Music / Suspiciously Similar Song - TV Tropes
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Suspiciously Similar Song / Music

Go To

  • General theme page to steal, uhm, make that, eh, sample.
  • Many one-hit wonders from the pre-Internet era fell victim to this trope, as they were never able to make a real name for themselves thanks to their first big hit being mistaken by most casual listeners as from being from a bigger name artist. To give a few examples:
    • "Baby Love" by Regina was commonly mistaken as being from Madonna, even though it was released as Madge was abandoning this sound to go in a more artistically experimental direction. Regina's physical appearance and singing voice having a striking resemblance to an early Madonna to the point of being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute didn't help.
    • "Don't Shut Me Out" by Kevin Paige was commonly mistaken as being a George Michael song thanks to their similar singing style.
    • "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks was mistaken by just about everyone as being an Alanis Morissette song.
    • "Sausalito Summernight" by the Dutch band Diesel was mistaken for being a Steve Miller song... despite Steve Miller himself absolutely loving the song and saying publicly that it was Word of God "The best song of mine that I have never written!". It was still assumed that Steve Miller had just assembled an ersatz copy of himself and his band to prove a point, and derailed the rest of Diesel's career in the USA.
  • The chorus of Jason Mraz's "Have It All" sounds remarkably similar to "What's Up" by 4 Non-Blondes.
    • On the flip side, Nick Jonas' "Introducing Me" (from the Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam soundtrack) sounds like a faster, sillier version of "I'm Yours".
  • Verse 3 of Elvis Presley's "I need your love tonight" sounds similiar to Los Lobos'/Ritchie Valens' "Come On Let's Go". This verse was also sung in the movie "La Bamba", plus they each have guitar solos after.
  • Murray Gold's "Love Don't Roam", made for the 2006 Doctor Who Christmas Special "The Runaway Bride" sounds a lot like "The Snake" by Al Wilson.
  • B.E.R's "Night Begins to Shine" opening theme is similar to Blondie's "Call Me" However "Night Begins to Shine" was created to be an 80's tribute.
  • Beyoncé "Hold Up" sounds like Shaggy's "Angel"
  • M83:
  • "Baby Come and Get It" by The Pointer Sisters contains a riff very similar to The Rolling Stones "Can't Get No Satisfaction"
  • Bree Sharp's "America" sounds VERY similar to The La's' "There She Goes" (as made famous by Sixpence None the Richer).
  • Daughtry's "Waiting For Superman" has a riff that sounds almost the same as Far East Movement's "Rockateer".
  • Vanilla Ice tried to avoid paying royalties for "Ice Ice Baby"'s musical background by adding an extra note to "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie. It didn't work, and he was ultimately forced to give songwriting credits and royalties to both artists.
  • Queen themselves had their share of songs that uncannily resembled other songs:
    • "Another One Bites the Dust" is pretty much their take on "Good Times" by Chic, barely dissimilar enough to not have to credit Nile Rodgers and Bernie Edwards. Edwards later admitted that bassist John Deacon hung around with Chic in the studio, hence him developing basically the same riff.
    • "Sheer Heart Attack" starts off with a few verses that were copied from the beginning of The Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There."
  • In the instrumental part of The Cure's "Prayers for Rain", there is a chord sequence that sounds like the chords for Alphaville "Dance with Me".
  • "Neighbors" by Camouflage sounds a lot like "New Dress" by Depeche Mode.
  • Many were quick to point out that Linkin Park and Kiiara's "Heavy" sounds almost exactly like The Chainsmokers and Halsey's "Closer". In turn, Zenith Volt's "Hold On" sounds like a more upbeat synthwave take on "Heavy".
  • The Spice Girls song "Last Time Lover" sounds similar to The Mary Jane Girls' "All Night Long".
  • Mazzy Star "Fade Into You" sounds similar to Bob Dylan "Knocking on Heaven's Door".
    • Also "Coming Down" by Dum Dum Girls sounds highly similar to "Fade Into You".
  • New Order's "All The Way" sounds a lot like The Cure's "Just Like Heaven".
    • Conversely, The Cure's "The Walk" is similar to New Order's "Blue Monday".
    • Ditto for "A Honest Mistake" by The Bravery.
  • Billy Joel's "My Life" takes its melody from Johnny Rodriguez' "Love Put a Song in My Heart".
    • His "This Night" has almost exactly the same tune as Louise Tucker's "Midnight Blue". But he's not ripping off "Midnight Blue", they're both borrowing from Beethoven (Sonata No. 8). Billy Joel gave Beethoven writing credit.
  • Ditto for 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up?", from Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy".
  • The fade-out of Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" from Brothers in Arms is set to The Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me" — lampshaded by Mark Knopfler having Sting sing it and giving him co-writing credits.
    • The fade-in to "Money for Nothing", with Terry Williams's improvised drum solo, is remarkably similar to end of the middle part of "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who.
  • Safetysuit's "Stay" sounds incredibly similar to Switchfoot's "Meant to Live." They sound enough alike that most people seem to initially think that "Stay" is a cover of "Meant to Live."
  • Both The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" and My Chemical Romance's "Bulletproof Heart" are reminiscent of Placebo's "Special K". MCR even sings "gravity" in the same way; this may have been done intentionally.
    • Then there's also Muse's "Time is Running Out." It doesn't sound like "Special K," but "Mr. Brightside" and "Bulletproof Heart" sound a lot like it.
    • Throw in Kish Mauve's "I Don't Care".
  • Aiden's entire discography is this to AFI's, but "I Set My Friends on Fire" and "The Despair Factor" deserves a special mention.
  • Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" is derived from the Christmas hymn "O Come All Ye Faithful". Lampshaded when the band did an album with rock covers of Christmas songs, where "O Come All Ye Faithful" is performed exactly like "We're Not Gonna Take It".
  • "I Missed Us" by SWV samples a Suspiciously Similar Version of the Fairy Fountain theme from the The Legend of Zelda series.
  • One popular example is the obvious similarities between "Roar" by Katy Perry and "Brave" by Sara Bareilles, to the point that the latter only became a hit on the back of the controversy. Despite all this, Sara Bareilles has said that she really doesn't care and thinks people are making too big a deal out of it.
    • And of course, the similarity between "Roar" and Delirious?'s "I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever".
  • The opening riff of Måneskin's "For Your Love" (which, coincidentally, shares a title with a song of the same name by The Yardbirds) sounds similar to the opening riff of "Layla" by Eric Clapton.
  • "39 Music!" by mikito-P featuring Hatsune Miku is quite similar in terms of structure and style to Psy's Gangnam Style.
  • "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 Concept Album Mechanical Animals) is a dead ringer for Bowie's own "Fame."
    • "The Fight Song" is quite similar to Blur's "Song 2."
    • In a more odd example of this, former guitarist Daisy Berkowitz claimed that the song "1996" stole and sped up his "She's Not My Girlfriend", an earlier Marilyn Manson song (back when it was Marilyn Manson and The Spooky Kids), from when Manson wrote only the lyrics, and Daisy wrote the music. The likelihood of this is reduced when you remember that Marilyn Manson (the person) considers "She's Not My Girlfriend" to be the worst song he ever wrote.
  • Fall Out Boy's smash hit "Centuries" has a chorus with a tune that's nearly identical to Get Scared's "Hate".
    • The riff to "Irresistible" is basically copied from part of Rhapsody of Fire's "Dawn of Victory".
    • "Uma Thurman" predominantly features samples from the Munsters theme music.
  • Speaking of Get Scared, their song "(Setting Yourself Up For) Sarcasm" is extremely similar to "Paralyzed" by The Used. Get Scared, another Post-Hardcore band from Utah, are huge fans of The Used and have cited them as a major influence on their music.
    • In fact, Get Scared have very much modeled themselves directly on The Used, right down to Nicholas Matthews imitating Bert McCracken's every mannerism and vocal tic. Their first album, Best Kind of Mess, is in fact a Suspiciously Similar Album to The Used's Lies for the Liars. However, they've been quite open about this, and are as such praised as an homage or throwback rather than condemned.
  • David Hasselhoff's "Crazy for You" all but shares its tune with, of all songs, "YMCA."
    • Creator/Disney's 1982 exercise album Mousercise features a song called "Keep on Trying", which also sounds like a Suspiciously Similar version of YMCA.
    • David Hasselhoff actually made Suspiciously Similar versions of 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 like Boney M's "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday") and "Hands Up for Rock'n'Roll" (similar to Pia Zadora's "Let's Dance Tonight.")
    • Taiwanese pop singer Cyndi Wang's "Honey" is also another "YMCA" ripoff.
    • "YMCA" itself was clearly influenced by The Trammps' "Disco Inferno."
  • Brinck's attempt to represent his country (Denmark) again in Eurovision 2013 entry was "Human." Having the exact same structure and guitar notes as Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah." The Danes decided to go for a different song - which ended up winning the Contest.
  • Abba did this with the follow-up to "Waterloo," "So Long," which was intentionally done to ensure another hit. It wasn't as successful.
  • Charlotte Gainsbourg's 5:55, composed by Air, sounds exactly like Dire, Dire Docks from Super Mario 64.
  • Train's 50 Ways to Say Goodbye sounds exactly like the title song to Phantom of the Opera.
    • In turn, the title song to Phantom of the Opera nicks its opening melody from Pink Floyd's "Echoes." Roger Waters was pissed off at this ("I couldn't believe it when I heard it. It's the same time signature — it's 12/8 — and it's the same structure and it's the same notes and it's the same everything.") but commented that "I think life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber."
      • Actually, Andrew Lloyd Webber ripped off "Poisoned Youth" by the obscure UK band England. That song predates "Phantom" by a few years.
    • The "Phantom" vocal melody has also been interpolated in "Angels Crying" by E-Type, "Thinking About You" by Cynthia, "Can't You Feel My Love" by Rose (of "Speed Over Beethoven" fame), and "Music Rides The Sky" by BPM.
  • 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 Suspiciously Similar 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 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." Bowie made some small changes to the tune and chord progression, and the result was "Life on Mars."note  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 (Theme from The Matrix)" and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir".
    • The opening riff to Audioslave's Cochise is pretty similar to Zeppelin's "The Ocean" too. And, of all things, 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 both songs!
    • Another song, Show Me How To Live, lifts the riff from the obscure Rage Against The Machine song "Producer".
    • The opening of Heart's "Barracuda" was lifted directly from "Achilles Last Stand".
    • Going the other way, Page has admitted he took the distinctive "da-da-da-da-duh" of "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You" from Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4".
      • Which itself sounds like a speeded-up version of The Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". These are all examples the Lament Bass (also heard in Green Day's Brain Stew, The White Stripes' Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, and a hundred other songs).
    • Sean Kingston's "Me Love" gets its melody from "D'yer Maker", which ironically got its name from a joke about Jamaica.
    Guy: My wife's going on holiday in the Caribbean.
    Friend: Jamaica?note 
    Guy: No, she wanted to go.
  • Iron Maiden's opening riff to The Wicker Man does sound an awful lot like Running Wild by Judas Priest...
    • Similarily a 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.
    • The main synth riffs in Muse's"MK Ultra" sound a lot like the synth riffs in Maiden's "Can I Play With Madness. Ironically, a year later, Maiden released "Satellite 15... the Final Frontier, whose baseline does bear a slight resemblance to "Hysteria" by Muse.
  • The opening riff of No Doubt's "Hella Good" sounds strikingly similar to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean".
  • 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. Here it is, folks.
  • Linkin Park's "Shadow of the Day" was rather heavily criticized for its uncanny resemblence to U2's "With or Without You".
