme fom The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. When the toon was released on DVD, the audio was changed to a JHV of the tune. Lampshaded by Matt Chapman (as Homestar) in the commentary when he tells Mike Chapman "don't listen to this part, we're gonna change it." when the original audio can be head in the backound.
      • Lampshaded somewhat in the cartoon "On Break", in which Mike and Matt perform an a-capella rendition of "Yakety Sax" that ends somewhat differently from the original song. Afterwards, one of them asks, "Does it end different?"
    • Another would be Zero Punctuation, which originally featured segments of various "appropriate" songs during the opening and closing credits. Lampshaded at the start of the first episode with the new theme music.
  • The intro music to CollegeHumor's retrogaming series Bleep Bloop is The Jimmy Hart Version of The Legend of Zelda theme.
  • Because YouTube is so ridiculously litigious about the use of music in parodies, parodists like Venetian Princess now have to find someone like Steve Goldstein to write a Jimmy Hart Version for them. Example here.
  • Used regularly on How It Should Have Ended to imitate the themes of the movies they're parodying, featuring "The Stuff" ("The Touch"), and the Terminator beat with an extra note.
  • Improv Everywhere's video of their Ghostbusters operation uses a Jimmy Hart version of the Ghostbusters theme.
    • Also, rather than use "Who Let The Dogs Out?" for their Invisible Dogs operation, one of their number composed "The Dogs Were Let Out By Whom?"
  • The song in Charlie the Unicorn 3 is a knock-off of "Under The Sea" from The Little Mermaid, but with a middle-eight based on the "Pokérap".
  • Since the Mega64 crew couldn't use "Walkie Talkie Man" by Steriogram for their Elite Beat Agents skit, Josh Jones, theri composer made a similar sounding version with Word Salad Lyrics.
  • The intro of Nyan Cat bears some resemblance with the organ intro of Light my Fire by The Doors.
  • The video Wiley vs. Rhodes uses melodies very similar to the Merrie Melodies theme "Merrily We Roll Along" in the intro and the Looney Tunes theme "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" in the ending. Justified since the video was a homage to the Wile E Coyote and The Road Runner cartoons.
  • A tune that often shows up in The Annoying Orange is really similar to one of the battle tunes from Serious Sam: Second Encounter.
  • Ashens uses a vaguely (emphasis on vaguely) Star Wars theme style song when reviewing bootleg Star Wars merchandise. This is accompanied by a text scroll with several references to the badly translated box writing on said bootlegs.
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