Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
" ...the sound track teases us by quoting from Strauss's 'Thus Spake Zarathustra,' but never quite getting it right. Why bother to rewrite Strauss? He's out of copyright."
Want to use a popular song for your soundtrack, with or without the original lyrics, but don't have the money to get the rights? You can always get some studio musician to record The Jimmy Hart Version — an instrumental version of the tune with a note tweaked here and there, designed to sound as much like the original as possible while being different enough not to break copyright.
Strangely enough, this sometimes happens with tunes which are clearly in the public domain.
A staple of shows that frequently feature parody songs or skits.
Named for "The Mouth of the South" Jimmy Hart, who did this constantly during his time as WCW's music director. Ironically, Time Warner (the owners of WCW) already owned the rights to most of the songs that Hart was using, making it entirely unnecessary for him to create Jimmy Hart Versions.
Note that, in the United States at least, it is perfectly legal under copyright law to use the same exact tune as the original song without paying royalties if the derivative work is clearly a parody of the original (using an original tune to parody something completely unrelated is fuzzier). However, this would obviously not apply to instrumental versions or songs that were instrumental to begin with.
Contrast with In The Style Of where the song is covered, in a style as far from the original as possible. When one song recycles the tune of another it's God Save The King. In the music industry, this is called "sampling", and usually requires permission...but it ain't always given.
Note that if you're just reworking your own theme, that doesn't count. Let's not go ballistic here.
Examples
open/close all folders
Anime
- For whatever reason, Gojou Shioji from Excel Saga appears to have "Another One Bites the Dust" as his theme song, with a few courtesy notes thrown in. This contributor suspects Vanilla Ice was involved.
- Similarly, Pedro's music is the guitar riff from House Of The Rising Sun.
- The second episode uses a parody of Metallica's Sad but True.
- Two words: Hotaru California
 .
- As mentioned in the entry for Full Metal Panic, "Tokkou Yoraou", a background theme used in that series is incredibly similar to the theme from The A Team.
- One of Sagisu Shirou's pieces ("Decisive Battle") for Neon Genesis Evangelion is The Jimmy Hart Version of a John Barry composition, "007," used in the early James Bond films.
- Another example ("Barefoot in the Park") is The Jimmy Hart Version of The Girl from Ipanema used when the characters are having a coffee break.
- The Italian version of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, which composed all-new songs, made many of them sound suspiciously like the songs they were replacing. Try comparing Assoluto Amore, Sara's Villain Song, with its original, Return to the Sea, and see what we mean.
- A closer similarity is within the original version of the series itself, and intentional: Tsubasa wo Daite, Michel's Villain Song, and Ashita ga Mienakute, Michal's Image Song. Their names already matched, as did the names of their birds, and they couldn't be active at the same time... but when their songs matched, all bets about coincidence were off.
- One episode of Gintama has a Jimmy Hart version of the Rocky theme. This gets lampshaded by Gintoki and Kagura.
- Soul Eater occasionally uses a music piece that sounds like that damn Milkshake song.
- Air Gear was inspired by the Jet Set Radio series, and has several background songs that are soundalikes to the music used in those games. Compare: Not Hummin' But Vibin' (Air Gear) vs. Hummin' The Bassline (Jet Set Radio); Sky 2 High (Air Gear) vs. Shape Da Future (Jet Set Radio Future)
- The Training Montage in the first episode of Gunbuster uses a musical cue essentially ripped off from Vangelis' theme from Chariots of Fire. So much so, in fact, that Studio Gainax ordered the US distributors to replace the music in the North American re-release.
- Public Domain Example: The last episode uses a conspicuously-synthesised piece of music that sounds suspiciously similar to the Hallelujah chorus. Considering that the original song would later turn up in Neon Genesis Evangelion, this example's rather perplexing.
- In an earlier example of ripping off Vangelis, the music from the first scene in the original Bubblegum Crisis OVAs is a Jimmy Hart version of the opening theme from Blade Runner.
- The guitar riff in "Say Yes" from OVA 7 resembles U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name".
- The opening theme to The Big O sounds suspiciously like Queen's Flash Gordon. This one was also replaced for the USA DVD re-issue.
- Battle Programmer Shiraise's opening tune bears an uncanny resemblance to, you guessed it, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna give You Up".
- Kogarashi's Theme from Kamen No Maid Guy is the Jimmy Hart Version of the Pirates Of The Caribbean theme (or a pastiche thereof). This doesn't prevent it from being awesome.
- An Imagine Spot in Lucky Star of a trip to the dentist as a Super Robot show is accompanied by a brief Jimmy Hart version of the Gunbuster theme "Active Heart".
- And don't forget the repeated use of an almost-but-not-quite "Gunbuster March" cue.
- The music from Mr. Lonely Chaser, theme song for the Transforming Mecha show Galvion sounds suspiciously similar to Michael Jackson's Beat It. The lyrics, however are something else altogether.
- One of the riffs from Clannad's Dango Daikazoku / Chiisana Te No Hira - Rock Version sounds like "Oh Come All Ye Faithful".
- Nikopol, Viral's theme sounds a lot like Linkin Park's Points of Authority.
- It's a lot harder to recognize than most examples, but Shinken from one of the Love Hina soundtracks is the Jimmy Hart Version of Eye Of The Tiger.
- The Trigun theme is eerily similar to Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog".
