Doesn’t That Song Sound Just Like ……

[David Herrick]

Ah, someone after my own heart!

When I wrote my screed a few weeks ago about sound-alike songs, I was going to include “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”, but first I checked Wikipedia for antecedents and found that it was set to the tune of “Stewball”, which actually dates back to the 1700’s.

The song I was going to compare it to, though, was this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rahTKCeBZ2M

 

[Howard]

Good call David. However, I guess with a tune dating back to the 1700s, copyright has truly expired. It makes you realise just how difficult it must be for young composers like the MLT (at my age I’m allowed to consider Papa Rudi to be young), to come up with original tunes. Its a credit to their talent that they are able to write such beautiful original songs.

We are indeed fortunate to have them not only breathing life into old favourites for us but creating new favourites for us as well.

[David Herrick]

Amen to that, Howard.  An artist really has to thread the needle (or at least it seems so to me here on the other side of the needle) to come up with a catchy tune that doesn’t remind you of an existing catchy tune.  I hold such songwriters in the very highest regard.

I’ve tried several times to write a song when I felt the inspiration, but invariably it ended up merging into some song I already knew.  My only successes have been tunes that came to me in a dream and that I still remembered when I woke up, but they tend to be of the type that would be most appropriate for children’s sing-alongs.

 

[Howard]

Well, there’s a lot of money to be made in children’s songs David. Just think what The Wiggles have achieved. And many top artists have had tunes come to them in their dreams, including Paul McCartney and Keith Richards. Keith Richards kept a cassette recorder beside his bed for just such occasions.

[Jung Roe]

Paul McCartney said he wrote Yellow Submarine for a Children’s album originally, but it ended up going to #1 in the charts for 13 weeks.

[David Herrick]

Thanks, Howard and Jung, for your encouragement.  I’m not really angling for fame and fortune, though.  I’d just like to have a nice little song that’s “mine”.

Actually, just a few weeks ago I woke up with a more adult tune in my head that was probably inspired by “Still a Friend of Mine”, in that it had the same mood and the same tempo.  But it seems so familiar that I can’t convince myself that it doesn’t already exist.

I realize that parallels McCartney’s story about writing “Yesterday”, but he’s Paul and I’m not!

 

 

[Jacki Hopper]

I once tried to write a song, at least lyric wise…. And kinda had a tune for it on my head, I hummed out the tune while I had written it, I was in my late teens I think… It was called “The Memory of The Red Rose”… I still have it written down somewheres in a journal book in amongst storage of  my stuff from I have from when we sold our house that I took with me and still have….