Same title, different hit songs

Posted on by brucehhackett

I always found it a curious thing to do when artists would release new singles that have the identical title as a completely different well-known song by another artist.

You’d think this might be confusing to the listening public, but apparently not, because it’s pretty remarkable how often this kind of thing has happened in rock music history, especially in the ’50s, ’60s, 70s and ’80s, and still occurs more frequently than you might expect in recent decades.

Perhaps the duplication of a song title isn’t all that important if they’re in different genres (country rock versus disco, or hard rock versus MOR ballad).  In those cases, it’s possible, maybe likely, that the songwriter wasn’t even familiar with the other tune because it’s not in a genre he/she listens to much.

I found nearly 100 great examples of notable song titles that were used in multiple hit songs, and I’ve whittled that list down to the 21 I’ve featured in this blog.  Most of the rest I’ll merely list as “honorable mentions” as a way of showing how prevalent the practice has been in pop music.  No doubt readers will think of many I’ve neglected to mention.

“Missing You” was the title of a minor hit (peaking at #23) for Dan Fogelberg in 1982, and then John Waite soared to #1 with his own song called “Missing You” in 1984.  Later that same year, Diana Ross reached #10 with Lionel Richie’s “Missing You,” a tribute to Marvin Gaye.

Here’s another:  “Best of My Love,” written by Don Henley, Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther, was The Eagles’ first #1 hit in the summer of 1974.  A completely different “Best of My Love,” composed by Maurice White and Al McKay, was also a #1 hit for the female disco group The Emotions in 1977.

“Feel Like Makin’ Love,” an R&B tune written by Eugene McDaniels, was a big #1 hit for Roberta Flack in 1974. Less than a year later, singer Paul Rodgers and guitarist Mick Ralphs of Bad Company wrote a harder rocking, different “Feel Like Makin’ Love” that went to #10 here.

Sometimes so many years have passed since the title’s first appearance that the songwriter, artist or record company felt confident there will be no confusion if a new song comes out with the same title as an earlier hit.  The great Roy Orbison reached #2 with his classic ballad “Only the Lonely” way back in 1959, so when Martha Davis, singer of New Wave group The Motels, came up with an unrelated song called “Only the Lonely” in 1982, nobody saw any reason it couldn’t also do well, and it reached #9 that year.

There often might be dozens of little-known songs (or classic rock tracks that never charted as singles) that share a title with better known hits.  “Heartbreaker” is an explosive album track by Led Zeppelin on their 1969 second LP, but you won’t find it on the Top 40 charts.  Instead you’ll find three different songs called “Heartbreaker” over the years:  a 1973 Jagger-Richards song, technically called “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker),” that reached #15 for The Rolling Stones; Pat Benatar’s first hit in 1979 by two obscure British songwriters; and a Dionne Warwick number in 1983 written by the Gibb Brothers that made it to #10.

How about the simple title “Fire,” which has at least three hit songs bearing that title.  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown went first with their 1968 song, peaking at #2; then the Ohio Players with their dance track in 1975, a #1 hit; and then Bruce Springsteen’s smoldering tune (he wrote it for Elvis, who never got the chance to record it) was made into a #2 hit by the Pointer Sisters in 1979.  Actually, the first rock recording called “Fire” was a Jimi Hendrix tune from the “Are You Experienced?” debut LP in 1967.

Then there’s Venus,” a song title that reached #1 three times.  First, teen idol Frankie Avalon did it in 1959 with a chart-topper written by Ed Marshall and Peter DiAngelis. A decade later, the Dutch band Shocking Blue reached #1 with guitarist Robbie Van Leeuwen’s song of the same title, and 16 years after that, the British female pop band Bananarama did a cover of Shocking Blue’s song that also peaked at #1 in the US.

“Jump” was such a humongous #1 hit for Van Halen in 1984 that The Pointer Sisters’ record label chose to alter the title of their own “Jump” the same year to “Jump (For My Love),” which still managed to reach #3.

