10 Bands That Ripped Off Themselves
Musical déjà vu.
It's no secret that the music business is about money at the end of the day. Regardless of how much artistic integrity a band has, it all comes down to finding something that you think will be sold to the masses for long after you're gone. While some may ride the trend wave for the rest of eternity, others have just gone back down to the well for what worked the first time.
There's nothing wrong with drawing from what made you good to begin with, but these songs are almost carbon copies of songs these acts have already perfected in the past. Does that mean their bad songs? Not really... they just might not be bringing anything new to the table. Even though it might seem like a desperate plea for these musicians to maintain control of their audience's attention, there's a bit of scale when it comes to songs like these.
Some may improve upon the initial song, some may just continue a story that you've heard before, but the worst of these just end up sounding like the band on autopilot praying that their listeners don't notice that they wrote the same track again. Despite being promoted into the ground, some of these songs may have worked much better as outtakes.
10. Footsteps - Pearl Jam
Footsteps is an interesting case study when it comes to the grunge rock lore. As opposed to being a great tune, at the end of the day, this song actually became the foundation for two totally different bands. While it's understandable to have some cross influence in the Seattle scene, it's another thing to just do a song all over again.
After losing Mother Love Bone vocalist Andy Wood to an overdose, guitarist Stone Gossard started shopping around for a new singer with the initial licks of what would become Footsteps. Though the band that would later be Pearl Jam found their man in Eddie Vedder because of this tape, they ended up running into trouble when Chris Cornell took a liking to the track when cutting material for the grunge tribute record Temple of the Dog.
While the song ended up being released as Times of Trouble on the TotD record, Pearl Jam also released the song as a B-side to their single Jeremy, with completely different lyrics by Vedder continuing the story put forth on the PJ tunes Alive and Once. Instead of reworking the music, the acoustic guitar slides and hazy energy remain virtually unchanged on the original song. It's one thing to try to pass off your riff in two separate bands, but this is the kind of recycling that was a little too close for comfort.