‘Isn’t It A Pity’ – George Harrison

For anyone who only heard The Beatles for their hits, George Harrison becoming the most successful ex-member wasn’t something anyone saw coming. He was the quiet one for a reason, but by the time All Things Must Pass was released, everyone got to see the person miles ahead of John Lennon and Paul McCartney in many respects. That didn’t mean he couldn’t steal a few tricks from his old band when crafting some of his initial hits.

While much has been made of Harrison’s lawsuit for ‘My Sweet Lord’, ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ is a more thinly-veiled rip from The Beatles’ days. Since the entire song captures the ending of the band’s final days so poignantly, the ending section was the perfect way for Harrison to show his skills as a guitar player, all while the chorus sings ‘na-na-nas’ that sound more than a little bit familiar in the background.

Since Macca had already critiqued Harrison for wanting to put guitar licks throughout ‘Hey Jude’, this is a subtle way for Harrison to get revenge on his old mate, especially towards the end where his voice and his guitars create this psychedelic stew for everything to end on. McCartney didn’t need his song to be too cluttered with music in the background, but as Harrison has clearly demonstrated, both approaches work equally well.

‘O My God’ – The Police

Sting always knew how to get the most out of his hooks. As much as ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ worked well as a sinister take on a pop song, having it become the virtual theme song to MTV when it was featured in Dire Straits’s ‘Money for Nothing’ was almost a happy accident that happened to work too well. But Sting made many decisions on instinct, and sometimes that means going back to the lyric book a little too much.

As much as Synchronicity marked the moment the band started turning into pop stars, it wasn’t short of some experimental moments. In fact, the entire first side of the record felt like one long journey before getting into the hits on the flipside, and ‘O My God’ was a turn back ot their rhythmic side, even throwing in a few funky moments in for good measure right before the final verse throws in the same lyrics from the second verse of ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’.

You can call it lazy if you want to, but listening to what Sting was doing in the original, it’s clear that he was still finding ways to twist a melody around those words for ages. So this might not be a case of theft but an idea that was never truly finished. And if the band never settled where to put the line, why not spread the love across as many different tunes as possible?

‘Summer in Paradise’ – The Beach Boys

By the time Brian Wilson left The Beach Boys, Mike Love had started to turn them into a nostalgia act. There was no way songs about fun in the sun would find traction on the charts amid the punk movement, so the next best thing was to play to the older crowd that wanted to reminisce on all the fun they had when they were younger. Being an oldies act certainly has its place, but there comes a point where someone can start piling on their signature sound a little too thick.

Although most of Summer in Paradise involves Love trying desperately to shoehorn some new sounds into the band’s playbook, this track was intended to be a song meant to show his concerns for environmentalism. A noble cause to be sure, but outside of talking about saving the trees and making a better world, the band start throwing in every single reference to their old hits as they can, even namechecking songs like ‘Fun Fun Fun’ and ‘Barbara Ann’ in the first verse of the tune.

So while this song is technically about the environment, its only purpose is to be a giant commercial for The Beach Boys’ brand. Because, as much as Love seems to have affection for the environment, it never seemed to matter more than the massive paychecks from cashing in on those fans wanting to hear ‘Good Vibrations’ during their island getaway.

‘All You Need is Love’ – The Beatles

The Beatles were always concerned with not having to fall back on their old tricks. As much as their fans may have loved every song they put out, it was all done so they wouldn’t accidentally rewrite one of their favourite tunes again. And while ‘All You Need is Love’ stands alone as one of their all-time greatest works, the way they plagiarise themselves is one of the most satisfying moments in Beatles history.

Since the recording and release of the song was done incredibly fast to capitalise on the Our World broadcast happening at the same time, many decisions were made on the fly. As much as George Harrison fumbled his guitar moment and left everything up to the strings, the outro is a virtual extravaganza of sound, throwing in pieces of Glenn Miller’s ‘In the Mood’ and Lennon throwing in the opening line of ‘Yesterday’.

But the real euphoria comes when Lennon and McCartney start singing the chorus to ‘She Loves You’ towards the end of the song, because we all know how far they have come at that point. ‘She Loves You’ is back somewhere in the rubble, and the mop tops had gone from lovable boys into the seasoned professionals that they were always destined to become.

‘Sugar Youth’ – Green Day

The whole art of punk rock is about not playing by the rules. As much as bands like Sex Pistols were interested in being the antithesis to the mainstream, some of their best moments came from taking those rock and roll cliches and twisting them ever-so-slightly until they were something that resembled youthful rebellion. Although Green Day had moved far away from their typical punk roots by the 2000s, it did sound like they were slightly nostalgic on Father of All.

While the opening singles were far from the greatest that the band have ever made, ‘Sugar Youth’ is the kind of straight-ahead punk tune that they could have written in their sleep during the Dookie era. If you take out many of the bells and whistles, the chorus is a carbon copy of what Billie Joe Armstrong sang on ‘She’s A Rebel’, down to the line “and it’s dangerous” having the same cadence as “and she’s dangerous.”

Since the American Idiot hand grenade is on the album artwork, it’s easy to call this a cheap callback to their old sound. However, since the record is miles shorter than any of their previous albums, it’s safe to say that they wanted to get this out to get out of a record deal. They were ready to move on to greater things, but this was the first time calling back to their old sound felt wrong.

