10 Classic Rock Songs That Were Likely Inspired From Other Songs

10. This Night - Billy Joel

Every great piano player has an extensive history of going through the sounds of classical music. Even though you might want to sound like Jon Lord or Elton John, the only way you get there is by going through the different sonatas and fugues that they learned from back in the day. Out of them all, Billy Joel was the real classical nerd, and he ended up turning one of his inspirations into a hit song in the process.

During the album An Innocent Man, Billy was looking to make every song a tribute to one of his musical heroes, like The Longest Time being a tribute to doo wop music and Uptown Girl being a loving homage to the sounds of Franki Valli and The Four Seasons. This Night is a bit of a different beast here, as the track's biggest influence - Beethoven - even received a writing credit due to the similarities. If you go back and listen to Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, you'll heard the same melody featured in This Night

It's not like Joel just copy and pastes ol LVB's song or anything, swinging the rhythm and taking out bits and pieces to make it work with the rhythm that he has going. It's blatantly obvious once you hear it, but it works shockingly well when you put it into the pop world. And with Beethoven not exactly topping the Billboard Top 100, most people won't even realise the inspiration unless they spied the credits on the track.

See, kids, sometimes it pays to actually pay attention in music class every now and again.