  • The sheer similarity between the intro of "No More Sorrow" and the last 30 seconds of Megadeth's "Silent Scorn". They even use similar 'military' drums. Of course, they may well have sampled it up, rather than outright copied it, but it still sounds like a Suspiciously Similar version.
  • 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 resemblance. 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 Suspiciously Similar Version. The funny thing was that Eminem mocked techno in this song.
  • A catchy Eurodance song by Italian musician Magic Box called "If You" became very popular on Brazilian radios. Later, two songs which carry four similar aspects appeared: a looped modulated bassline, similar ad-libs, a narration in the beginning of the song, and a notable usage of falsetto. Those two songs were the not-so-popular "Game of my Life" by Project One, and the One-Hit Wonder "Can't Get Over" by Kasino.
  • A few of Japanese singer GACKT's songs are Suspiciously Similar versions of other songs; "Another World" is very similar to the Josie and the Pussycats song "Three Small Words", "Vanilla" is very reminiscent of Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca", 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 more folk-rockish, less fuzzed-up 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 adapted by Jimmy Page for the Led Zeppelin instrumental "Moby Dick".
    • "Watch Your Step" is all over 60s Beat music: it's hard to say where The Yardbirds' "Rack My Mind" would be without it.
    • 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 "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago, 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. That said, "Come Together" sure sounds a lot like Dr. John's 1968 song "I Walk on Guilded [sic] Splinters" as well. Both compositions have similar ominous bass-centered Swamp Rock-type grooves (with "Come Together" at a slightly slower tempo) and feature Word Salad Lyrics.
    • 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: the court accepted his claim that if he had plagiarized, it was unintentional and unconscious, but they ruled that unintentional plagiarism is still plagiarism. Bright Tunes Music vs Harrisongs became a landmark decision in American copyright law. He later wrote "This Song" to rebut the lawsuit. (Interestingly, both songs are suspiciously similar to the traditional Gospel Music song "Oh Happy Day," but that resemblance didn't seem to sway the court case either way.)
    • When the Beatles' press officer started working for The Byrds, Harrison asked him to tell the band's guitarist that he created the Beatles' "If I Needed Someone" out of two of their songsnote .
    • 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. Meanwhile, some people have noticed a resemblance between "Sweet Little Sixteen" and Clarence Garlow's 1953 Listing Cities song "Route 90".
    • 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.
    • When they were an up-and-coming touring band they often did Little Richard covers, with McCartney taking Little Richard's lead vocals. After they hit it big they covered Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" and released it on an EP. They also recorded Lennon-McCartney original "I'm Down", sung by Paul, which is...not dissimilar to "Long Tall Sally".
  • 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. Given that "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas, with a similar hook, was peaking on the American charts around that same time, Richards might've had the song on his (subconscious) mind.
    • 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 Arctic Monkeys borrows a riff from "Out On Patrol" by The Offspring.
  • One of The Residents' songs share the bass line of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". Which one? Their cover of Hank Williams' Kaw-Liga. Funnily enough, The Residents usually avert this so their covers usually only share the lyrics and the basic rhythm of the original song. One theory is that this was done for the sake of a Stealth Pun: Hank was once married to country singer Billie Jean Horton.
  • 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. In fact, the solo section from "Black Fire" contains the beginning of the Double Dragon theme verbatim.
    • The opening riff to "Evening Star" is taken from the solo of "Mr. Crowley" by Ozzy Osbourne.
  • 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.
    • He didn't help his cause by using the beats from "Numbers" in the very same song. Eventually the case was settled out of court.
  • Lenny Kravitz's "It Ain't Over Til It's Over" has a strong resemblance to "That's the Way of the World" by Earth, Wind & Fire (mostly in the arrangement and chorus).
  • 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.
  • Speaking of Super Mario World, Kakkmaddafakka's "Touching" sounds like a decent homage to the "Athletic theme".
  • 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 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' cover sounds even more like "Canon in D", as Neil Tennant was a huge classical music fan. The cover of "Go West" also heavily interpolates the Soviet national anthem.
    • Pachelbel's Canon has seen Suspiciously Similar versions produced 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.
    • Another odd Weezer example: their single "Troublemaker" has been reviled by their fanbase as just a rehashing of the song "The Good Life" despite only having a vague resemblance. This is mostly a case of an incredibly Broken Base, though.
    • Van Weezer as a whole is meant to be an homage to vintage Hard Rock and arena rock, and some songs were close enough to their inspirations that they credited members of other bands as cowriters just to play it safe - "I Need Some of That" credits members of both Blue Öyster Cult and Asia due to melodic similarities to "Don't Fear The Reaper" and "Heat Of The Moment", Billy Joel is credited for "The Beginning of the End" due to similarity to "The Longest Time", and Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads are credited for "Blue Dream" due to the signature riff from "Crazy Train" appearing throughout the song note 
  • 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 (link), but specifically cited the album Low, which doesn't include the song (it was added to Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) 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"). Some have also pointed out similarities to Garden of Delight's "22 Faces", Bauhaus' "Hollow Hills", and The Beatles' "Day Tripper" (though the last one is debatable).
    • Also from Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was considered similar to Boston's "More Than a Feeling", "Debaser" and "U-Mass" by The Pixies, and "Godzilla" by Blue Öyster Cult. 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 was doing a Suspiciously Similar version of the Pixies track rather than Boston.
      • During concerts, Nirvana would often play the opening riff of Teen Spirit before launching into an intentionally poor version of More than a Feeling.
    • In turn, Diamond Dallas Page's WCW theme music "Self High-Five" is a Suspiciously Similar version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
      • Likewise for The Breeders' "Cannonball".
  • 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 Suspiciously Similar 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"), "I Remember Larry" (They Might Be Giants' "See the Constellation"), "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.
      • Also, compare the choruses of "Young, Dumb & Ugly" and AC/DC's "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You.)"
    • 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", best known as a hit for The Monkees (though originally by Paul Revere and the Raiders).
    • 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.
  • 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.
    • In that vein, fans on Youtube have identified Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" and Céline Dion's "It's All Coming Back To Me Now" as distaff counterparts, owing to their similar sound, length, and music videos. Both songs were written by Steinman.
  • 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 released "Mad World" as a single two years before The Offspring even existed.
    • Linkin Park's "New Divide" also borrows heavily from both.
  • 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 Suspiciously Similar versions of each other. Probably because they were written by the same guy...
    • The tune for the chorus of "Bump in the Night" by Allstars also sounds very similar to "You Give Love a Bad Name".
  • Justin Timberlake's "Nothin' Else" sounds like a Suspiciously Similar Version of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black." "Rock Your Body" has a similar sounding beat to "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen.
  • The beginning of Sublime's "What I Got" is an acoustic "Lady Madonna" with different lyrics and a note changed here and there.
    • Sublime has an entire laundry list of this, as demonstrated here.
  • 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 (albeit not for Belinda Carlisle), and he does it yet again with FM's Bad Luck.
  • In another "You Give Love a Bad Name" soundalike case, the bassline for "Comedown" by Bush sounds like the guitar riff of the former.
  • Try to listen to "Kings & Queens" by Ava Max without thinking of "You Give Love A Bad Name" as soon as you hear the chorus. Desmond Child wrote this as well.
  • Bon Jovi has a few other examples:
    • "Who Says You Can't Go Home", which has a striking similarity to Bob Dylan's "Positively Fourth Street".
    • "Bad Medicine", the first single fromNew Jersey album sounds a lot like "Social Disease" from the preceding album Slippery When Wet.
    • The verses of "Living in Sin", the final single from New Jersey, sound a lot like the chorus to "Father Figure" from George Michael.
  • The guitar riff of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" from Dangerous is similar to that of The Rolling Stones' "Rock and a Hard Place" from Steel Wheels.
    • Which is itself extremely similar to that of the Stones' own "Brown Sugar" from Exile on Main St.. It's a very regularly recycled riff in Classic Rock.
    • The riff is also similar to Bob Dylan's Neighborhood Bully!
    • The vocal melody sounds strikingly similar to that of the Duran Duran song "Hungry Like the Wolf".
    • 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'!"
      • But then, there was an old Mountain Dew commercial (The "doing it country cool" one) that resembled "Hurts So Good."
  • 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."
    • The riff to "Hammerhead" sounds ridiculously reminiscent of "Ace of Spades" by Motörhead.
    • The song "She's got Issues" appears to borrow heavily from 38 Special's "Hold on Loosely".
    • "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" sounds like Offspring's own "Come Out & Play".
  • MOD/demoscene example: Purple Motion's "Fracture In Space", one of his earliest songs, was a Suspiciously Similar version of Dr. Awesome's "Space Deleria". Which itself was similar to Jean-Michel Jarre's "Oxygène Part 5".
  • 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 Suspiciously Similar versions. One label (Mecado) is credited with killing an entire genre of music by oversaturating the market with subpar copies in the Netherlands and was succesfully sued over misleading customers.
  • Older Than Television: The tune most commonly used in the U.S. for the Christmas song "Away in a Manger", typically called "Mueller", was written by James R. Murray. Most other countries use "Cradle Song" (1895) by William J. Kirkpatrick, which sounds much like a Suspiciously Similar 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.) And "Mueller" itself is itself an example, according to The Other Wiki: "The first half of the melody is identical to the beginning of the second theme of Waltz #4, transposed down a fourth, in G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald, Op. 325 by Johann Strauss Jr., composed 19 years earlier."
  • 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 Herzegovina (MP3 file) sounds a lot 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.
    • Unintentional for sure, but the first 11 notes of the verse of Senegal's national anthem sound like a rewritten version of the chorus of "Jingle Bells".
  • "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction has a guitar riff that sounds just a bit too much like the riff in "Summer Nights" from Grease. On the other side of the spectrum, "Say Somethin'" by Austin Mahone and, more recently, "Cake By The Ocean" by DNCE both bear a strong resemblance the boy band hit.
    • The Epic Riff of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash is copied very unsubtly in "Live While We're Young".
    • "Best Song Ever" blatantly copies the opening of The Who's "Baba O'Riley", enough that it was rumored that it was going into court. Directioners were not happy about this. The Who's fans couldn't care less.
    • And then you have "Midnight Memories" and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me".
    • In a more obscure example, the opening ukulele of "Story of My Life" is very similar to "Sweet Troubled Soul" by stellastarr*.
    • In the piano's tone and riff, "Steal My Girl" resembles Journey's "Faithfully".
  • Marsheaux:
  • Since Ferry Corsten's remix of William Orbit's version of "Adagio for Strings", numerous imitations have been made, such as "Purple Room" by 949.
    • Spaceplanet's "Summer Rain" sounds suspiciously similar to Tiesto's arrangement of "Adagio".
  • Fleetwood Mac's song "Peacekeeper" has a chorus that has more than a passing resemblance to that of Paul Simon's song "Kodachrome".
  • The Venga boys' Rocket To Uranus has a suspicious resemblance to Donna Summer's I Feel Love.
  • Inna's Be My Lover, in addition to interpolating the La Bouche song of the same name, sounds similar to Nicki Minaj's Pound The Alarm.
  • The breakdown and ending of Ylvis's "The Fox" resemble Inna's "In Your Eyes". Although the latter's video was released second, the song itself was released six months prior to "The Fox". The verse and overall melody is even more similar to Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" and to some extent David Guetta's "Titanium", to the point that it was temporarily pulled from circulation due to plagiarism accusations.
    • One can argue that it's a deliberate parody of modern "electronic dance music" (referring to the specific mainstream use of the term to refer to the particular classes of house music made popular by acts like Guetta)
    • And yes, there's a resemblance to Gangnam Style as well.
  • The "Pachelbel Rant" routine by comedian Rob Paravonian features him playing the chord progression used in "Pachelbel's Canon in D" on his guitar while singing the lyrics to many, many different contemporary songs.
