PSB songs that quote other artists' lyrics
Posted: Wed 20 Nov 2024, 10:22 pm
I'm starting this thread having not been able to find anything similar in Geowayne's otherwise pretty exhaustive collection of PSB lists - how many PSB songs can we find where Neil's lyrics quote other songs deliberately, or at least in a way that could be deliberate?
The obvious example is "somebody spoke and I went into a dream" from Metamorphosis, which Neil has explicitly said is taken from The Beatles' A Day in the Life.
But there's two more I would make a case for. The first is "you may not always love me" in Why Don't We Live Together, which could very well be lifted from the first line of The Beach Boys' God Only Knows: I remember Neil choosing it as one of three records to play when they appeared on a radio show to promote Release in 2002 (one of the others was Crying at the Discotheque).
And the final one I can think of, which is maybe the biggest stretch, is "like an unmade bed" in A New Bohemia - which intentionally or otherwise quotes In My Room by Troye Sivan. Of course this is also a Tracey Emin reference and ordinarily I'd have dismissed the Troye link as a coincidence but Neil did list the Troye album in question as one of his favourites last year, and the back cover of the album (in some formats, anyway) actually depicts an unmade bed. The question is were the lyrics for A New Bohemia written before Troye's album came out in October 2023? It seems likely, so maybe this one is a red herring after all.
Anyway, can anyone think of any more where the quotation is substantial and unusual enough to appear deliberate, or at least subconscious? (I wouldn't count cliches or very short phrases that can't really be said to belong to one song in particular.)
The obvious example is "somebody spoke and I went into a dream" from Metamorphosis, which Neil has explicitly said is taken from The Beatles' A Day in the Life.
But there's two more I would make a case for. The first is "you may not always love me" in Why Don't We Live Together, which could very well be lifted from the first line of The Beach Boys' God Only Knows: I remember Neil choosing it as one of three records to play when they appeared on a radio show to promote Release in 2002 (one of the others was Crying at the Discotheque).
And the final one I can think of, which is maybe the biggest stretch, is "like an unmade bed" in A New Bohemia - which intentionally or otherwise quotes In My Room by Troye Sivan. Of course this is also a Tracey Emin reference and ordinarily I'd have dismissed the Troye link as a coincidence but Neil did list the Troye album in question as one of his favourites last year, and the back cover of the album (in some formats, anyway) actually depicts an unmade bed. The question is were the lyrics for A New Bohemia written before Troye's album came out in October 2023? It seems likely, so maybe this one is a red herring after all.
Anyway, can anyone think of any more where the quotation is substantial and unusual enough to appear deliberate, or at least subconscious? (I wouldn't count cliches or very short phrases that can't really be said to belong to one song in particular.)