- A recurring piece in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, from A's on, is suspiciously similar to the Metroid main titles.
- Is it just me, or does one of Mello's themes sound like the Terminator 2 theme?
- "Ark" from Yoko Kanno's Brain Powered soundtrack starts off like the Terminator theme with bagpipes. Och, I'll be back, laddie!
- Kodomo No Jikan has an opening that sounds almost exactly like the Offspring's One Fine Day.
- Somebody in charge of Bleach's soundtrack seems to be a fan of Andrew Lloyd Weber...
- Near the end of the Ah My Goddess OVA, a Jimmy Hart version of "L'amour est bleu" shows up in the scene where Keiichi works several part-time jobs to buy Belldandy a ring.
- On the soundtrack for Gundam 0083, Mitsuo Hagita directly copies, note for note, extensive parts of two pieces from James Horner's Brainstorm score: "The Battle of Solomon Sea" was Brainstorm's "Race For Time", and "Burn Down" was "Lillian's Heart Attack".
- "Rush! Issei and Yohshi" from the score of Giant Robo OVA 2 is a Jimmy Hart version of the How the West Was Won theme.
- "Vogler's Landing" from OVA 3 rips off a passage from Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring".
- Yoko Kanno pulled this off again several times in Macross Frontier:
Commercials
- A commercial for gold coins has a recognizable parody of Morricone's "Ecstasy of Gold" (Tuco in the graveyard), while yelling the word "GOLD!" repeatedly.
- Frito-Lay created a soundalike for Tom Waits' Step Right Up as part of a Doritos marketing campaign. It was close enough that Tom Waits called his lawyer, and ended up making more money in damages than he'd made from all the albums he sold up to that point.
- For some reason, the theme from the Old Spice commercials opens with two bars of "Scotland the Brave" and then goes off in a completely different direction.
- There is an American Express ad with a backing track that sounded suspiciously like ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky". The ad's even on YouTube, and several others have commented on the similarity as well.
- Commercials for proactiv.com, which sells facial cleansers, have a song in the b/g that sounds suspiciously like Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is"
- The Danup ad in Mexico features the Jimmy Hart version of "Good Vibrations" from the Beach boys.
- As do those horrible horrible Aussie commercials for the Good Guys... urgh....
- A chicken noodle soup commercial included a song which has a chorus very similar to the part of Green Day's "American Idiot".
- The music used in a local Public Service Announcement about water conservation sounds exactly like The Monkees "Daydream Believer". They get around it by having voices sing a wordless riff every once in a while that presumably counts as an original melody, but if you know the lyrics you can sing along with the music without missing a beat at all. The structure and chords are identical.
- Here's an interesting one: Listen to E. S. Posthumus' song "Pompeii", used in quite a few movie trailers. Then listen to Pfeifer Broz' "DNA Reaction", a song made especially for movie trailers— particularly the latter half.
- And then listen to Immediate Music's "Avenger".
- Have you seen the trailer for Electric Entertainment's made-for-TV movie The Librarian 3: Curse of the Judas Chalice!? By Jove, that's gotta be the most shameless use of The Jimmy Hart Version ever seen! Go on, look at it. The theme song must be one, maybe two (but not so many as three) notes away from the main orchestral theme from Pirates Of The Caribbean.
- There is a Kraft Dinner ad with a teen listening to an MP3 player. The player is playing the first few notes from "American Woman" by the Guess Who over and over again.
- The Mighty Mighty Bosstones sued Pizza Hut over a commercial that used an instrumental backing that was suspiciously similar to "The Impression That I Get" at the height of the song's popularity.
- A commercial series from Fido has a light and breezy background piece that sounds strikingly similar to Chrono Trigger's "Guardia Millenial Fair".
- A Commercial for Barbie dolls uses a song that's blatantly based off Aqua's "Barbie Girl".
- Several, some of which keep the "Come on Barbie/Let's go party" part. It's ironic that a song they initially sued over now figures heavily in their advertising.
Film
- The Jimmy Hart Version of Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever?" shows up in the movie Highlander II: The Quickening. Queen wrote a hit album of songs for the first one, but they couldn't be bothered to record anything for the sequel. Good for them, too.
- The short film George Lucas in Love (a pastiche of Shakespeare in Love) has The Jimmy Hart Version of the Star Wars theme for the end credits music.
- "Make 'Em Laugh" from Singin' In The Rain is one of the movie's few original songs not from a previous MGM musical. Well, maybe original In Name Only, since it bears more than a small resemblance to Cole Porter's "Be A Clown," which had appeared a few years earlier in MGM's The Pirate.
- The "Parlay" music from the third Pirates Of The Caribbean sounded very much like Ennio Morricone's Harmonica music. In fact, it was intentionally used to "give an air of the end of an era.
- Angels' Revenge, a Charlies Angels knockoff featured on MST3K, features a triumphant melody that's "Vaguely Strauss, but noooooooot!"
- And later on, the background music sounds suspiciously like the Charlie's Angels theme...
- Hero of the Federation was apparently low-budget enough to Jimmy Hart Backdraft's Fighting Seventeenth...
- Woody Allen's 1969 comedy Take the Money and Run has an escape scene accompanied by a knockoff of Quincy Jones' "Soul Bossa Nova". (Of course, those who only know Jones' piece from its use in the Austin Powers films and are unaware of its dating to the early '60s may, on seeing Allen's movie for the first time, come to the erroneous conclusion that the Jimmy Hart Version is the original.)