  • "Halo" by Beyoncé and "Already Gone" by Kelly Clarkson would be a case of this (not mentioning that the songs were hits only months apart)... except that writer/producer Ryan Tedder co-wrote both songs, making this a subtle case of Self-Plagiarism.
  • Trans-X's "Living on Video" sounds rather similar to Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love", leading to this mashup.
  • Ferry Corsten:
  • The opening riff of Avenged Sevenfold's "Unholy Confessions" sounds similar to a riff from Death's "Spirit Crusher"
    • Interestingly enough, the opening of Black Veil Brides "Knives and Pens" sounds a lot like the opening riff of Unholy Confessions.
    • On the topic of Avenged Sevenfold, their song "Hail to the King" sounds a lot like the Metallica song "King Nothing."
    • Avenged Sevenfold's "This Means War" and Metallica's "Sad But True" sound so similar that the former song is considered by some to be a ripoff.
    • Again, the intro of their song "The Stage" sounds a lot like "Thunderstruck" by Music/ACDC.
  • The chorus from Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" sounds a whole lot like the chorus from The Alan Parsons Project's "Eye In the Sky".
  • Ewan Dobson's "Time 2" is pretty much just a slightly slower version of Buckethead's "Big Sur Moon"
  • The Oakenfold, Christian Burns, and Jes collaboration "As We Collide", especially the chorus, is suspiciously similar to Coldplay's "Speed of Sound". Possible mashup material.
    • In turn, the chorus of "Speed of Sound" is similar to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill". This was intentional according to the band members.
      • Also, the synths in Years & Years' "Shine" sound like the effect vocals throughout "Running Up That Hill".
    • Also, the intro to and verse melody of Lindsay Lohan's "Confessions of a Broken Heart (Daughter to Father)" sounds very similar to the intro to and verse melody of "Speed of Sound".
      • Not to mention that the intro to Demi Lovato's "For the Love of a Daughter" is very similar to the intro to "Confessions". "Daughter" and "Confessions" even have a similar meaningnote !
  • Some have noted that "Das Lamm, das erwürget ist", the last movement of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, is very similar to "Worthy is the Lamb", the last movement of George Frederic Handel's Messiah. The two share a very similar structure and are even based on the same Bible verses!
  • The Frozen Autumn:
  • Fish Leong's song Chong Bai directly steals the refrain tune from Can You Feel the Love Tonight.
  • Deap Vally's song "Baby I Call Hell" is an exact copy of the Flaming Lips/MGMT's song "Worm Mountain"
  • Marlon Band$' "Hold Up" sounds a bit like "Living with Determination" from Persona 3.
  • Fozzy's "The Test" has a basically identical main riff to Therapy's "Rust".
  • Queens of the Stone Age's song "I Sat By The Ocean" has a similar guitar riff to The All Seeing I 's "Walk Like A Panther"
    • Both of those songs sound like Blur's "Coffee & Tv"
  • Colony 5's Avalanches, to Pride and Fall's Border.
  • Anamanaguchi's song "Pastel Flag" sounds quite a lot Nelly's song "Dilemma"
  • Yello's "Oh Yeah" is suspiciously similar to Vicious Pink's "8:15 to Nowhere".
  • Eluveitie's "A Rose for Epona" copies its intro almost note-for-note from Blood Stain Child's earlier "Metropolice", released approximately five years before Eluveitie's song. Some say that the intro is lifted from an earlier Irish/Scottish folk song, but so far not many people have been able to verify that origin (or what the base song is, for that matter) and it leaves one questioning how a Japanese trance/metal band would have heard an obscure Celtic folk song in the first place (slightly more understandable for Eluveitie, being a Celtic metal band themselves).
    • Eluveitie has several songs based on folk songs, which makes them sound very similar to other songs based on the same source material. If you don't know this, you might be forgiven for thinking Inis Mona and Luxtos were pirated from French folk hip hop band Manau's La Tribu De Dana and Qui Est La Belette or the other way round.
  • Anoraak and Sally Shapiro's "Don't Be Afraid" sounds like the "Tim 1" music from Lemmings.
  • Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks" has received some criticism for its similarity to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' "Home".
  • Fraktus, the band that invented Techno in 1980 (at least so they say), parody this:
    • The chanting in Westbam's "Sonic Empire" is stolen from "Supergau".
    • The Telekom stole their jingle from "Bombenalarm" and removed two notes at the beginning.
    • New Order stole the bass drum line in "Blue Monday" from "Affe sucht Liebe" (which was deliberately prevented from charting high).
    • And of course, they all got away with claiming that these are original compositions because nobody remembered Fraktus anymore.
  • The chorus melody of "When I'm Gone" from 3 Doors Down sounds a lot like "Breathe" from Faith Hill.
  • Gustav Holst's "In the Bleak Midwinter" has a nearly identical melody to the Largo movement of Antonín Dvořák's New World symphony.
  • The melody of Yuya Matsushita's "Foolish Foolish" sounds almost identical to Ne-Yo's "So Sick".
  • The guitar riffs in OMC's "How Bizarre" and Kristen Kelly's "Ex-Old Man" are virtually identical.
  • The chorus of Walk the Moon's "Jenny" sounds a lot like that of The Killers' "Somebody Told Me."
    • "Somebody Called Me" by Format C & Gabry Ponte copies "Somebody Told Me"'s chorus verbatim.
  • The intro of Kylie Minogue's song "Padam Padam" sounds similar to the synth used in Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place."
  • Some parts of Voicians' "Loner" bear a rather strong resemblance to Celldweller's song "Switchback." Though, they work together and Voicians has made it pretty obvious Celldweller is his main influence, so.... yeah...
  • Neil Young's "Borrowed Tune" outright admits the melody is lifted from a The Rolling Stones song (specifically, "Lady Jane") - it's right there in the title.
  • Dragonforce's "Cry Thunder" sounds like a ripoff of a couple of Sabaton songs, particularly "Union (Slopes of St. Benedict)."
  • Swedish singer Ted Gärdestad's 1979 Eurovision Song Contest entry "Satellit" is infamously similar to Toto's breakthrough hit "Hold The Line". Gärdestad's guitarist had jammed with the then-unknown Toto in Los Angeles, and unaware that they'd just started climbing the charts, figured he'd get away with borrowing the most striking bits.
  • The synthesizer riff in Eurobeat Brony's remix of "Hush Now Quiet Now" from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is suspiciously similar to the chorus of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South.
  • Warrant's "Cherry Pie" came about because their label asked them to do a song in the style of Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator". However, the finished product sounds a lot more like Ringo Starr's "Back Off Boogaloo".
  • As said in the YouTube comments, the main melody of Evening Star's Octavia sounds similar to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme.
  • The intro of Faunts' "Lights Are Always On" sounds quite similar to the title music from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
  • Muse's "Plug in Baby" sounds way too much like Air's "Sexy Boy"
    • "Panic Station"'s bass intro sounds a lot like "Another One Bites The Dust," and its chorus bears quite a resemblance to "Thriller."
    • "Map of the Problematique" has a synth riff which sounds like "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode.
  • The opening bit of "Angel in Blue Jeans" by Train is note-for-note the chorus of Matt Redman's "10000 Reasons".
  • The chord progression to Daft Punk's song "Get Lucky" sounds like some parts of Ratatat's "Wildcat"
  • One Republic's "Counting Stars" can be aligned with Bloodhound Gang's "Bad Touch" so perfectly it's eerie. Like so.
    • Even more blatant is its similarity to Asaf Avidan's "One Day/Reckoning Song."
  • John '00' Fleming's WKO sounds suspiciously similar to X-Cabs' Neuro.
  • The chorus of Celine Dion's "All By Myself" sounds like Bon Jovi's Never Say Goodbye.
    • "All By Myself" was a cover of an Eric Carmen hit from 1975, which pre-dates NSG by 11 years. Jon Bon Jovi himself, however, states that the song was inspired by Southside Johnny And The Asbury Jukes' "Hearts Of Stone".
  • American Authors' "Best Day of My Life" sounds an awfully lot like Imagine Dragons' "It's Time."
    • And BOTH were accused of ripping off Matt & Kim's "Daylight.
  • When many people first heard "Latch" by Disclosure & Sam Smith, they thought it was a rehash of Sam Sparro's "Black & Gold."
  • Seether's "Country Song" is eerily similar to Black Stone Cherry's "White Trash Millionaire", except played in a minor key with more of a steel-guitar focus. Otherwise, the two songs sound more or less the same. It's worth noting both were released in 2011, BSC succeeding Seether by about a month.
  • Hearing "Low" by Cracker and Spacehog's "In the Meantime" back-to-back can be very disorienting. The later sounds like a slightly happier version of the former, which is a stoner's love anthem. "In the Meantime" was kinda creepy to begin with, but this disparity and obvious similarities make it all the more disturbing.
    • Try listening to "In The Meantime" without thinking of "Where Is My Mind" by the Pixies.
  • The intro to Switchfoot's "Dark Horses" is cut-and-paste from Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away".
  • Six Feet Under's "Nonexistence" and Obituary's "By the Light" sound incredibly similar. Which isn't surprising since the latter band's guitarist was in the former band during the recording of the former song.
  • Swiss rock band Gotthard's biggest hit, the ballad "Heaven", bears an uncanny resemblance to Savage Garden's "Truly, Madly, Deeply."
  • KingSpartaX37's "Eurobeat Boss Battle: Eurobeat Pegasister" almost directly cribs the intro, synth hook, and bridge melody from DJ Command & 3L's "Think of You", a Eurobeat arrangement of the Touhou Project song "Bad Apple!!". Although the organ intro in those two seems to resemble that of Eurobeat Brony's "Discord" (which is actually taken from Bach's "Toccata & Fugue in D Minor"), "Think of You" predates said song by several months, and the original "Bad Apple" is more than a decade older than all of those.
    • The A-section of "Eurobeat Pegasister" is a pastiche of "Lost Dream"'s A-section with the first half of Fluttershy's "So Many Wonders".
    • Another brony music piece possibly inspired by Touhou is Makkon's "Deae Lunae", which sounds like a slow version of the climax of "Vanishing Dream~Lost Dream" from Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream.
  • The main riff of Die Krupps' "High Tech Low Life" is pretty much the Halloween theme.
  • Imagine Dragons' "I Bet My Life" bears some resemblance to KONGOS' "Come With Me Now".
  • Misery Index's "We Never Come in Peace" is basically a slight re-write of Chimaira's "Cleansation".
  • Here is the Academy Award-nominated "Accidentally in Love". Two years later, Bon Jovi gives "Who Says You Can't go Home". The similarities in song structure are undeniable!
  • The hook of Ne-Yo's "She Knows" reminds one of Kirko Bangz's "Drank In My Cup".
  • A Christian blogger pointed out that Dan Schutte's mass setting "Mass of Christ the Savior", in particular the "Glory to God" part, sounds just like the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic theme. Read here and here.
  • "Endgame" by T. Stebbins (the same person behind the Odyssey and Eurobeat Brony aliases) sounds like a cross between "A Searing Struggle" from Ys III: Wanderers from Ys/The Oath in Felghana and "He's A Pirate" from Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, "Aflame" is similar to Karna's theme from Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys.
  • Lasgo's "Only You" is a sped-up soundalike of the 80s italo disco song "Come On" by Alan Barry.
  • DJ Yanny's "Take Me to the Top" and Jimmy Diamond's "Love Machine" both copy the chorus of "Tell It To My Heart" by Taylor Dayne.
