Substandard Soup

So I have been messing around, familarising myself with the song 'still country', you know the one I found in an old box of crap.

It was obviously quite quickly that it had a striking similarity to a song by Neil Young, I won't tell you which one but mention it is buried on one of his best but probably least popular albums of the seventies.

This was interesting to me (and maybe to you keeping reading to find out) for a few reasons. My first reaction was 'oh shit' I can't continue with this. It was and is my general policy to not finish songs which bear such a striking resemblance to one particular song but this one was completed (unusual in itself). There was probably a period around about when this was written that I was so into Neil Young that everything sounded a bit like him so the problem was more that it was SO similar.

On the actual scrawled page I found in the box with lyrics and chords and musical ideas there was a wee note next to the chorus that just said 'its different from here' this ties in with where it changes to sound different from the Neil song. This is also where the lyrics take a more direct slant towards the meaning of the song. At this point the lyrics are:-

Shouldn't make a difference to me, today we're Still Country

So I think I knew what I was doing. If you are writing a song about trying to ignore that fact that loads of folks have achieved magnificent levels of songsmithery and the load that puts on you when you are attempting to do your own personal work. What better way to do it than to, all but, steal from the source and then add your own bit, no?

After my own bit there is a small instrumental section (which requires a harmonica in G about the only key I don't own) which is also reminiscent of another of my favourite artists, Lambchop. Its not as blatant as the previous nick but I am drawn to trying to make it sound more like the song in question, an urge I must quell. There is some logic in that part sounding similar, they are an artist who make music that owes a debt to the past yet sounds wholly original, so an example of a strategy the same as mine, succeeding. Hopefully, this was my train of thought back when my younger self wrote it but I probably just thieved from my heroes and fused some of there finest moments together into a substandard soup.

POSTSCRIPT: There are many songs that sound like other songs, hundreds and thousands actually.

Neil Young himself actually does it on Borrowed Tune (from Tonights the night - check it out if you haven't already) to the melody of Lady Jane he sings

I'm singing this borrowed tune, I took from the rolling stones
Alone in this empty room, too wasted to write my own

Another pertinent example was on Lucinda Williams most recent album, where she uses the melody from a Neil Young song, Cortez the Killer, blatantly and throughout.
So in short, not only is fine to do this its mandatory if it can be justified which I what I just done, so there!