- The James Bond theme is actually a Jimmy Hart Version of an unused song composer Monty Norman wrote for a musical.
- The Ghostbusters theme was the Jimmy Hart Version of "I Want A New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News. Huey Lewis actually filed a lawsuit against Ray Parker, Jr. because of this.
- The same riff was first used in "Pop Musik" by the band M.
- Related to Ebert's quote at the top of the page, Alex North's original score for 2001: A Space Odyssey also opened with a Jimmy Hart Version of "Also Sprach Zarathustra", which may have been part of the reason why Stanley Kubrick ended up scoring the film with the temp tracks he picked rather than use any of North's music (but never bothered to tell North).
- "Across the Stars", the love theme from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones is a Shout Out by John Williams to Nino Rota's theme from the 1968 film of Romeo And Juliet. Even the title is an Incredibly Lame Pun on "Star Crossed Lovers".
Live Action TV
- Used frequently in Professional Wrestling, especially in TNA (though it occasionally shows up in WWE; listen to the Full Blooded Italians' entrance music, and you'll be reminded of "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn" by the Beastie Boys). WCW was an even worse offender before it got bought out, which is rather odd; they were a Time Warner subsidiary, and Time Warner owned most of the labels that were getting ripped off. As noted above, this is mostly due to Jimmy Hart himself writing the music for these companies.
- Other examples include Mortis using a reworked version of the theme from The Phantom of the Opera (both characters wore a skull-like mask).
- Even more baffling than writing covers of songs they already owned, was WCW rewriting songs that were already in the public domain! Randy Savage had previously used "Pomp & Circumstances" in WWF, but it was given a rock makeover in WCW.
- Recent example: ECW wrestler Jack Swagger's entrance theme bears an extremely strong resemblance to the Rage Against The Machine song "Testify"; in fact, the band that performs the song is a RATM tribute band called Age Against The Machine.
- Speaking of ECW, Tommy Dreamer's WWE theme is a Jimmy Hart version of his original ECW music, "Man in the Box" by Alice In Chains.
- The humorous thing about that song is it's official WWE name is
"Boxed Man" "Bad Dream".
- The same thing happened with Balls Mahoney. The Sandman, too...but not so much (it DOES bear some resemblance to "Enter Sandman", but again, not so much).
- With "Enter Sandman" it was a necessity. Metallica charges $5-6 million just for the use of that one song. ECW used to have a cover version on hand just in case.
- WWE Diva Mickie James' entrance theme is pretty obviously the Jimmy Hart Version of "My Sharona" by the Knack.
- You mean "Oh Mickie" by Tony Basil.
- Also, Bill Goldberg's entrance theme in WWE was a Jimmy Hart version of his original WCW entrance theme (An awesome piece of stock music), due to the rights to the song not being available. The WWE version was not as awesome.
- Victoria had previously used tAtU's "All the Things She Said" but was given a lyrics-less cover version a few months later. The same could be said of Christian using Waterproof Blonde's "Just Close Your Eyes."
- "Just Close Your Eyes" (both the Waterproof Blonde and the current versions) is actually the live-band-recording Jimmy Hart Version of two of his previous themes, "At Last" (which itself—in an earlier iteration—was a Jimmy Hart Version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen) and "Blood Brother". Of course, one could just claim that it's The Jimmy Hart Version of "My Last Breath" by Evanescence like his TNA theme afterwards was.
- Lord help the WWE if they lure Bryan Danielson in without getting the rights to "The Final Countdown".
- Considering the way they're going to likely repackage him, they probably wouldn't even consider giving him something that even remotely sounds like it. Let's consider it "averted" for him...for the moment.
- Ring of Honor's even started this: the music for their HDNet television show bears a remarkable resemblance to Velvet Revolver's "Slither".
- As it turns out, WCW using this trope has probably saved WWE a ton of headaches, as they (usually) haven't had to bother with editing music on their archived WCW broadcasts, and certainly not to the same extent as they've had to self-edit. Most of the replacement songs for WWE versions aren't even this trope in action, as they're usually not even close to the original pieces.
- The Other Wiki even has an article which lists songs TNA theme composer Dale Oliver has made Jimmy Hart versions of. The list is rather long.
- Sesame Street's parodies almost always have original melodies, as PBS shows do not have the budget for ASCAP fees.
- Example: Cereal Girl was a pastiche of Madonna's Material Girl, using the same beat and chord progression with a different melody. "It's Hip to Be a Square" is of course, the Jimmy Hart version of Huey Lewis & The News' "Hip to be Square", and Billy Idle - Rebel L is a JHV of Billy Idol - Rebel Yell.
- Bill Nye The Science Guy featured parodies of pop songs with scientific lyrics for its music videos, in addition to Jimmy Hart versions of several tunes, eg La Bamba, the 007 theme, Wipe Out(the surfing song)...
- Myth Busters has a number of songs that fit this trope, most blatantly an off-key version of Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive".
- And some of the previews featured a parody of Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science", with the lyrics "We're Bustin' It With Science".
- And the music during "Sonic Boom Breaks Glass" is designed to evoke "Danger Zone" from Cheap Trick (from Top Gun).