  • The synthesizer hook in Jenny's "Do You Remember Me?" sounds suspiciously like the first part of Hard Man's BGM from Mega Man 3. Likewise, the main riff of Awol Nation's "The Best" is similar to the B-section of Hard Man's theme.
  • Butthole Surfers' "Pepper" is a blatant and admitted nudge at Beck's "Loser."
  • Listen to the opening drumbeats of both "Hope You Get Lonely Tonight" by Cole Swindell and "Neon Light" by Blake Shelton, and try not to be reminded of Chris de Burgh's "The Lady in Red".
  • The chorus to Green Day's Amy is highly reminiscent of The Zombies' Time of the Season, as well as the Beatles' All I've Gotta Do.
    • "Time of the Season" itself was interpolated in Melanie Fiona's 2009 single "Give It To Me Right". The latter was about to sample up the former, at least in Fiona's native Canada, but quickly faded into obscurity.
  • Many Homestar Runner viewers, upon listening to the Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars song "Uptown Funk" for the first time, noted a striking similarity between that and the Homestar Runner original song "To The Limit". The resemblance was so uncanny that an epic mashup has been created.
  • Elastica got into trouble over the glaring similarities of their early single "Connection" to Wire's "Three-Girl Rumba", and the album track "Waking Up" to The Stranglers' "No More Heroes". Money was reportedly handed over to settle lawsuits.
  • The sabi (Eurobeat term for chorus) of Mark Foster's "Spiderman" is similar to the first half of the Stage 1 BGM from the Capcom shmup 1943: The Battle of Midway. In turn, Maximum Power's "Go Rocky Joe" copies "Spiderman"'s riff and chorus nearly verbatim, as well as the verse and bridge of Niko's "Night of Fire".
  • Tay Zonday's now memetic Chocolate Rain sounds similar to the Mission Select theme from U.N. Squadron.
    • It's also almost a copy of the underground level theme song from Super Mario Bros..
      • Apparently a total coincidence- Tay admitted early on that his parents had never let him play video games as a child so he'd have been unlikely to have heard either.
  • Justin Moore's "'Til My Last Day" has both an opening similar to Hollerado's "Americanarama", and a chorus eerily similar to Melissa Etheridge's "If I Wanted To".
  • Rotting Christ's "Sorrowful Farewell" has a riff much like Nightwish's "Slaying the Dreamer", though the former song came first.
  • The refrain of the Christian hymn "Alas! Did My Savior Bleed" borrows from France's national anthem, "La Marseillaise," with the later twentieth-century children's song "If You're Happy and You Know It" borrowing from the rest of the hymn's refrain.
  • All That Remains' "Fiat Empire" has a chorus that sounds sort of like Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", complete with the "why, why," phrase.
  • Ariana Grande's "Love Me Harder", Nick Jonas' "Jealous", and Taylor Swift's "Style" all sound similar to Lady Gaga's "Do What U Want" in terms of melody. And then "thank u, next" received comparisons to, of all things, the theme of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.
  • "Perfect" by One Direction sounds a lot like Taylor Swift's "Style". Not helped by the fact that the latter song is very arguably about the former act's Harry Styles, and contains the line "if you're looking for someone to write your break-up songs about…"
  • Taylor Swift's "Look What You Make Me Do" follows the same rhythmic pattern as "I'm Too Sexy".
  • "Smooth" by Santana has an opening very similar to that of "Rainbow In The Dark" by Dio.
  • Men Without Hats' "Hey Men" almost sounds like a copy of the Steve Miller Band's "Rockin' Me", using the same guitar riff.
  • The similarity between "Got to Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye and "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke is another example that actually involved legal action. Gaye's estate won, and Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay the estate $5 million.
  • There exists what is known as the "26 or 6 to 4" riff, a very distinctive set of bass chords which has been endlessly copied:
  • The acid break in Audrey Napoleon's "My Sunrise" is very similar to "Higher State of Consciousness" by Josh Wink, which itself borrowed from Hardfloor's "Acperience 1", as did Cygnus X's "Synchronism".
  • The synth/guitar riff in Hotblade's "Plastic" is all but copied from the bridge section of the A-Team theme.
  • "Free Your Mind" by En Vogue sounds quite similar to "Feed My Frankenstein" by Alice Cooper - less so in the instrumental and moreso in the lyrical style and overall progression of the song- both begin with a spoken opening followed by the title drop, some lyrics could practically be switched between songs and both have a similar instrumental break in the middle.
  • mitch murder:
  • Power Glove: "Grip", to Cybotron - "Clear", and "Maximum Potential", to Lazerhawk - "Dream Machine".
  • "Hot Fun in the Summertime" by Sly and the Family Stone (1969), "Sail On, Sailor" by The Beach Boys (1973), "Hold the Line" by Toto (1978), and "Misunderstanding" by Genesis (1979) all sound very similar to one another. Toto cited "Hot Fun" as an inspiration for "Hold The Line". In the case of "Misunderstanding", songwriter Phil Collins has said that the resemblance to the others was intentional. And The Beach Boys did a Cover Version of "Hot Fun" many years later.
  • "Sussudio" by Phil Collins has a background that's very similar to that of "1999" by Prince.
  • Compare the repeating organ of "Ignant Stick" by Mem Shannon to the main guitar riff of "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top
  • Miami Nights 1984's "Saved by the Bell" is similar to Elec Man's theme.
  • Sight Unseen's "Goodbye at Last" is totally a ripoff of Aviators' "Friendship". Which itself sounds like a Dark Reprise to "Through The Eyes of The '90s" by French-Canadian synthpop act Trans-X.
  • "Insane in the Brain" totally sounds like "Jump Around". Proof. They did share a producer, though.
  • "Trampled Under Foot" by Led Zeppelin has been long debated about what it copied- it was stated by Robert Plant to have been inspired by Robert Johnson's "Terraplane Blues" in that they both use cars as a metaphor for sex, but they sound little alike. Some have also suspected it copied Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" due to the organ, but those parts sound distinct. But many have noted that it sounds a lot like "Long Train Runnin'" by the Doobie Brothers due to similar sounding riffs and the choruses, not to mention that the lyrics to one could be sung to the tune of the other. It has inspired this mix. It's worth pointing out that the Doobie Brothers had played their song live in concert for 3 years before it was released as a studio cut, and not only does it predate "Trampled" by several years, it also predates "Superstition".
    • And "Long Train Runnin'" is itself likely a take on Bachman Turner Overdrive's "Let it Ride". Randy Bachman says they were sharing a dressing room with the Doobies while they were working on the opening riff, and when he heard "Long Train Runnin'", he realized right away where they'd gotten the idea for beginning with those stuttering acoustic chords.
  • Gin Blossoms' "Til I Hear It From You" sounds a lot like Marshall Crenshaw's "Some Day Some Way," though this could be intentional since Crenshaw was one of the writers of the former.
  • Madonna's "Frozen" was the target of a lawsuit once a Belgian composer said she riped off his song, and "Frozen" remained banned from the country for a while (including from the Greatest Hits Album tracklist; Madonna still played it in a 2009 concert in Werchter). It was lifted once another party claimed their song was being plagiarized too, leading the judges to say the three were "not sufficiently 'original' to claim".
  • The verses of Asia's "Heat of the Moment" musically resemble the verses of The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" (and even lyrically, in some cases, like with "And now you find yourself in 82" vs. "And now we meet in an abandoned studio", at the start of their respective second verses). Since Geoff Downes contributed to the writing on both songs, this probably wasn't a total coincidence.
  • Lost Years:
  • 5 Seconds of Summer's "She's Kinda Hot" has been considered similar to My Chemical Romance's "Teenagers" that came out 9 years earlier.
  • Sam Smith's "Stay With Me" sounds a lot like Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down". Smith said this was a complete coincidence as he'd never heard the latter song before, but nevertheless, Petty and Jeff Lynne ended up getting co-writer status on "Stay With Me".
  • Thomas Rhett has done this a few times.
    • "Crash and Burn" sounds very similar to "Chain Gang". Same rhythm and grunts.
    • Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" became a huge hit in the beginning of 2015. Rhett's "Die a Happy Man" has become a country hit in the latter half of 2015 with very similar guitar chords, as well as similar messages of "you are all I'll need for the rest of my life."
    • "Vacation" has a similar bassline to "Low Rider" by War, so the writers and producers of that song, as well as the members of War themselves, were credited as songwriters.
    • "Shape of You" had a similar-enough melody to TLC's "No Scrubs" that the latter song's composers were also credited as writers.
  • Porter Robinson's "Language" and Armin van Buuren's "Another You".
  • "A Little Bit of Ecstasy" by Jocelyn Enriquez is very similar to Planet Soul's lone hit "Set U Free", down to the slowdown during the break.
  • Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband" has a hook which has been accused of being very similar to Olly Murs' "Dance With Me Tonight." Just listen to a mash-up of the two songs and try not to notice how lyrics from either song played over the other works. In return you can then argue that "Dance With Me Tonight" has a similar beat to Dion's "Run Around Sue", which just makes this a circle of suspiciously similar music.
  • Calvin Harris' "Blame" suspiciously resembles Corona's "Rhythm of the Night", enough that there is at least one mashup of the two songs.
  • David Guetta:
  • The chorus of Selena Gomez's "Same Old Love" sounds like a slower take on Inna's "Sun is Up".
  • The respective guitar riffs of ZZ Top's "Cheap Sunglasses" and the Edgar Winter Group's "Frankenstein" sound similar to each other.
  • "Theme to the Midnight Veil" by Prom Queen sounds suspiciously similar to Dick Dale's arrangement of "Misirlou".
  • Lights' "Running With the Boys" sounds rather like Madi Diaz's "Stay Together", although the songs were released just two months apart.
  • The main riff to The Dandy Warhols' song "Bohemian Like You" sounds awfully a lot like a riff from Ted Nugent's "Snakeskin Cowboys."
  • Clan of Xymox's "She is Falling in Love" and "Kiss and Tell", both from Matters of Mind, Body, and Soul, are similar to New Order's "Blue Monday" and Blondie's "Rapture", respectively.
  • Toshiki Kadomatsu's "Secret Lover" is a dead ringer for "Hey DJ" by World's Famous Supreme Team.
  • Deadmau5's "Ghost's n Stuff" rips most of its melody from "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak.
  • The opening Riff of "After Midnight"- By Fastway- off the "Trick or Treat" Movie soundtrack album sounds just like the opening one of "Marseilles"- by The Angels.
  • "Ari Oh" by Jenny Kee very obviously riffs on "Let it Go" from Frozen (2013), and one Eurobeat fan named Vincent Nguyen mashed up the former with Demi Lovato's version of the latter. Ironically, there is also an official Eurobeat remix of Idina Menzel's version.
    • The chorus of "Inside My Soul" by SCP Eurobeat labelmates Ace and Pamsy also resembles that of "Let It Go", albeit more subtly.
  • Queens of the Stone Age's song "Sick Sick Sick" has some parts of it sound an awful lot like Foo Fighters "All My Life." Though, considering Josh Homme and Dave Grohl have worked together in the past and the guitars used in both music videos are clear glass guitars, this may have been intentional on Josh's end.
  • Periphery's song "Luck As A Constant" has a part toward the outro that closely resembles the introductory melody of "Alice in Wonderland" from the fifth Touhou Project game, Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square, both in the c minor key.
  • Oddly (and humorously), Janet Jackson's "That's the Way Love Goes" sounds like the Gangsta Rap song "Guerillas in tha Mist" by Da Lench Mob.