‘Lux Aeterna’ – Metallica

Metallica never wanted to give their fans anything less than 100%. Ever since the days of St Anger, they knew not to mess around too much with what their fanbase wanted, and while that has led to some of their records sounding homogeneous, they know their strengths and can capitalise on them every time they get into the studio. When they rolled out their latest record, though, pieces of their roots were showing a bit too much from the very first track they released.

That’s not to say ‘Lux Aeterna’ is a bad thing by any means. Especially for a late period Metallica record, this manages to get the lead out a lot better in a tight package than most of their other records, but the minute that they doing that opening riff, it’s simply an inverted of what they had done in ‘Hit the Lights’, even managing to quote the same breakdown riff when coming out of Kirk Hammett’s solo.

In all fairness, the whole album was meant to be a celebration of those times when they were first discovering metal, so it’s easy to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the only thing that most people will think of is that it sounds like Metallica that’s a lot looser than before. Still, it’s better to have more kickass riffs out in the world rather than them sleepwalking their way through ‘Enter Sandman’.

‘Girls of Summer’ – Aerosmith

All great Aerosmith songs are based on the groove first. The band always worked best when they were a down-and-dirty blues outfit, and even if The Rolling Stones’ comparisons stuck to them for a while, it hardly mattered when they were putting out the greatest rock and roll of their generation. When the outside songwriters began getting brought in, though, Steven Tyler thought it was completely fine to keep throwing out the same tired song for the summer concert circuit.

While Just Push Play occupies a weird space in the band’s catalogue, ‘Jaded’ was at least proof that their turn to pop was profitable. The song was far from the version of Aerosmith that everyone knew, but it was at least a step towards getting them in front of the same crowd reserved for Britney Spears and NSYNC. So if it worked once, ‘Girls of Summer’ was Tyler’s plan to do the whole thing again, except this time with a chorus half as good as the original.

And it’s not like the band was on board for this version for long, with none of them bothering to show up for the video and Joe Perry saying it had nothing to do with Aerosmith. Just Push Play may have been an attempt for Tyler to see what life as a pop star would have been like, but if he was this gung-ho about making lightning strike twice, maybe Just Push Play should have been his first official solo album.

‘When They Come For Me’ – Linkin Park

By the end of the 2000s, the nu-metal landscape that Linkin Park grew up in was confirmably dead. It’s not that every band had died out by any stretch of the imagination, but acts like Korn and Limp Bizkit had either moved on or realised that no one cared about them complaining about their internal problems for an hour’s worth of an album. So if the rap-rock style didn’t work, the band’s only option was to go in an electronic direction, but that didn’t mean Mike Shinoda still didn’t have love for their old sound.

Since the majority of A Thousand Suns is looking to wipe the slate clean for them to move on to something different, hearing him talk about his come-up on this song gets a lot cuter when he talks about being the one who told everyone to forfeit the game. It seems like a strange line at first, but for any Linkin Park fan, that line was seared into their brain the first time they heard Shinoda’s verse in ‘Points of Authority’ when he talked about how the listener couldn’t handle the pace they were going.

So, while most fans saw the band’s new direction as a betrayal, this was a subtle reminder that they were the same band from before with a little more depth. They hadn’t given up on rock and roll completely, but they knew that they had to make some changes if they wanted to stay afloat.

‘Shock of the Lightning’ – Oasis

Oasis were never the ones to make many callbacks to themselves. They were children of their influences, and if they were going to make a reference in one of their songs, there’s a good chance it would be by taking the riff from a T Rex song or making a Manchester-ised version of what The Beatles had done years before. As the band entered the final chapter of their career, though, Noel did find a way to shoehorn in some of their flirtations with perfection in one of their final singles.

Then again, ‘Shock of the Lightning’ is a far cry from the Britpop brilliance the band had started with. They had started flirting with a lot of new toys at this point in the studio, and while this track does manage to get going with roaring guitars and a monster drum solo going on in the middle of the track, one of the final sounds in the background is a backwards sample of the chorus to ‘Champagne Supernova’ being played.

Noel has always been somewhat cagey about what all of his greatest moments are about, but there might be a hidden subtext if he knew that a breakup was on the cards. They had reached the end of the line with Oasis as a brand, but judging by this tune, the guitarist could still be more than a little bit nostalgic for those days when they had truly conquered the world.

‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ – Pink Floyd

Rock and roll has never run short on great tribute songs. No band can remain active forever, and even if some artists have to cross over to the other side, it’s important for them to give praise to the giants that came before them. While every member of Pink Floyd was among the living when they were making ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, Richard Wright’s final work on the song was a work of genius, knowing who the track was about.

Once the band got famous, there was always a shred of guilt knowing that Syd Barrett wasn’t able to celebrate with the rest of them. He could never have made records like Dark Side of the Moon even if he wanted to, but if he couldn’t be in the band, Roger Waters wrote this tune as a way of paying homage to his impact on the group, encapsulating every single feeling that someone has when reminiscing on their friends.

Right as the song reaches its final section, Wright’s subtle keyboard line is a direct quote from ‘See Emily Play’, Barrett’s first major hit with the band. There was no way for Barrett to continue on his own, making music, but compared to all of the pain that comes with losing a friend to their mind, this one section greets you like a warm hug at the end of that long journey.