- The Rutles (a fictional band with its own telemovie back in the late 1970s and several "reunion tours" since) have plenty of Beatles sound-alike tunes in their repertoire (not surprising, since they're a Beatles parody), all composed by Neil Innes and George Harrison. However, BMI Records thought they didn't sound different enough, and, one lawsuit later, many of the songs on the original soundtrack were (and still are) legally credited to Innes, Lennon, and McCartney.
- "Ouch!" and "Get Up and Go", in particular, are pretty blatant swipes of their Beatle counterparts, "Help!" and "Get Back".
- Sometimes this happens when a TV show is released on DVD and the production company didn't manage to secure the license to the original music. For instance, the DVD release of Married With Children uses an instrumental opening song that's very reminiscent of, but not identical to, Frank Sinatra's "Love and Marriage"... unlike the original broadcasts, which actually did use Sinatra's song.
- Likewise the soundtrack of House M.D. in most non-US-countries is a Jimmy Hart Version of the original.
- One episode of Zoey 101 had the "Macalana", which was nearly identical to the Macarena...Or So I Heard.
- Lewis Black's segments on The Daily Show were prefaced with a Jimmy Hart version of AC/DC's "Back In Black".
- A possible lampshading occurred on The Colbert Report - Stephen requested to use "Back in Black" for a segment intro, but was told that Jon had said no, as that was the Daily Show's thing.
- The Banana Splits theme shares a notable refrain with Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier (as pointed out on Ed.)
- Marley and his family were in the United States (Wilmington, Delaware, to be exact) for an extended visit with his mother in the summer of 1969, when The Banana Splits were in the middle of their original run. Given that he had some young children who might have been Saturday morning TV viewers, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he might have been familiar with their theme song.
- Comedian Frank Sidebottom once performed a sketch in which he claimed that 'after the first six notes you have to pay royalties'. He proceeded to perform a cover-version of the Star Wars theme tune, with a handful of notes played a semitone off at the times in the tune where they would sound the most agonisingly painful.
- Similarly, a Saturday Night Live sketch featured Jon Lovitz as the host of a program presenting an unauthorized adaptation of Disney's "Snow White", who explains that it's legally not plagiarism as long as every third note is different.
- Parodied by Harry Hill in Harry Hill's TV Burp in a segment where he mocks a wildlife show for using a cheap rendition of the James Bond theme, as shown here.
- This video contains what can be described as the Jimmy Hart Version of the Doctor Who theme tune.
- Dr. Who also has a Jimmy Hart Version within the series itself. In series 3, The Master's theme sounds rather like a horribly twisted version of the show's title theme, which is only right considering he's basically a horribly twisted version of The Doctor.
- The Knight Rider theme is lifted almost note-for-note from "March and Procession of Bacchus" by Delibes.
- Used for laughs in Father Ted, when Ted and Dougal write Ireland's Eurovision Song Contest entry using new lyrics and an old Eurovision song track's tune, which they assume to be too obscure to be widely known. They assume incorrectly.
- A particularly uninspired workover of Sir Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March no. 1 is used in two graduation-themed episodes of The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody, which was completely unnecessary, as the march is in the Public Domain.
- Predictably, WCW did this with Randy Savage when he jumped to WCW.
- This is one of TNA's few justified uses of the trope, as it's a remix for Jay Lethal's "Black Machismo" character.
- The FLN showings of Iron Chef have had all the music of the Food Network version (originally used in the movie Backdraft of all things), replaced with royalty-free-to-Warner-Brothers Jimmy Hart versions. The effect is disconcerting as the opening really seems less epic
- The theme song to Spanish comedy series Los Serrano, which became a hit single itself, was a rather brazen knockoff of "Pure" by The Lightning Seeds.
- The pilot episode of the 1980s U.S. game show Bullseye used "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by The Animals as the theme. When the show made it to air, a new theme with similar instrumentation was used.
- Alan Thicke has written Jimmy Hart versions of themes for three different game shows:
- The 1970s game show Blank Check used Quincy Jones' "Chump Change" as the theme in the pilot episode. After Mark Goodson-Bill Todman productions decided to use this theme for their game show Now You See It, Thicke wrote a theme with a similar melody.
- Similarly, "Now You See It" itself briefly stopped using "Chump Change" for anything else than the opening, instead going for a doppelganger theme written by Edd Kalehoff. The original was still used in the intro.
- After The Jokers Wild stopped using Jean-Jacques Perry and Gershon Kingsley's "The Savers" as its theme, they briefly switched to a Jimmy Hart version of the theme, written by Thicke.
- The pilot episode of Wheel Of Fortune used "Give It One", compose by Maynard Ferguson. When the show made it to air in 1975, the first theme that it used was "Big Wheels", a Thicke composition with similar melody.
- The short-lived 1998 revival of Match Game used a Jimmy Hart version of the 1970s theme.
- When the Pyramid game show franchise was brought back in 1982 as The New $25,000 Pyramid, it used a theme song that was a Jimmy Hart version of "Tuning Up", the theme that had been used on all 1970s incarnations of the Pyramids.
- Brazilian TV station Globo reworks songs into opening themes of some programs. The most obvious case is for Video Show, which is the instrumental bridge for Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough". Their major news show, Jornal Nacional started with an already-existing intrumental, "The Fuzz" but eventually changed to a Jimmy Hart Version.
- The Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "The Pantomime Horse is a Secret Agent Film," being a spoof of James Bond movies, uses music that, though probably from a stock music vault, has a fairly obvious resemblance to the James Bond theme.