  • P.D.Q. Bach's music is full of this trope, even not counting themes directly lifted from other composers (which Peter Schickele attributes to the composer's penchant for plagiarism):
    • "1712 Overture" is obviously a takeoff on Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture," with the patriotic Standard Snippets facetiously replaced with ones more familiar to American audiences: "God Preserve Thy People" becomes "Yankee Doodle" (with one chord repeated an excessive number of times), "La Marseillaise" becomes "Pop Goes the Weasel," and "God Save the Tsar" becomes the finale theme from Antonín Dvořák's "New World" Symphony.
    • Papa Geno's "I Am" Song from The Abduction of Figaro, unsurprisingly, sounds a lot like Papageno's "I Am" Song from The Magic Flute.
    • "Tarragon of virtue is full," the opening chorus of The Seasonings, is quite similar to the opening chorus of Johann Sebastian Bach's Magnificat in D.
    • "Dying" from "Iphegenia in Brooklyn" is a ground similar to "When I am laid in earth" from Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.
  • Mauro Picotto's "Lizard" and "Like This, Like That" are suspiciously similar songs to Binary Finary's "1998" and Armin van Buuren's "Blue Fear", respectively.
  • The bridge and chorus of ASTR's Bleeding Love are basically stolen from Katy Perry's E.T..
  • The guitar riffs in the parts of Imperial Circus Dead Decadence's "Jashin no Konrei, Gi wa Ai to Shiru." sounds closely similar to those of Machine Head's "This Is the End".
  • Decisive Battle from the soundtrack of Neon Genesis Evangelion shows extreme similarities to 007 Takes the Lektor from From Russia with Love, composed by John Barry.
  • "You're So Cool" by Nicole Dollanganger closely resembles "Robbers" by The 1975. One could dismiss it as a coincidence (since both songs fall under the Indie Pop genre) if the final line of "Robbers" wasn't "you look so cool".
  • Gloria Estefan's Rhythm Is Gonna Get You quite obviously rips off Michael Jackson's Wanna be Startin Somethin'.
  • Prince's Little Red Corvette, and Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time.
  • "What's It Gonna Be" by Shura sounds an awful lot like "Flesh Without Blood" by Grimes.
  • OGRE & Dallas Campbell's All Hallows horror concept album has several:
  • The Labrynth's "Blood Moon" and "Decay" are suspiciously similar to Front 242's "Until Death (Do Us Part)" and "Headhunter", respectively, while "Evil Spells" is similar to Lemmings's aforementioned "Lemming 2" BGM.
  • The chorus of Thousand Foot Krutch song "Lifeline" sounds a lot "Fallen Angel" like Three Days Grace.
  • The drum patterns and main riff of The Sweet's big 1970s hit "Ballroom Blitz" are suspiciously similar to those of Bobby Comstock's early-'60s song "Let's Stomp". And in between those two songs, The Rolling Stones used a similar riff and drum beats in the song "Surprise, Surprise."
  • Salt Ashes' 2016 single "Save It" sounds suspiciously like Shakedown's 2001 house hit "At Night".
  • Kate Project - "A Better World", to Jewel - "Foolish Games".
  • "You Can Fly" by Estrella, from the Blast! Eurobeat label, sounds suspiciously like "Defying Gravity" from Wicked.
  • "Lightning Strikes", by Steve Aoki & Tony Junior feat. NERVO, is suspiciously similar to "The Dragon Flies"(Disco Fries Remix) by David Vendetta & Sylvia Tosun (VenSun).
  • Kristine's "The Deepest Blue" is similar to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer".
  • The main riff in Future Perfect's "Spaces" sounds like that of Depeche Mode's "Everything Counts".
  • Assemblage 23:
  • And speaking of songs named "Afterglow", Genesis has admitted that they based their song of that name on the chords of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."
  • The riff to Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" is a simplified version of the main riff to Tool's "Schism".
  • MC Miker G & DJ Sven's "Holiday Rap" was originally intended to be a Sampled Up version of Madonna's "Holiday". However, rather than actually use the samples, the producer decided to use nearly-identical instrumentation to get around it instead.
  • Kevorkian Death Cycle's "The Promise" (no relation to the When In Rome song, incidentally) is suspiciously similar to Skinny Puppy's "Worlock".
  • Decoded Feed Back's "Slaughter" sounds like a Darker and Edgier rendition of "Keep Hope Alive" by The Crystal Method.
  • Unknown Source's "Nadjanema" and "Cruentus" sound quite similar to Rank 1's "Symsonic" (itself a suspiciously similar song to the Speed theme) and Gouryella's "Ligaya", respectively.
  • According to R.E.M. in interviews, they only realised the extreme musical similarity of "Hope" from Up to Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" after completing recording. Rather than lose all the work, they decided to release the song anyway and give Cohen a co-writing credit.
    • Cohen was hit with this again with the song "When I Need You", by Leo Sayer, the chorus of which resembles his "Famous Blue Raincoat". Sayer was sued on Cohen's behalf, with an out of court settlement reached, even though a musicologist was brought in to argue that the motif was in the public domain and dated as far back as Schubert.
  • R.E.M.'s "Strange Currencies" sounds a lot like "Everybody Hurts".
  • Wham!'s "Last Christmas" sounds like a mashup of Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You" and Kool & the Gang's "Joanna". In fact, the writers of the Manilow song sued George Michael and settled out of court.
  • Breakbot's "Baby I'm Yours feat. Irfane" has the vocal melody sound near exactly like the vocal melody to Midnight Star's "Midas Touch."
  • iChill Music's "Radiant Sun" is suspiciously similar to the Zora's Domain theme from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
  • "The Human People" by retraux Eurodance artist Alex sounds suspiciously much like The Shamen's "Move Any Mountain".
  • Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself" and Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" fit together almost perfectly.
  • Devo's "Speed Racer" and Michael Jackson's "Speed Demon" sound alike if you pitch the latter down. "Speed Racer" was released in 1982, while "Speed Demon" was released in 1989.
  • Compare/Contrast Crash Kings' "Mountain Man" with White Stripes' "My Doorbell".
  • The familiar guitar riff from Michael Jackson's "Beat It" is quite similar to the riff from REO Speedwagon's 1979 song "Back On The Road Again"
  • The APM stock music track "Lollipop" by Otto Sieben is incredibly similar to the Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass instrumental "A Taste of Honey".
  • Yo Gotti's "Down in the DM" sounds similar to the The Legend of Zelda dungeon theme.
    • Better yet, Horse The Band's "The Immense Defecation of the Buntaluffigus" directly interpolates it.
      • It's worth noting that the dungeon theme borrowed heavily from "April" by Deep Purple. Koji Kondo not only admitted to it, but had played in a Deep Purple cover band prior.
  • Lindsey Buckingham's "Holiday Road" sounds like the theme song to Happy Days.
  • The hymn tunes "Lyons" (attributed to Joseph Haydn and most often used for "O Worship the King") and "Hanover" (composed by William Croft, most often used for "Ye Servants of God") are very similar. Their first stanzas are almost note for note the same, and they have an almost entirely identical rhythm. Some hymnals even swap these tunes.
  • In More's 2000 Italo-dance hit "Around the World" (not to be confused with One-Hit Wonder ATC's song that came out the same year), the main riff is is similar to Eiffel 65's "Blue", while the verse melody directly quotes that of Europe's "The Final Countdown". Likewise, the synth hook and scatting melody "I'm Ready for the Glory" are all but identical to the saxophone hook from Glenn Frey's "The Heat is On".
  • Mono Inc.'s "Forever and a Day" resembles the Chicago theme from Perfect Dark.
  • Twelve Tone's "Spirit of Man" is suspiciously similar to N-Trance's "Set You Free", complete with the lyrical reference "Only you can set me free".
  • Whitney Houston's "If I Told You That" is very similar to Brandy and Monica's "The Boy is Mine", which is also an example of Self-Plagiarism, since both were produced by Rodney Jerkins.
  • A part of Lindsey Stirling's "Crystalize" sounds an awful lot like "Point of No Return" from The Phantom of the Opera.
  • Lasgo's "Feeling Alive" is yet another "Wicked Game" soundalike.
  • In an example of a song that closely imitates another artist's style as opposed to any specific song, Ultravox's "Mr. X" has often been pointed out as sounding very much like Kraftwerk.
  • Lisa Loeb's "Stay", from Reality Bites, sounds an awful lot like Mae Moore's "Coat of Shame", which had come out a year or so earlier.
  • The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine theme music is strongly evocative of Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man", and at one point even discreetly quotes it.
  • Ashley Tisdale's He Said She Said song organ riff intro sounds a bit similar to Saberwulf's Killer Instinct SNES theme.
  • The chorus of Ellie Goulding's "Burn" sounds a lot like the chorus to Bruce Springsteen's "I'm Goin' Down".
  • Parts of Vanessa Hudgens' song "Come Back to Me" sound a lot like Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" at times.
  • My Chemical Romance's iconic song "Welcome to the Black Parade" clearly takes a lot of influence from both Pachelbel's Canon in D Major (the chord progression is similar aside from being in the key of G major) and the first act finale from Les Miserables (with which it shares not only the chord progression - which is also based on Pachelbel's - but also the lyrical themes of oppression, uprising, death/sacrifice, and perseverance/defiance, AND the style and call-response dynamic set up during the conclusion). MCR were obviously at least fans of musical theater, and very likely were also inspired by some of the more influential classical pieces.
  • Kelly Clarkson's "Heartbeat Song" is nearly isomorphic to Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle", which has led to some epic mashups. Clarkson admits listening to "The Middle" a lot on the bus on the way to school.
  • The verse section of Tiësto's "Red Lights" is a carbon copy of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream".
  • Katy Perry's song "Dark Horse" was successfully sued for being too similar to Christian rapper Flame's track "Joyful Noise". Perry has appealed the ruling.
  • The Flaming Lips' "Fight Test" was similar enough to Cat Stevens' "Father and Son".that Stevens was added as a co-writer.
  • The song "Body" by the Jacksons sounds an awful lot like their brother Michael's song "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'".
  • There's more than a passing similarity between "Dance With Me" by Orleans and "Love's Theme" by The Love Unlimited Orchestra, which was a #1 hit a year earlier. And yes, someone has done a mashup. Mike Post's theme song for Hill Street Blues also borrows a bit from "Love's Theme".
  • The synthwave song "Future Cops" by Midnight Driver copies the synth hook of New Order's aforementioned "Blue Monday" verbatim.
  • The Cruxshadows:
  • The riff in the first part of Betamaxx's "Restless" is blatantly ripped from "Gloria" by Umberto Tozzi/Laura Branigan.
  • Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From" is pretty obviously based on the British hit "Goodbye Nothin' to Say" by Nosmo King and The Javells, which came out a year earlier. The writers of "Goodbye Nothin' to Say" sued and got an out-of-court settlement. But "Goodbye" itself is pretty close to the 1966 hit "Black is Black" by Los Bravos.
  • Sash!'s Life is a Beach album has two particularly flagrant examples:
  • "Sidewalk Surfin'" by Jan and Dean is "Catch a Wave" by the Beach Boys except with the lyrics altered to be about skateboarding.
  • "Rise and Shine", the instrumental theme song for The Flintstones for its first two seasons has musical passages that are very similar to "This is It", the vocal theme for The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Show. The similarity is most likely a coincidence given the two programs debuted only two weeks apart in 1960. Whether the similarity had anything to do with The Flintstones later dropping "Rise and Shine" in favor of the song "Meet the Flintstones" - and the decision to remove "Rise and Shine" from syndicated versions of the first two seasons for more than 30 years - is unknown.
  • Cappella's "U Got 2 Know" has a more-or-less identical melody to "Happy House" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, a similarity that led to a lawsuit.