In 1967, the world got a hearty taste of “the San Francisco sound” when Jefferson Airplane reached #5 on US pop charts with “Somebody to Love,” written by Grace Slick’s brother-in-law Darby, who had been guitarist in her previous band, The Great Society. Nearly a decade later, Queen‘s lead singer Freddie Mercury wrote another track called “Somebody to Love,” based on a gospel choir arrangement. It peaked at #13 in the US, and #2 in the UK.

Most everyone knows Steely Dan’s #6 hit “Do It Again,” a Fagen-Becker original that jump-started their career in 1972, but four years before that came a different “Do It Again,” a Brian Wilson-Mike Love ditty that was a #20 charter for The Beach Boys.

One of the more unusual duplications of a song title was “Shining Star,” because both compositions were bonafide R&B songs.   First came the Maurice White-Philip Bailey dance classic, a #1 hit for their group Earth, Wind & Fire in 1975.  Then in 1980, The Manhattans, a vocal group dating back to the early ’60s who were reborn with a new lead singer in the late ’70s, had a #5 hit with another “Shining Star,” written by Leo Graham and Paul Richmond.

Joe Walsh was both a solo artist and a member of The Eagles in 1980 when he composed “All Night Long,” a #19 hit from the “Urban Cowboy” film soundtrack.  Three years later, Lionel Richie went to #1 with a different “All Night Long,” although it was technically known as “All Night Long (All Night).”

George Harrison wrote, arranged and played guitar on Ringo Starr‘s #1 hit “Photograph” in 1973. Ten years later, Def Leppard reached #12 on the US charts with a heavy-metal slab that sported the same title.

The Pacific Northwest pop band Paul Revere and the Raiders had a #4 charting in 1966 with “Good Thing,” a Mark Lindsay-Terry Melcher tune.  More than 20 years later, Roland Gift and his Fine Young Cannibals wrote and recorded their own “Good Thing,” which topped the charts in 1989.

In 1971, the third single from Carole King‘s multiplatinum LP was the ballad “So Far Away,” which peaked at #14. When Dire Straits assembled their mega-successful 1985 album “Brothers in Arms,” one of its singles was also titled “So Far Away” and reached #19 on US charts.

Barrett Strong had Motown’s first charting hit in 1959 with the song he co-wrote with Berry Gordy called “Money (That’s What I Want).” It stalled at #50 in the US but reached #5 in the UK and #7 in Canada, and The Beatles recorded it on their second LP. In 1973, Pink Floyd‘s progressive rock classic “Dark Side of the Moon” album featured the single “Money,” peaked at #13.

“My Love,” as written by Tony Hatch (who also wrote “Downtown”), was a #1 for Petula Clark in 1966.  That didn’t stop Paul McCartney from writing his own tune called “My Love,” which topped the charts in 1973.

Del Shannon‘s tune “Runaway” held the #1 slot for four weeks in 1961. Seventeen years later, Jefferson Starship had a hit single with their song “Runaway,” which peaked at #12.

The Isley Brothers — Ron, Rudy and O’Kelly — co-wrote and recorded their call-and-response tune “Shout” in 1959, which reached only a modest #45 on charts that year. Its use during the toga party scene in the 1978 film “Animal House” gave it a whole new life, and it has since become a wedding reception must in the years since. British duo Tears for Fears had their own #1 hit with their unrelated song “Shout” in 1985.

Harry Nilsson wrote a lovely ballad about loneliness called “One,” which Three Dog Night made into a #5 pop hit in 1969. Two decades later, The Bee Gees‘ tune called “One” peaked at #7. Finally, U2 scored a #10 hit with its identically titled “One” in 1992.

We can’t forget the timeless title “Lady,” which appears on the top of the sheet music page for three different hit songs:  First came power pop band Styx’s number by Dennis DeYoung (#6 in 1975); and then, in rapid succession, Little River Band’s tune (#10 in 1979) and the Lionel Richie-penned #1 smash in 1980 by Kenny Rogers.