- For the Power Rangers 15th anniversary teamup There was a Jimmy Hart version of the MMPR theme tune for Adam's scenes, as copyright issues prevented Disney from accessing the Saban song library. As the other four retro rangers in the teamup were from the Disney seasons, the actual themes were used for them.
- Listen to RPM's instrumental for a moment. The riffs sound very similar to Metallica's "Fuel" in composition.
- Another example from RPM, uses a version of a-ha's "Take On Me" during a Hard Work Montage.
- In Dino Thunder's 9th episode Beneath The Surface, at the end there's a instrumental that is suspiciously like The Black Eyed Pea's "Where Is the Love".
- The Psych episode "Extradition: British Columbia" uses Jimmy Hart Versions of the anthem "O Canada", including a rock version and a guitar version.
Music
- In a hilarious-but-serious example, rapper Vanilla Ice tried to play off his obvious plagiarism of a Queen and David Bowie song by adding one note to the bass line of one of his songs. Not everybody bought it.
- Vanilla Ice's "explanation" was repeated word for word, in a mock-defensive manner, by Huey Morgan of the Fun Lovin' Criminals in an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks for comedic effect.
- Not that this is actually a straight up example, since Vanilla Ice actually licensed the use of the riff from Queen's label.
- David Hasselhoff's "Crazy For You" all but shares its tune with, of all songs, "YMCA".
- Disney's 1982 excercise album Mousercise features a song called "Keep on Trying", which also sounds like a Jimmy Hart version of YMCA.
- David Bowie tried to do a lyrically less-than-faithful glam rock version of "Comme d'Habitude," but Paul Anka took the rights from under him for "My Way." He changed the tune slightly (but not the chord progression), and the result was "Life on Mars."
- When you've got some time, sit down with Rage Against The Machine's "Wake Up" and Led Zepplin's "Kashmir".
- The opening riff to Audioslave's Cochise is pretty similar to Zeppelin's The Ocean too. And I'm Broken by Pantera!
- Australian musical comedy group Tripod have, on occasion, included a version of the MASH theme in their concerts. When the concert was being recorded to be put on DVD, the song had to be changed - the last note of every phrase goes in a different direction (the final note in the first line, for example, goes up rather than down.)
- This was incredibly amusing on the DVD- they sang it properly (crowd joining in) then stopped and said that if it was going to make it on the dvd they'd have to change it, so Scod gets the audience to sing said 'revised' version, which he's improvising, leading to a very confused chorus.
- Apparently they did get the rights for the song anyway- a later performance has them telling the audience that the final stage was sending their version off to the guy who wrote it for his approval, so they wrote a song about him. Hunt it down, it's good fun.
- Linkin Park's "Shadows Of A Day" was rather heavily criticized for it's uncanny resemblence to U2's "With or Without You".
- Trivium is often reviled by metal fans for making songs that allegedly copy the notes from other metal bands' songs, primarily Metallica. In fact, most people see them as trying to "copy" Metallica.
- Metallica's "The Four Horsemen" and Megadeth's "Mechanix" bear a massive resemblence. The reason? Dave Mustaine while a member of Metallica wrote the song "The Mechanix" which is included in some of their early demos. However when he was kicked from the band's roster they kept the song and rewrote the lyrics and some parts and made "The Four Horsemen". Later when Mustaine formed Megadeth he dropped the "The" in the same and sped up the main riff and included the track on his debut album.
- There's a You Tube series called "Metal that sounds like other metal" based all around this trope, pointing out the similarities between songs intentional or not.
- Heck, just watch these videos.
- The Cat Empire's song "Voodoo Cowboy" briefly pastiches the theme from The Good The Bad And The Ugly.
- A techno song called "E" included the melody from a popular Eminem song. However, when that techno song got popular and got released in a larger scale, they changed the melody to the Jimmy Hart Version. The funny thing was that Eminem mocked techno in this song.
- Two of Japanese singer Gackt's songs are Jimmy Hart versions of American songs; "Another World" is very similar to the Josy and the Pussycats song "Three Small Words", and "Emu~for my dear~" sounds very much like U2's "With or Without You".
- The signature guitar riff for "I Feel Fine" by The Beatles is a very slightly altered version of the riff for Bobby Parker's minor 1960 hit "Watch Your Step". The drums on the two songs are also very similar. However, John Lennon himself freely admitted that he borrowed the riff.
- The Beatles more or less admittedly used this technique to craft the song "Come Together" out of Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me", even taking one of the lines ("Here come ol' flat top). Berry tried to sue them; they settled out of court. The same thing is often alleged to have been done by George Harrison's solo hit "My Sweet Lord", which sounds a lot like "He's So Fine". That one *wasn't* settled out of court: Harrison was successfully sued.
- "Still Take You Home" by the Arctic Monkeys uses a riff that is almost certain was borrowed from "Out On Patrol" by the Offspring. Unfortunately, "Out On Patrol" appeared only on their first album, which was so terrible that nobody else remembers it.
- One of the The Residents' songs share the bass line of Micheal Jackson's Billie Jean. Which one? Their cover of Kaw-Liga. Funnily enough, The Residents usually avert this so hard that their covers usually only share the lyrics and the basic rhythm of the original song.