  • The Isley Brothers famously sued Michael Bolton and won over accusations that his "Love is a Wonderful Thing" plagiarized their earlier song of the same title. But there's another soft rock hit that's much more similar to an Isley song than Bolton's was: "Ride Like the Wind" by Christopher Cross (1980) resembles 1974's "Live it Up". The Epic Riff for both songs is almost identical, and the choruses are close as well.
  • The piano riff in the beat of MC Jin's song "Money" sounds almost exactly like the Sacred Grove theme from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, just played in a higher key.
  • Anders Enger Jensen:
  • Void Vision's "The Source" is suspiciously similar to the Stage 1 theme from Journey to Silius.
  • Nickelback:
  • Theocracy's On Eagles wings sounds similar to Helloween's I Want Out
  • Rise Against's Hero of War Bears some resemblance to Chicago's Hard to Say I'm Sorry.
  • The song "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac sounds very similar musically (complete with very similar horn riffs) with "Beetles in the Bog" by War. Both are also Limited Lyrics Songs.
  • "She Don't Love Nobody" by the Desert Rose Band, "Love Like This" by Carlene Carter, and "Every Time She Passes By" by George Ducas all have nearly identical verses.
  • "Livin' Our Love Song" by Jason Michael Carroll and "Do We Still" by Rockie Lynne have nearly identical choruses.
  • "Listen To Your Heart" by Roxette sounds very similar to Heart's "What About Love".
  • The chorus of "Lost On You" by LP is suspiciously similar to that of "Feel This Moment" by Pitbull feat. Christina Aguilera, which itself interpolated A Ha's "Take on Me".
  • Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" is a deliberate one to The Who's "My Generation". Jett is a big fan of The Who and used to open for them back in the day.
  • The original mix of "Shake" by Chris Walsh & Dave Beran (not the Revolt remix used in Grand Theft Auto III) is similar to "Don't Laugh" by Winx AKA Josh Wink.
  • "It's Tricky" by Run–D.M.C. is, even up to the title, blatantly similar to "Hey Mickey" by Toni Basil. Justice goes strange ways: The Knack sued them for sampling "My Sharona".
  • The bridges of Richard Marx's "Now and Forever" and Rascal Flatts' "Winner at a Losing Game" are almost identical.
  • The Script's "Superheroes" and Coldplay's "Paradise".
    • The intro to Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" is a rip-off of that of "Paradise". Here's a mashup.
    • The verse pianos in Shakira's "Empire" and Coldplay's "Paradise" are somewhat similar. Mashup here.
  • The instrumental parts to Avicii's "Wake Me Up" sounds pretty similar to the instrumental parts of Albert Hammond's "It Never Rains in California." It also sounds similar to the pre-chorus to Demi Lovato’s song "Heart Attack", which was released only a few months before "Wake Me Up".
  • "They're Red Hot", "Alice's Restaurant", and "Her Majesty" are interchangeable.
  • For some reason, the chorus of Macedonia's 2017 Eurovision entry "Dance Alone" by Jana Burčeska sounds remarkably similar to that of Bad Lip Reading's "Everybody Poops" not just in melody/harmony, but down to the instrumentation and vocal pitch.
  • Avril Lavigne's "I'm With You" is suspiciously similar to Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris".
  • Tobias Bernstrup manages to create, of all things, an italo disco version of Manowar's Warriors of the World except it's about robots taking over. Really.
  • In the category of "Artists You Would Never Otherwise Mention in the Same Sentence", the chorus of Reba McEntire's "Little Rock" is nearly identical to the chorus of ABBA's "Waterloo".
  • Machine Head's latest album Catharsis was heavily criticized for having a lot of these.
    • "Volatile"'s main riff is strangely similar to the main riff of Chimaira's "Cleansation".
    • "Beyond the Pale" more or less has the same riff as "Love?" by Strapping Young Lad. A lot of fans suggested it was actually plagiarism.
    • "Bastards" basically sounds like a downtuned cover of Dropkick Murphys.
    • Heck, it's very difficult to find a song that is not suspiciously similar to another one on this album !
  • Alexander James Adams' song "Faerie Queen" is intentionally styled after "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". In it, a woman wins back her soon-to-be-husband from a fairy queen by besting her at fiddling.
  • In rhythm, feel, and story, John Michael Montgomery's "Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident)" is nearly indistinguishable from Tim McGraw's "Something Like That."
  • Keith Whitley's hit from 1988, "Don't Close Your Eyes," and John Denver's "Don't Close Your Eyes Tonight" from 1985. Besides having almost identical titles, both songs are about a man asking his wife to make love to him tonight rather than to some fantasy man, and both choruses repeat some of the same phrases.
  • "Return of the Necrowizard" by Impaled Northern Moonforest has more or less the same introduction riff as "Freezing Moon" by Mayhem. It is however possible that this was done deliberately, since Impaled Northern Moonforest were actually two members of Anal Cunt.
  • Three Days Grace’s hit song "Painkiller" (their debut without Adam Gontier), is somewhat similar to Adelitas Way’s "The Collapse".
  • Alex Clare’s 2012 One-Hit Wonder "Too Close" has an opening nearly identical to that of the Goo Goo Dolls’ 2006 hit "Let Love In".
  • "Any Love" by Luther Vandross sounds a lot like a slower version of "You Are" by Lionel Richie, especially the choruses.
  • "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" borrows heavily from Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz."
  • Three Dog Night's "Words" and Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" sound strikingly similar.
  • The introductory vocal hook of CHVRCHES's "Playing Dead" resembles the refrain of Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus".
  • KISS' Reason to Live sounds extremely similar to Foreigner's I Want to Know What Love Is.
  • The synth strings hook in X-Cabs'Neuro '99 is suspiciously similar to Robert Miles' Children, albeit starting on a different note, while the intro is similar to that of System F's Out of the Blue.
  • Everdune:
  • The chorus to Liz Phair's "Why Can't I" has a rather similar melody to "These Dreams" by Heart.
  • The intro of "Matrix" (AKA "Grid") by The Cynic Project is similar to the main theme of The Journeyman Project.
  • The starting verse in Spice Girl's "Stop" is VERY similar to the starting verse in Picketywitch's "That Same Old Feeling"
  • Blood On The Dance Floor's Sexting has an intro music that sounds very similar to Pacman's intro music.
  • "Dakota" by Juno Reactor & Undercover interpolates a One-Woman Wail variation of the aforementioned Blade Runner credits theme.
  • When Red Hot Chili Peppers released Dani California in 2006, many thought it extremely similar to Tom Petty And The Heart Breakers' Mary Jane's Last Dance. Of course both are suspciciously similar to The Lovin' Spoonful's Summer in the City...
  • The post-chorus of U2's "Beautiful Day" is similar to the chorus of A Ha's "The Sun Always Shines on TV", which itself resembles that of Eurythmics' "Here Comes The Rain Again".
    • Speaking of "The Sun Always Shines on TV", the intro verse of Alexia's "Me and You" is suspiciously similar to the former's verse section, while the second verse melody of "Me and You" is copied almost verbatim from the verses of "He's So Shy" by The Pointer Sisters.
    • Also similar to "Here Comes The Rain Again" is "Love Somebody" by Maroon Five.
    • The choruses of Amy Holland's "She's On Fire" and Bananarama's "I Heard A Rumor" are likewise similar to that of "He's So Shy".
      • The introductory riff of "She's On Fire" is nearly identical to that of Irene Cara's "Fame" from the film of the same name. Better yet, the chorus of The Weather Girls' "It's Raining Men" is copied just about verbatim from that of "Fame".
  • "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" sounds like a country music version of "Yakety Sax."
  • Toni Braxton's "Unbreak My Heart" quite obviously rips off the chorus of No Doubt's "Don't Speak".
  • The chorus of Gwen Stefani's "Cool" sounds just like that of Yazoo's "Only You". Also, the verses resemble the coda of Queen's "Under Pressure".
  • The verses of Oscillator X's "Dynamo" are suspiciously similar to those of New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle".
    • Krystal Klear's "Neutron Dance" is another "Bizarre Love Triangle" sound-alike.
  • One-Hit Wonder Filly's "Sweat (The Drip Drop Song)" sounds like the title track of Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine.
  • "Hammer to the Heart" by The Tamperer feat. Maya uses a slightly modified version of the riff from ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)". The remix used in the official video, however, lacks this riff, possibly for copyright reasons.
  • The production/arrangement of Ashlee Simpson's "Eyes Wide Open" obviously rips off that of Coldplay's "Square One".
  • For a totally silly example compare the eerie intros from "Autobahn" by German punk band Abwärts...and "View from a Bridge" by Kim Wilde. (Songs couldn't be more different otherwise...)
  • The synthesizer hook in Victoria Celestine's "Carrying On" is similar to the beginning of "Europe Endless" from Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express.
  • Ollie Wride:
  • "You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma" by David Frizzell and Shelly West had a chorus so similar to "Rocky Top" that the writers of the former had to credit "Rocky Top" writers Felice and Boudleaux Bryant as co-writers.
  • Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing" sounds a lot like Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way". Here's a mashup of the former's tune with the latter's vocals.
  • Chromeo's "Jealous" is suspiciously similar to "Walking on a Dream" by Empire Of The Sun.
  • Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" (released in 1987) sounds eerily like "Unpublished Critics", a 1981 album cut from Australian Crawl.
  • The synth breakdown of Interface's "All Roads" sounds very much like the B-section of "Vit-Symty" from RayCrisis. The main riff is also quite similar to the climax of Faderhead's "Darker Please". On the same album, the chorus of "Fire In The Sky" is similar to that of Information Society's "How Long", as well as Melissa Manchester's "Thief of Hearts", and the strings melody of "We Will Never Be Together" is lifted nearly note-for-note from Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygène Part 3.
  • Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" copies near-verbatim the chorus of "Dreaming" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. It's also often compared with "Always Gonna Love You" by Gary Moore.
  • Beast in Black song 'Eternal Fire' might as well be Europe's 'The Final Countdown'.
  • Zhi-Vago's "Celebrate the Love" and Ayla's "Angelfalls" both appear to be inspired by Robert Miles' "Fable". In turn, the piano hook in Missing Heart's "Charlene" is similar to that of "Celebrate the Love" with a touch of Miles' "Children".
  • The pre-choruses of Zedd's "Clarity" featuring Foxes, I Prevail's "Alone", and Red's "Let it Burn" are interchangeable.
  • The song "Lovefool" by The Cardigans features a guitar riff throughout the verses that sounds nearly identical to that of the song "Elevation" by New York post-punk band Television.
  • The climactic synth riff in the album version of "Just Be" by DJ Tiësto and Kirsty Hawkshaw is highly similar to that of "Domino Runner" by fellow Dutch trance master Vincent de Moor.
  • The verses of Christina Milian's "AM to PM" sound blatantly like the chorus of The Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive", with hints of Mýa's "Free". In turn, the verse section of Dua Lipa's "Levitating" is nearly identical to that of "AM to PM"; ironically, she got sued for plagiarizing Cory Daye's "Wiggle and Giggle All Night".
  • The chorus of Missing Heart's "In Aeternum" is just a few notes off from the Titanic (1997) theme. More strangely, the main riff of "Hearts of Ice" sounds like the Area 2 BGM from Zanac.
  • The refrain of Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" sounds just like "Don't Let The Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man)" by The Serendipity Singers.
  • "That's All" by Genesis is very similar to "Dirty Laundry" by Don Henley.
  • The music of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" are very similar.
  • Good that hardly anyone knows the German metal band Chalice and their "Digital Boulevard", or people might remember another main street: Billy Idol "Blue Highway". (To be fair, only the refrain falls under this trope.)
  • The chorus of Go2's "Hot Hot Racing Car" sounds like the title theme of Mega Man 2.