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Here are a few more honorable mentions to explore of “Same Title, Different Songs,” should the mood strike you:

“Good Times” — Sam Cooke, 1964;  Chic, 1979

“Power of Love” — Joe Simon, 1972;  Huey Lewis and The News, 1985

“Gloria” — Them, 1965;  Laura Branigan, 1982

“Real Love” — Doobie Brothers, 1980;  Jody Watley, 1989;  The Beatles, 1995

“Games People Play” — Joe South, 1969;  Alan Parsons Project, 1981

“Angel” — Aretha Franklin, 1973; Fleetwood Mac, 1979; Madonna, 1985; Aerosmith, 1987

“It’s a Miracle” — Barry Manilow, 1975;  Culture Club, 1984

“Love Will Find a Way” — Pablo Cruise, 1978;  Yes, 1987

“Baby Blue” — The Echoes, 1961;  Badfinger, 1972

“America” — Simon and Garfunkel, 1968;  Neil Diamond, 1980

“I’m On Fire” — Dwight Twilley, 1975;  Bruce Springsteen, 1984

“Hold On” — Ian Gomm, 1979;  Santana, 1982

“Crazy Love” — Paul Anka, 1958;  Poco, 1979

“It’s My Life” — The Animals, 1965;  Talk Talk, 1984

“On the Road Again” — Canned Heat, 1968;  Willie Nelson, 1980

“Nobody’s Fool” — Cinderella, 1987;  Kenny Loggins, 1988

“Question” — Lloyd Price, 1960;  The Moody Blues, 1970

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I’ve prepared two Spotify playlists.  The first one compares the songs discussed in the main body of the blog post; the second one contrasts the tunes listed in the “honorable mentions.”

I beg of you, don’t say goodbye

Posted on by brucehhackett

While this piece is offered as a respectful tribute, I must be completely honest. For the most part, I find the music of Neil Sedaka to be lightweight, cloying and not at all my cup of tea.

Sedaka, who died last week at age 86, was part of that “teen idol era” that took up space between the disappearance of the pioneers of rock and roll and the arrival of The Beatles — roughly 1959-1963. If you hunt hard, you can find a few great classic songs during those years in the wilderness, but too much of it, to my ears, was inconsequential fluff, puerile bubblegum, and cringeworthy ditties. Still, there was clearly a big audience for it. Much of it topped the charts and still evokes fond memories for those whose innocent pre-teen and teenage years came during those years.

Three of Sedaka’s biggest hits perfectly exemplify what I’m talking about. “Calendar Girl” (“I love, I love, I love my calendar girl”), “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” and “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” each offer earworm melodies that stay in your head (not necessarily in a good way) long after the song is over. In its obituary this past week, The New York Times graciously described Sedaka this way: “He combined a genius for melody, the commercial instincts of a pop savant, a boyish high tenor and an unabashed enthusiasm for performing onstage.” Perhaps this is all true — or at least it’s an opinion shared by many pop music fans of that period — but I’m just not on board Sedaka’s train.

So why devote a blog post to him? There’s no denying he was an integral part of the New York community of songwriters employed at the famous Brill Building in Manhattan, where composers and lyricists plied their trade working for music publishing companies, churning out tunes for recording artists to turn into commercial hits. He and his lyricist partner, Howard Greenfield, once estimated they wrote a song a day for nearly five years, most of them never getting public exposure, but they came up with enough hits to keep their jobs.

Sedaka’s career truly started in 1958 at age 19 when he was tasked with creating a hit for singer Connie Francis, whose first couple of releases had flopped. He and Greenfield wrote “Stupid Cupid,” a song he felt was so silly that Francis (“a classy lady”) would be insulted by it. Instead, she allegedly jumped up and down with excitement when she heard it, and her vocal performance turned that silliness into pop perfection, reaching #14 on US charts.