- And then there was the time that John Fogerty got sued for "The Old Man Down The Road" ripping off Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through The Jungle", a song written by...John Fogerty. (There's a lesson here about reading the fine print in your record contract.)
- The speed metal band Dragonforce's music drew much inspiration from computer and video games, including the synths, complete with occasional SID-style arpeggios, ala Machinae Supremacy. The verse of Through The Fire And The Flames, with it's 8-bit synth chords and its bassline, is reminiscent of the Dr Wily's Castle theme from Mega Man 2. The opening riff of Heroes Of Our Time resembles a tune from a certain RPG, can't think of the name. Maybe one of the Ys games? Wonder if one of the members was a fan of the series.
- Horse The Band, pioneeers of "nintendocore", have used Jimmy Hart versions of Nintendo melodies in a few of their songs.
- Similar to the later Vanilla Ice incident, Afrika Bambaataa used a slightly altered version of the main riff from Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express in his popular song Planet Rock(you may know the Paul Oakenfold remix from the Swordfish soundtrack), and needless to say, got sued over it.
- The opening of Procul Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale is clearly...ahem, inspired by Bach's Air On A G-String, aka "The Hamlet cigar music" in the UK. Ironically, the authorship of the song (and thus the royalties) is now disputed between the band members...
- Reel Big Fish's song "Suckers" features a little riff that sounds suspiciously like the Super Mario theme played on horns.
- Compare the opening riffs of KISS' "War Machine", Danzig's "Snakes of Christ", and Stone Temple Pilots' "Sex Type Thing".
- Silverchair's "Suicidal Dream" is only a solo away from being a guitar cover of Alice in Chains' "Bleed The Freak".
- The Village People's Go West has a...somewhat similar tune to the charismatic hymn Give Thanks, released a year earlier, as many have noted.
- The main guitar riff of Weezer's "Take Control" is almost the same as that of "Children Of The Revolution" by T Rex.
- Nine Inch Nails' "A Warm Place" has a very similar keyboard melody to "Crystal Japan" by David Bowie, as well as the same overall ambient feel.
- The opening riff from Nirvana's "Come As You Are" bears a striking resemblance to the riff played throughout Killing Joke's "Eighties".
- And Killing Joke seems to have taken it from The Damned song "Life Goes On".
- Also from Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was considered similar to Boston's "More Than a Feeling". Kurt Cobain himself agreed: "It was such a clichéd riff. It was so close to a Boston riff or [The Kingsmen's] 'Louie Louie.'"
- In turn, Diamond Dallas Page's WCW theme music "Self High-Five" is a Jimmy Hart version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
- Journey's song Faithfully sounds awfully similar to Working Class Man - with good reason. They were both written by Johnathon Cain, keyboardist for Journey.
- Asher Roth's "I Love College" was originally based around a sample of "Say It Ain't So" by Weezer. Once it got an official release, he couldn't get the sample cleared, so it became a Jimmy Hart version... which accidentally made it sound a little like "Waiting On The World To Change" by John Mayer instead.
- Weird Al Yankovic used to do this early in his career, especially with non-vocal orchestrations. But as he got famous enough to ask direct permission from artists, these got closer and closer to the originals.
- Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" has rhythms from "Werewolf of London" and a chorus from "Sweet Home Alabama."
- That's not Jimmy Harting, that's just
stealing sampling stealing.
- Zilch's "What's Up Mr. Jones?" pretty much an English version of X-Japan's "Drain".
- Explained by the fact that Zilch was founded by hide, who wrote the original version and owned the rights to it.
- The tune of a Chinese pop song seems to be The Jimmy Hart Version of "Wakareuta" ("The Parting Song") by the Japanese folk rock artist Miyuki Nakajima. You can listen and compare the two songs here.
- Jim Steinman, the songwriter-producer most commonly associated with Meat Loaf, tends to recycle certain musical hooks in songs written for different artists. Compare the intro to the song Stark Raving Love off his solo album, Bad For Good, to the intro of Bonnie Tyler's Holding Out For a Hero, which he wrote, and you'll note that aside from the drum track the two are note-for-note identical.
- Is it just me, or does Gary Juels' "Mad World" (also known as the Gears Of War commercial theme) sound like a slow, calm version of The Offspring's "Gone Away"?
- This website devotes to seeking songs that derive melodies,hooks and other stuff from other songs. Just be aware of very heavy Accentuate The Negative attitude of the site.
- The choruses to Bonnie Tyler's "If You Were a Woman (and I Was a Man)" and Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" are Jimmy Hart Versions of each other. Probably because they were written by the same guy...
- Justin Timberlake's "Nothin' Else" sounds like the Jimmy Hart Version of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It, Black."
- The beginning of Sublime's "What I Got" is an acoustic "Lady Madonna" with different lyrics and a note changed here and there.
- The chorus of Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" is Bonjovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" reset in a major key.
- The guitar riff of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" is similar to that of the Rolling Stone's "Rock and a Hard Place."
- An intentional, parodic example is Offspring's "Why Don't You Get a Job?", which is patterned after "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."
- MOD/demoscene example: Purple Motion's "Fracture In Space", one of his earliest songs, was a Jimmy Hart version of Dr. Awesome's "Space Deleria".
Radio
- Dead Ringers managed to avoid this trope a surprising amount of the time despite being completely based on impressions and parodies, as most of its regular targets were also BBC productions. They did use Jimmy Harted theme musics for some of their one-off sketches, though, such as when they put one of the BBC's most well-known political interviewers into a superhero story to form The Continuing Adventures of Paxman.
