There are plenty of artists who love to wear their influences of their sleeves, but instead of covering songs by artists they love, sometimes they'll write a song by blatantly taking another band's sound and putting their own spin on it. Here are seven great songs that were homage to other bands.
1. The Clash - "Hitsville U.K." (1981)
By their fourth album, the triple LP Sandinista!, the Clash had pretty much moved away from punk, experimenting with reggae, hip-hop, and on "Hitsville U.K.," Motown pop. The song's bouncing bassline and punchy drums are clearly reminiscent of Supremes hits, particularly "You Can't Hurry Love."
2. Belle & Sebastian - "I'm A Cuckoo" (2003)
Any song that features a twin guitar lead is going to be compared to Thin Lizzy, but Belle & Sebastian beat everyone to the punch by actually referencing Thin Lizzy in the chorus to this single, which takes "The Boys Are Back in Town" and turns it into an indie pop gem.
3. The Modern Lovers - "Roadrunner" (1972)
Boston proto-punks the Modern Lovers were huge fans of the Velvet Underground before it was cool, so much so that they based their sound on VU's primitive guitar rock. The most obvious example of this is the band's most famous song "Roadrunner," which was inspired by the Velvet's 17-minute noise jam "Sister Ray".
4. The Flaming Lips - "Take Meta Mars" (1990)
The Flaming Lips often pay tribute to their psychedelic forefathers, most famously Pink Floyd. Nineteen years before recording their full-length cover of The Dark Side of the Moon, the Lips recorded this semi-cover of Can's 1971 song "Mushroom" for their 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance. It's only a semi-cover because while the bassline and melody are identical, Wayne Coyne changed the lyrics.
5. Patti Smith - "Gloria" (1975)
Patti Smith's second single "Gloria" is less a cover of Van Morrison's garage-rock classic than it is a platform for Smith's poetry with the same chords and chorus. While Morrison's version with his band Them is extremely simple and repetitive, Smith's version is dynamic, wandering, and dramatic.
6. Talking Heads - "The Overload" (1980)
After seven tracks of avant-garde funk, Talking Heads closed its 1980 opus Remain in Light with what is by far the darkest song in its catalog, "The Overload". The reason for the song being so dark is that it was an attempt to write something that sounds like Joy Division, despite the fact that nobody in the band had actually heard Joy Division. Judging from how similarly dirgey "The Overload" is to Joy Division's "The Eternal," the band made a pretty excellent guess.
7. The Beatles - "Back in the USSR" (1968)
Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson are such admirers of each other's music that their best works were attempts to out-do one another (Sgt. Pepper's was a response to Pet Sounds, which was a response to Rubber Soul). McCartney's love of The Beach Boys is most apparent in "Back in the USSR," a Beach Boys-style rock song that opens up the White Album.
