10 Bands Who Used Songs To 'One-Up' Rival Artists
Turning songwriting into a competition.
Artists are looking for different angles when it comes to writing their next creative breakthrough. To find inspiration, musicians either travel to foreign lands, experiment with drugs, or dig deep into the corners of their psyche to bring out an interesting new perspective on life.
Then again, many just look to the artists around them to create great songs. In many instances, bands take their inspiration by trying to outdo their musical peers at their own game. Rather than having the muse be just inward thinking, it's sometimes more fun to have some innocent competition between friends.
These displays of one-upsmanship range from outward mocking to deliberate rip offs of other bands' trademark styles. Sometimes the bands even use these songs as opportunities to get revenge on artists they have had spats with in the past.
Most of the time the artists being mocked have either responded with songs of their own or have taken it as a sincere form of flattery. Other times, the offense is taken to heart, which leads to years of verbal sparring on both fronts. These songs may be an outright aping of styles, but not so overblown that they veer too far into Weird Al's territory.
10. Simon And Garfunkel "Stole" Dylan's Sound On ' Simple Desultory Philippic'
When the folk rock movement of the 60's was reaching its cultural peak, Simon and Garfunkel were the duo who outshone most of their competition. The band had knocked out a sonic touchstone with "The Sound of Silence" and built off that momentum with a great mix of originals and covers of traditional folk ballads. That being said, they were still listening to those around them.
Midway through the band's beautiful 3rd effort, "A Simple Desultory Philippic" comes on with a more rootsy edge to its sound. From the outset, you realize this is a different vibe for the duo thanks to Paul Simon's more rapid fire delivery and clever wordplay. When composing the song, Simon said that he had been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan's work and had wanted to try something in the Dylan mold to break out of the duo's more innocent sound.
Throughout the song, Simon uses more extravagant puns that sound like they have meaning on the surface but are actually just complete nonsense when looked at up close, along with ending the song with a quote from "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35." This may not have surpassed the immortal writings of Dylan, but it's still an interesting peak into the cross-pollination of folk rock during the Summer of Love.