- The radio countdown show Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40 uses bumpers that are Jimmy Hart versions of country songs. This carried over from when Kingsley hosted American Country Countdown, which uses original-tune bumpers now that Kix Brooks hosts it.
Theatre
- In the musical Dames At Sea, "That Mister Man Of Mine" has a melody mostly copied from "The Man I Love".
- The "Nightingale Lullaby" from the musical Once Upon a Mattress includes an obvious pastiche of the Lullaby from Stravinsky's ballet music for The Firebird.
- "Sunday" from tick...tick...BOOM! is a parody of the song of the same name from the Sondheim musical Sunday In The Park With George, with the melody turned upside down.
- Since it's part of what's probably the show's Crowning Moment Of Funny it demands spoiler tags: in Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere, an instrumental sound-alike of "Stayin' Alive" turns up.
- The Victorian-melodrama villain's theme in the Show Within A Show in Show Boat sounds like the Russell Bennett version of Mysterioso Pizzicato.
Video Games
- For some reason, the first-level theme from God Hand sounds a great deal like the theme song from Hawaii Five-O (odd, considering this is a Western-themed level).
- Godhand also has a Jimmy Hart version of the Mazinger Z theme song with new lyrics as its ending credits song.
- In Diddy Kong Racing, TT's theme bears more than a passing resemblance to Kool and the Gang's hit song "Celebration".
- Guitar Superstar is a plug-'n'-play unit that's a complete and utter knockoff of Guitar Hero, complete with songs that are not only bad MIDI renditions, but Jimmy Hart Versions at that. Just to give an idea, one of the songs is called "Granite Man", which is somewhat reminiscent of "Iron Man". Watch this video just to see how awful it is.
- The Little Busters! soundtrack features a track entitled "Mission Possible," which is pretty much as close as they could get to the Mission Impossible theme song without actually being said theme song.
- Parts of the Doom and Doom II soundtracks were Jimmy Hart Versions of metal songs, but executed in such a fashion that few people really noticed. See this page for some comparisons.$
- It should be noted that the games' composer used to be a lawyer, so he knew how much plagarism they could get away with. The story goes that the lead designer essentially gave him a set of his favourite metal albums and asked the composer to make the Doom soundtrack sound like those.
- In the case of the E 3 M 8 track, I've always thought it sounded more like ''Sargent D and the S.O.D.''
- Coincidentially, the open-source project Freedoom contains Jimmy Hart versions of Doom music, making it somewhat Meta.
- The music track for the Doom II level "Barrels o' Fun", entitled "Bye Bye American Pie" (no relation to that song, incidentally), is by far the most egregious example of this trope in the game. It is literally just a few minor variations away from being a note-for-note MIDI transcription of Alice In Chains' "Them Bones", minus the vocal melody, and about half as long. It's essentially a karaoke version. Here, listen for yourself.
- In a Power Rangers SNES game, the Player Select music is very similar to X Japan's Sadistic Desire.
- The second riff of the grassworld/skyworld level music in Super Mario Bros 3 is a Jimmy Hart version of the opening of "Video Killed The Radio Star". This hook also appears as a Recurring Riff in the "Snowman's Land" music in Super Mario 64.
- The Airship music in Super Mario Bros 3 is the Jimmy Hart Version of Mars: The Bringer Of War from Holtz's "The Planets" suite. The similarities are even more obvious in the orchestrated version from Super Mario Galaxy. But then again, "Bringer of War" is a pretty appropriate theme for those levels.
- The Mario Kart ganmes also have their Jimmy Hart versions of known Mario tunes:
- Bowser Castle from Super Mario Kart is based on the final boss from Super Mario World. Also, the victory songs for Mario and Bowser are based on the Super Mario Bros theme song.
- Bowser Castle from Mario Kart Super Circuit has a bit from the Bowser fights from Super Mario 64.
- The Ghost Tracks from that same game has the main notes from Ghost Valley from Super Mario Kart.
- The Rainbow Road intro has the main notes from Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart.
- All Final Lap jingles, except for Super Mario Kart, are Jimmy Harted from the Time Up Warning from Super Mario Bros.
- Weirdly, the Nintendo DS game based on Futari Wa Pretty Cure Max Heart used Jimmy Hart Versions of several themes from the anime (most noticeable is the Marble Screw music). What's weird about this is that they used the real version of the show's opening theme song. That, and the whole "same franchise as the original music" thing.
- Even weirder, some stages in Super Mario Land used The Jimmy Hart Version of the original Super Mario Bros theme.
- Not to mention Petal Meadows from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, though this is arguably an homage to the original.
- Also, Yoshi's Island contains a rather blatant takeoff of The Emotions' "Best Of My Love", as well as some other disco and soul songs.
- Yoshi's Story's castle theme is a Jimmy Hart version of "The Sugar Plum Fairy".
- Spy Hunter of course used the Peter Gunn theme for its main music, supposedly this was licensed. Ironically, Super Spy Hunter, which was not originally titled as a sequel, instead being named Battle Formula in Japan, used a Jimmy Hart version of the Peter Gunn music in its second stage.