  • Rank 1's "Black Snow" is blatantly similar to Cygnus X's "The Orange Theme", which Bervoets & de Goejj, the producers of Rank 1, also officially remixed. Ironically, the B-Side of "Black Snow" is titled "The Citrus Juicer", but is a completely different song. It does, however, resemble BBE's "7 Days & One Week".
  • Kim Wilde's "Time" has an eerie resemblance to Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love", though the former came out well before most Westerners knew of the latter's existence.note 
  • Bjorn Lynne's "Himalayan Summit (Hightop)" has a guitar lick at one point that sounds just like the main hook of "Am I The Same Girl" by Swing Out Sister.
  • The intro riff of Boytronic's "Time After Midnight" is similar to that of the VNV Nation song "Rubicon".
  • The synth riff and chorus of "Nothing Prevails" by Information Society are Lighter and Softer soundalikes of "Morpheus" by In Strict Confidence.
  • The intro bassline of Zanias' "Endling" sounds like "Descent Into Cerberon" from Quake II.
  • The chorus of "Vicious" by The New Division bears more than a passing resemblance to the pre-chorus of "Something About You" by Level 42, with a touch of "Land of the Blind" by Information Society.
  • Color Theory has described "In Space, No One Can Hear You Cry" as Blade Runner meets Morrissey. In addition to the synth bass ostinato throughout the song, the bridge section interpolates the first phrase of the film's end credits theme. The chorus has also been compared to Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence" and Talk Talk's "It's My Life".
  • "Dash Wata" by Raging Fyah sounds like a reggae version of "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens.
  • Roxi Drive:
  • ''Any Song'' by Zico resembles Pursuing My True Self from Persona 4, particularly the first few notes.
  • NINA:
  • "Eros" by Little Boots and Planningtorock, in particular the chorus, suspiciously resembles "Can't Get You Out of My Head" by Kylie Minogue.
  • Jean-Michel Jarre's "Zoolookologie", from Zoolook, is quite similar to Herbie Hancock's "Rockit", released a year earlier.
  • Burl Ives:
  • The main riff from Psy's "Gangnam Style" sounds quite similar to the opening riff from Rammstein's "Eifersucht"
  • ABBA's "Honey, Honey" and Elton John's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" have similar beats and music.
  • The introductory bass line of Jupiter's "Starlighter" sounds like that of "Lithium" from Nirvana's Nevermind, whilst the chorus of "One O Six" is strongly similar to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean".
  • "Stunning" by LAU (Laura Fares, NINA's former co-songwriter/production partner)sounds eerily similar to "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd, which sounds eerily similar to "Young Turks" by Rod Stewart.
  • "The Name of the Game Was Love", one of Hank Snow's more obscure songs from 1969, has a first verse sounding amusingly like the children's nursery rhyme "Five Little Speckled Frogs".
  • The main chorus of "Seek You Out" by Poets of the Fall has the same tune as the chorus of "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley. Possibly done on purpose as the song also features repeated use of the word "never" and has a theme that runs opposite of the infamous rickroll tune.
  • It's been noted that the main guitar riff in The Cult's hit "Wild Flower" is pretty much identical to the one in AC/DC's "Rock and Roll Singer". The riff is fairly basic and not necessarily original to AC/DC either.
  • Mattie Maguire:
  • The Pet Shop Boys' "Domino Dancing" sounds suspiciously similar to Exposé's "Point of No Return". This is because it was produced by Exposé founder and producer Lewis A. Martineé.
  • "All Around the World" by TajMo (Taj Mahal and Keb'Mo') is an unabashed revision of "Waiting on The World to Change" by John Mayer. Oddly, TajMo did in fact release a Cover Version of "Waiting on The World to Change" on the same album, and the cover sounds less like the original song than "All Around the World" does.
  • Carpenter Brut's Sexkiller On The Loose is quite similar to ZZ Top's ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man.
  • This Christmas stock music track from the KPM library (notable for being heard in the Rocko's Modern Life Christmas Episode) sounds suspiciously similar to "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine Band.
    • Lil Nas X's "SUN GOES DOWN" bears enough similarity to iann dior's "Holding On" that he recieved a writing credit - though the similarity is probably more likely to do with the songs sharing two producers in Omer Fedi and Blake Slatkin.
  • The Cover Girls' "Inside Outside" is this to Miami Sound Machine's "Conga".
  • Canadian indie pop band Was It The Walrus released their first EP in 2016 - it wasn't until a few years later that a Weezer fan listened to it and discovered all five songs on the EP have similarities to specific Weezer songs. "Whatever After" takes it further by literally being an uncredited cover of Weezer outtake "367" with a new title and barely changed lyrics.
  • "Something From Nothing" by Foo Fighters deliberately invokes this with a riff borrowed from Dio's "Holy Diver"
  • The trance track "Landmark" by Solarstone & Lostly sounds like the title theme of Cirque du Soleil's Alegría crossed with Alexander Nakarada's "The Lone Wolf", which itself sounds like a slow version of the A-section of "Gensokyo Millennium ~ History of the Moon" from Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night.
  • The finale melody of The Kyoto Connection's "Best Days of My Life" is copied wholesale from the chorus of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face". It's a wonder they haven't been sued by her yet.
  • It's been noted that the synthesiser top line and vocal melody of New Order's "Blue Monday" appears to owe quite a bit to the self-titled 1979 single by Gerry And The Holograms. Although to the wider world the single was quite obscure, it's likely that New Order were aware of it as John Scott, alias "Gerry", was a well-known figure on the same Manchester music scene that New Order/Joy Division were part of.
  • The main guitar riff of "I Want It That Way" by the Backstreet Boys bears a resemblance to the riff of "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica. According to Word of God from co-writer Andreas Carlsson, the riff for "Nothing Else Matters" provided inspiration for the riff of "I Want It That Way".
    • The riff for "I Want It That Way" is also incredibly similar to the riff for "No Scrubs" by TLC.
  • The Speakeasies' Swing Band's "Black Swamp Village" sounds quite similar to "Macavity: The Mystery Cat" from Cats, both being mysterious, jazzy tunes in C Minor with a repetitive, descending melody.
  • "She Hates Me" by Puddle of Mudd has a melody similar to "Summer Nights" from the musical Grease. Comparisons have also been made between "She Hates Me" and "I Saw Your Mommy" by Suicidal Tendencies, complete with some very similar guitar leads.
  • The guitar riff of "Am I Wrong" by Nico & Vinz sounds a lot like the one in "Message In A Bottle" by The Police.
  • September's hit "Cry For You" uses the chord progression of and a tune similar to Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", plus a slightly modified version of the synth riff from Bronski Beat's "Small-town Boy". Then Project Acoustic Brothers performed a medley of all three songs.
  • Done deliberately by Blur with "Song 2", which the band made as a parody of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
  • Secret Shine's "Liquid Indigo" is very, very similar to "Only Shallow" by fellow shoegazers My Bloody Valentine.
  • The main melody in Bryce Miller's "Spectral Drift" is blatantly similar to Willy's leitmotif from Free Willy.
  • Islandrocks' "Back To the '80s" resembles the main theme of the Commodore 64 game Lightforce.
  • Gerard Joling's "Ticket to the Tropics" is basically a carbon copy of George Michael's "Careless Whisper".
  • Meanwhile, "Careless Whisper" sounds a lot like Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" (especially the saxophone's Epic Riff).
  • Stephanie Mills' "Winner" suspiciously sounds like Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" from a year earlier.
  • The synthesizer hook and chorus of Mindtrust's "Raver's Groove" are essentially ripped straight from Michael Sembello's "Maniac".
  • Michael Oakley:
  • Japanese Idol Group YURiMental's song refrain of Kinou Ni Kanaderu Ashita No Uta (released in 2021) is almost identical to Xi's BMS song Freedom Dive (released in 2010). It's so infamous among the rhythm game community that some rhythm game fans called it "Freedom Dive with vocals". The music composer of Kinou Ni Kanaderu Ashita No Uta SC Kanata says that it's a homage to Freedom Dive and the producer of YURiMental is aware of this.
  • Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth has some resemblance to the similarly titled "Instruments of Destruction" by N.R.G. from the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack.
  • Linkin Park member Mike Shinoda's 2021 solo single, "Happy Endings", featuring UPSAHL and iann dior, has a hook that sounds similar to Gigi D'Agostino's 90's hit, "L'amour toujours (I'll Fly With You)".
  • The chorus of UEFA Euro 2020 competition's official song, "We Are The People" by Martin Garrix featuring Bono & The Edge, is very reminiscent of the recurring riff in Pinguini Tattici Nucleari's "Ringo Starr".
  • Genesis's "Invisible Touch" was deliberately based on Sheila E.'s "The Glamorous Life".
  • The Romantics's "Talking in Your Sleep" shamelessly rips off Rick James' "Super Freak". Unlike Mc Hammer, they didn't get sued over it.
  • Salt Ashes' "Too Many Times" sounds suspiciously similar to The Knife's "Heartbeats".
  • Thunder Porpoise:
  • Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" is very similar to Stealers Wheel's "Stuck In The Middle With You". Crow's performance of the latter is at least an acknowledgement of the similarity.
  • The B-section synth lead of Reptile & Sky's "The 7th Star" sounds suspiciously like the chorus synth of My Mine's "Hypnotic Tango". The A-section hook is also similar to the intro of Freestyle's "Don't Stop The Rock".
  • The refrain of She Moves' lone hit "Breaking All The Rules" is very similar to that of Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good". Ironically, She Moves also covered said song.
  • Robbie Dupree's 1980 single "Steal Away" features a similar rhythm and keyboard hook to "What A Fool Believes" by The Doobie Brothers, released just a year earlier - this didn't go unnoticed by critics of the time, and the publishers of "What A Fool Believes" were at one point considering legal action, though the song's cowriter, Michael McDonald, declined to sue.
  • "The Pushbike Song" by Australian band The Mixtures sounds almost exactly like Mungo Jerry's "In The Summertime"... which The Mixtures had just released a cover of. Hilariously, two decades later, Mungo Jerry themselves covered The Pushbike Song.
  • Nihilist Blues by Bring Me the Horizon ft. Grimes is extremely similar to Never Go Back by Evanescence.
  • The Rain Within's "Forward in Reverse" sounds suspiciously like a composite of Danger's "6:24" and "7:53" from Furi, With Lyrics.
  • The refrain of Ricky Martin's "Shake Your Bon Bon" was intentionally based on Peaches & Herb's "Shake Your Groove Thing", though Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing accused him of ripping off their "Super Bon Bon".
  • The chorus of Versailles' "Rosen Schwert" sounds a lot like the oft-covered standard "Fly Me to the Moon".
  • Coo Coo's "You Can Set Me Free" sounds blatantly like Bananarama's "Love In The First Degree".
  • Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk" has an opening that's almost identical to the open of "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town". Some enterprising Jazz musicians have even mashed-up the two songs. Given that he was known for his quirky sense of humor, Monk may well have done this on purpose.
  • The refrain of GAYLE's "abcdefu" is bizarrely similar to the refrain from the old cartoon Fangface's Italian opening song, known as "Luni, il lupo col dentone". It's also been compared to "Where is My Mind?" by Pixies.
  • The chorus melody of Lil Nas X's "Panini" sounds so suspiciously similar to Nirvana's "In Bloom" that Kurt Cobain is posthumously credited as a songwriter.
  • In the 1984 single version of Laserdance's "Goody's Return", the synthesizer hooks are dangerously close to those of "Breakout Theme" by The Breakout Crew. Consequently, "Return" was rearranged on LD's 1987 album Future Generation so as to be less blatantly similar. Ironically, in 1995, they did a straight cover of "Breakout Theme", retitled "Break Through", for The Guardian of Forever.