The duo continued to write for other artists, but Sedaka had his heart set on being a performing artist himself, and he soon got the chance to show off his baby face and high tenor. His first effort, “The Diary,” came from Sedaka’s attempts to persuade Francis to show him her diary as inspiration for teen heartache anecdotes. It’s mostly forgotten now, but it made the charts and, more important, it paved the way for his first Top Ten hit “Oh! Carol,” the song written about his former girlfriend Carol Klein, who had since married Gerry Goffin, changed her professional name to Carole King and became an amiable rival in the Brill Building sweepstakes.

Led Zeppelin fans might find it amusing to learn that Neil Sedaka had a #6 hit in 1960 called “Stairway to Heaven,” which includes these lyrics: “I’ll build a stairway to heaven, I’ll climb to the highest star, I’ll build a stairway to heaven, ‘Cause heaven is where you are.” To say it bears no resemblance to the 1971 classic rocker is a blinding glimpse of the obvious.

Sedaka had grown up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood as King, Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, among others. Sedaka’s teachers recognized his musical talent as early as second grade and urged his parents to get him piano lessons, and he took to them enthusiastically. His mother’s goal was for him to become a classical music pianist like their family friend Arthur Rubenstein, but the pop music bug had bitten, and Sedaka pursued that path instead.

He wrote Francis’s signature hit “Where the Boys Are” in 1961, the same year he scored with “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.” His first #1 hit, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” came in 1962, with its insipid “Down dooby doo down down, comma comma” lyrical hook.

Sedaka sold 25 million records during those peak years, touring nationally and internationally. But then, almost overnight, he was gone from the charts, replaced by “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and dozens of other “British Invasion” hits. He was devastated by the apparent betrayal of the fickle American pop music market, where the songs he wrote and released barely eked into the charts for the next ten years, and as a performer, he was consigned to oldies revues while he was still only in his 20s.

Curiously, though, Sedaka remained a popular concert draw in England, where he moved in the 1970s and tried to rejuvenate his career. None other than Elton John, a fan of his early work, signed him to his Rocket Records label in 1974, and suddenly, Sedaka was back at #1 on US charts with “Laughter in the Rain,” followed by another #1, “Bad Blood,” which featured John on harmonies. Perhaps most surprising was a reimagining of “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” as a jazz-influenced piano ballad, featuring what I think is Sedaka’s best recorded vocal.

Throughout this period, several of his songs became hits for other big stars. “Working on a Groovy Thing” reached #20 for The 5th Dimension in 1969, and “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo?” was a minor hit on country music charts here but reached #1 in Germany in 1971 as recorded by England’s Tony Christie.

I’ll bet you don’t know (I didn’t until this week) that the massive international #1 hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” by The Captain and Tennille was written by Sedaka. So was “Solitaire,” written and recorded to no fanfare by Sedaka in 1973 but turned into a Top 20 hit in 1975 with a poised, heartbreaking vocal by Karen Carpenter.

Sedaka managed two more Top 20 chart appearances, in 1976 with his song “Love in the Shadows,” and in 1980 in a duet with his daughter Dara on “Should’ve Never Let You Go.” Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he released foreign-language singles, live recordings, children’s albums and holiday collections that, while not big sellers, kept his name out there, especially in Europe.

As I was perusing his catalog, a couple of quasi-parody songs caught my eye: Kids evidently responded well to “Waking Up is Hard to Do” and “Lunch Will Keep Us Together” (Weird Al Yankovic, how did you miss out on these?). I added them to the end of the Spotify playlist, just for fun.

I was intrigued when I came across “The Immigrant,” a deep track from his 1974 “Sedaka’s Back” comeback album. Inspired by John Lennon’s struggles with US immigration at the time, he and lyricist Phil Cody wrote this ode as a tribute to their ancestors’ migration from Russia, Poland and Italy, and as encouragement to those from foreign lands seeking a better life here. Fifty years later, it’s still a difficult journey.

Sedaka continued performing well into his 80s and even returned to his classical roots, composing a symphonic piece and a piano concerto, both of which were recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London in 2021.

Rest in peace, good sir.

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