  • The former Trope Namer Jimmy Hart was doing this even back when he was still in the band The Gentrys. Their minor 1970 hit "Why Should I Cry?" (which Hart wrote) is an ersatz version of "Midnight Confessions" (a hit for The Grass Roots, Covering Up the original by The Ever-Green Blues).
  • My Mine's "Can Delight" is a slightly faster soundalike of Toto's "Africa".
  • Tin Machine's "Crack City" starts off as Black Sabbath's "Iron Man", then turns into Jimi Hendrix's version of "Wild Thing" by The Troggs.
  • Blue Pearl's "(Can You) Feel The Passion" originated as a remix of Bizarre Inc.'s rave anthem "Playing With Knives"; after the latter group rejected it, BP retooled it into a Suspiciously Similar Song With Lyrics.
  • Steps' song "One For Sorrow" has a lot of similarities to ABBA's "The Winner Takes It All", from the melody, the meaning of the lyrics, the fact that both songs are mostly solo pieces by one member of the respective bands with the other members serving as backing vocals, and how both songs were released not long before the bands broke up.
  • The Oak Ridge Boys' Signature Song "Elvira" bears more than a passing resemblance to the Fiestas' doo-wop tune "So Fine" - which the Oaks would cover the following year.
  • Empire of Angels from Two Steps from Hell sounds very similar to the main theme from Fairy Tail.
  • The piano riff in Jimmy Somerville's solo version of "Run From Love" has a striking resemblance to that of Depeche Mode's "Strangelove".
  • The main hook of Menno de Jong's "Turtle Paradise" is basically identical to that of The Future Sound of London's "Papua New Guinea".
  • Portugal. The Man openly accused the Jonas Brothers of copying their single "Sucker" from his own "Feel It Still" though many others had noted the similarities before. The latter itself borrows the refrain of The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman".
  • "Bad to the Bone" by George Thorogood and the Destroyers sounds very similar to "I'm a Man" by Bo Diddley.
  • Sia
    • "Chandelier" is very similar to Rihanna's "Diamonds", right down to Sia sounding just like Rihanna. Incidentally, "Diamonds" was also written by Sia.
    • "Chandelier" also has a suspiciously similar beat to "Unstoppable".
    • "Cheap Thrills", "The Greatest" and "Never Give Up" all sound like variations of each other in that they have similar chords.
  • Compare the chorus of Sandra's "(I'll Never Be) Maria Magdalena" to that of RAF/Laura Branigan's "Self Control", released a year earlier. Surely not a coincidence, is it? The former's male backing vocals even lyrically reference the latter with the lines "You're a creature of the night, you're a victim of the fight". Here's a mashup.
  • A recurring riff in Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me", "Didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?", sounds similar to the refrain in John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy".
  • When Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor heard Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy", he instantly recognized his own "Taj Mahal" and sued for plagiarism. Stewart would eventually admit the inspiration, having heard the other song attending Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and tried to compensate donating royalties to UNICEF.
  • "Ahjia" by Italo Disco band Kano sounds like a blend of Earth, Wind & Fire's "Boogie Wonderland" and "September".
  • "Hail to the King" by Avenged Sevenfold lifts musical cues from "King of Kings" by Motorhead. Both were also used by the WWE.
  • In Minuit Machine's "Follower", the stanza "Come on, talk to me/Tell me what is wrong with me/Come on, don't lie to me/Everyone is better than me" sounds suspiciously similar to the "Come on, dance with me/Move your body along to the beat" hook from Age of Love's "The Age of Love".
  • "All I Need Is Love", a Christmas song recorded by Cee Lo Green and The Muppets, sounds like an ersatz version of Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5", definitely helped by the fact that the former song interpolates "Mahna Mahna" in its chorus.
  • "Times Like These" by Five Finger Death Punch has several lines that are sung to the tune of "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
  • 0:30 of Ariana Grande's Problem sounds like the climax of Complete Darkness from Touhou Project. Comparisons have been made.
  • Ween's "Japanese Cowboy" is essentially an uptempo, countrified, With Lyrics version of Vangelis' "Title" from Chariots of Fire - acknowledged by the band themselves during several live performances, where the song actually segues into a full on Cover Version at the end.
  • Porn Kings originally directly sampled the 303 riff of Josh Wink's aforementioned "Higher State of Consciousness" in their white label single "Pumpin' The Junk", then utilized a Suspiciously Similar version of the riff in its commercial follow-up "Up To No Good", which in turn was Sampled Up by Voodoo & Serrano in "Blood Is Pumpin'".
  • Indio Solari's "Pedía Siempre Temas en la Radio", from Porco Rex, has a similar ambience to Audioslave's "Your Time Has Come".
  • The self-titled single of Dutch trance duo Magica is basically a Musical Pastiche of Agnelli & Nelson's "El Niño" and the Veracocha remix of Ayla's self-titled song. Not to mention both "El Niño" and "Magica" Sampled Up Sueño Latino's "La Puerta del Sol".
  • Sweet's "Block Buster!" features a strikingly similar riff to that of RCA Records labelmate David Bowie's "The Jean Genie", which was released just barely sooner. Both artists maintained that the similarities were purely coincidental. According to Nicky Chinn, who co-wrote "Block Buster!", Bowie responded to the song out-charting "The Jean Genie" by calling him a cunt, then immediately hugging and congratulating him.
  • SZA's vocals in the chorus of "Low" have a rhythm, melody and tempo immediately reminiscent of blackbear's "hot girl bummer", namely the pre-chorus.
  • The guitar in Dax's "She Cheated Again" is incredibly similar to the guitar in Niwel's "Bad Love (Vocal Edit)", in regards to melody, tone, rhythm, and the amount of reverb applied and resulting note length.
  • Both Gershwin's "Sweet And Low-Down" and the theme to Inspector Gadget borrow their main riff from Grieg’s Peer Gynt's “In The Hall Of The Mountain King"
  • Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog" has a similar riff and chord progression to The Beatles' "Day Tripper".
  • The refrain of Magic Affair's "Hear The Voices" sounds blatantly similar to Snap!'s "(Do You) See The Light". Both also heavily resemble the chorus of Ultravox's "Hymn", which was a top 10 hit in Germany.
  • The main riff of "Pussy" by Rammstein sound a bit like a faster version of the riff from "More" by The Sisters of Mercy.
  • The song "Be Mine" by the Korean pop band Infinite sounds a lot like a sped up version of "Even the Nights Are Better" by Air Supply
  • The chord progression on "Never Went To Church" by British rapper The Streets is identical to "Let It Be" by The Beatles. Enough that Paul McCartney demanded to be credited as a songwriter.
  • "Vertigo" by Mexican children's group LemonGrass is essentially a cover of "Bar Bar Bar" by K-pop group Crayon Pop, which would be perfectly fine if this was actually admitted anywhere.
  • The Art of Trance's "Emerald Eyes" is suspiciously similar to The Age of Love's self-titled song (minus the lyrics) for its first half.
  • The bassline at the start of Tom Cardy's "Big Breakfast" is very reminiscent of the repeating bassline in Madonna's first verse of "Into The Groove". The notes are fairly similar, and the rhythm feels like it was plucked straight out of the song.
  • Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up The Sun" sounds incredibly similar to "Shiny Happy People" by REM. It also shares similarities with "All I Wanna Do", an earlier Sheryl Crow song.
  • Sheb Wooley's song The Purple People eater sounds an awful lot like the finale for Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals, specifically the verses of "One-eyed one horned flying purple people eater!"
    • It also sounds the same as the children's song "Michael Finnegan".
  • Ondina's "Into The Night" is an obvious copycat of Corona's "The Rhythm of the Night". The former's vocalist, Jenny Brusk, even has a similar name and voice to Giovanna "Jenny B." Bersola of the latter.
  • Some Crazy Frog merchandise uses a track called "Crazy Toy Song" that is identical to the character's hit cover of "Axel F" besides featuring a different synth riff, likely for licensing reasons.
  • "Everytime" by Britney Spears sounds like a slowed-down version of "Breathless" by The Corrs.
  • Tubeway Army's "Praying To The Aliens" sounds like a slightly slower and less abrasive take on Throbbing Gristle's "United".
  • CHVRCHES' "Clearest Blue" is clearly (no pun intended) inspired by Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough". After hearing of the passing of Andy Fletcher, CHVRCHES performed an In Memoriam medley of the two songs at The Fillmore in San Francisco on May 26, 2022.
  • The arpeggiated piano riff that plays twice at 1:53 of "Dream" by Shawn Mendes is an exact copy of the arpeggio from the Stranger Things opening theme.
  • Afrojack's "Bangduck", especially the drop, sounds uncannily similar to Boris Dlugosch's "Bangkok", right down to the title.
  • While it's not too similar musically, the lyrics of Gene Autry's song "Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey" are basically a Recycled Script of his earlier hit "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The title character is an animal mocked by all the other animals for a freakish feature of his body (Rudolph's shiny red nose, Nestor's enormous ears); but then he's called upon to help an iconic Christmas figure on their important journey (Rudolph helps to pull Santa Claus's sleigh, Nestor carries The Virgin Mary to Bethlehem), and when winter clouds threaten to halt the journey by hiding their way, he uses his special feature to guide them (Rudolph's nose lights Santa's way, Nestor's ears hear angels' voices calling); thus he becomes a hero and the other animals all love him and praise him. Both songs were also adapted by Rankin/Bass Productions into stop-motion Christmas specials, ''Rudolph'' in 1964 and ''Nestor'' in 1977.
  • The chorus of Nelly's "Ride Wit Me" sounds similar to the ending of Eurythmics's 1986 cover of "Winter Wonderland".
  • The synth hook of the lost-and-found Brazilian freestyle song "Feels Like A Wish" (formerly nicknamed "Fond My Mind") by Station K sounds very similar to the bridge section of Taylor Dayne's "Tell It To My Heart".
  • The A-section of Jeroen Tel's demoscene tune "That's the Way It Is" sounds almost exactly like the chorus of "A Brand New Day (Everybody Rejoice)" from The Wiz.
  • The Beastars-inspired song "Predator & Prey" by two of the anime's English dub voice actors Griffin Puatu and Jonah Scott has a guitar riff that sounds like that of Aerosmith's "Dream On." Also similar to the guitar riff in "Dream On" is that of No Doubt's "Don't Speak." Eminem sampled "Dream On" in "Sing For The Moment."
  • The Modern English song "I Melt with You" contains passages that sound just like the NBC chimes.
  • Much like the theme song to Yo Yogi!, "Hellraiser" by Ozzy Osbourne (also performed by Motörhead) appears to have lifted elements from "Unskinny Bop" by Poison.
  • Part of the vocal melody from "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong sounds identical to the opening line of the nursery rhyme "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
  • Siamese Youth's "Take On Me Too", in addition to the obvious nods to a-ha's "Take On Me" and perhaps The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights", has a bridge passage that suspiciously resembles the chorus/coda of "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". The pre-chorus also sounds like the chorus of Gerard Joling's 1988 Eurovision Song Contest entry "Shangri La".
  • The "Theme from New York, New York" borrows from the opening sequence of Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"
  • "A Bay Bay" by Hurricane Chris has a very similar melody to "Hello Zepp", the theme from the Saw films. Mashups of the two songs exist.
  • Despite some fans not wanting to admit it, some of Tally Hall's do sound like others:
  • There are also some examples from Tally Hall's second album "Good & Evil":
  • Both the main verse melody and guitar riff to "Everywhere" by Michelle Branch bear a striking resemblance to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2.
  • The intro to "Mr. Blue Sky" by Electric Light Orchestra is similar to the piano bridge in "A Day In The Life" by The Beatles.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top