- In another ironic twist, the Spy Hunter game also provides an aversion of this trope. The makers of the game originally wanted to use the James Bond theme song, but couldn't obtain the rights to it. Instead of using a Jimmy Hart version, they went with the Peter Gunn theme.
- The original arcade version of Taito's Rainbow Islands uses "Over The Rainbow" (yes, the song from The Wizard Of Oz!) as its background music. Needless to say, there were some issues with licensing the music when the game was released on home systems. Many home computer ports of the game got away with using the original tune, but the American NES release uses a very noticeable Jimmy Hart Version; the European NES release uses an entirely different tune altogether; and re-releases on more recent systems, including the recent PC re-release, are back to Jimmy Hart Versions again.
- In a possibly unintentional case, the music in Tourian in the original Metroid resembles the music from Bowser's Castle in the original Super Mario Bros, especially the opening notes of the bassline. The resemblance is further notable in that Tourian is roughly the Metroid equivalent of Bowser's Castle, since the final boss confrontation takes place there.
- The theme music to some versions of Pengo is a Jimmy Hart version of "Popcorn" by Gershon Kingsley/Hot Butter.
- Seeing as Legend of Mana and Super Mario RPG share a music composer (Yoko Shimomura), it only figures that the former would include some versions of songs from the latter. For example:
- "Mystic City Geo" is a noticeable Jimmy Hart version of the Mushroom Kingdom theme.
- The Toad Town theme from Mario And Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, which Shimomura also composed, is in turn a Jimmy Hart Version of Mystic City Geo (with multiple pastiches of the first nine notes of the infamous "Beware the Forest's Mushrooms" from Super Mario RPG thrown in for good measure), to bring this full-circle.
- "Pastoral" uses the same measurement and beat as the Marrymore theme.
- And speaking of Super Mario RPG, the music for Bandit's Way and Bean Valley is obviously modeled after the Russian dance music from The Nutcracker.
- Gritzy Desert from Partners in Time sounds a lot like Agrabah's theme(s) in Kingdom Hearts (especially the Brawl version). Again, Shimomura was the composer for both songs, so it's not surprising.
- The battle theme that Shimomura did for Superstar Saga has a remarkably similar structure to the one she did for Mario RPG.
- The second-level bosses in the Ninja Gaiden arcade game are a Lawyer Friendly Cameo of legendary Professional Wrestling tag team The Road Warriors, and their background music is even The Jimmy Hart Version of the Warriors' entrance theme, Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" (the game's version being titled "I Am Man").
- Amidst the current Rick Roll craze, some astute retrogamers have realized that Robo's theme from Chrono Trigger is actually a Jimmy Hart Version of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". That's right, Square Rickrolled us before Rickrolling was cool.
- It is now confirmed that the similarity was just a coincidence, and the composer never heard of Rick Astley way back when he originally made the song.
- Speaking of Chrono Trigger, "Jolly Ol' Spekkio", the theme of the shapeshifter of the same name found at the End of Time, sounds a heck of a lot like I Just Can't Wait to be King from The Lion King.
- Also, there's Ayla's Theme (here) and It's Not Unusual by Tom Jones (here).
- The once-available-on-Genesis-and-SNES Spider-Man game "Maximum Carnage" was advertised as featuring a soundtrack composed by Green Jelly - who came up with an original title tune and Jimmy Hart Versions of metal classics for the rest of the game. Most notable as well as fitting was Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules" for boss fights.
- Green Jelly is a real (and hilarious) band, whose current name is actually the Jimmy Hart Version of their original, Green Jello. They had to change it when Kraft sued, but the band insists that it's still pronounced "Jello."
- The soundtrack to Forza Motorsport 1 features an instrumental Jimmy Hart version of Black Sabbath's Iron Man.
- The bar in Space Quest 1 features lookalikes of The Blues Brothers and ZZ Top, performing 8-bit versions of "Can't Turn You Loose" and "Sharp Dressed Man", respectively, albeit in internal speaker bleep form. ZZ Top later sued Sierra(they got sued a lot, remember the Droids R Us scandal?), thus the bands and their music were removed from the VGA remake. That didn't stop a Madonna look-a-like from making an appearance.
- Also, in the remake, a rendition of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from 2001: A Space Odyssey is played during the alien hologram sequence.
- In Daryl Gates' Police Quest: Open Season, another Jimmy Hart version of "Can't Turn You Lose" can sometimes be heard in Ragin' Records at Hollywood & Vine.
- The protagonist's headquarters being Parker Center, it also featured a Jimmy Hart version of the Dragnet theme, another variation of which was used as the theme for Police Quest I.
- In Quest for Glory 3, the music playing in the background at the Apothecary's store is a somewhat mediterranean Jimmy Hart version of Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. Very suitable, given the Apothecary's profession (sells drugs...) and hippie-like demeanor.
- Leisure Suit Larry 5: One of the musics in the K-Rap building is a pastiche of Thomas Dolby's She Blinded Me With Science.(same beat, the characteristic pulsing bassline, similar synth hits)
- The most recent trailer for the next Prince Of Persia game features the Jimmy Hart Version of "Reqiuem for a Dream". With how often the original song is used in fan-made trailers, it'a bit ironic.
- Tails' theme in Sonic Adventure is a Jimmy Hart version of the Bridge Zone theme from Sonic SMS/GG, which itself is a Jimmy Hart version of the theme from Full House.
- The day music for Mazuri in Sonic Unleashed is essentially a remix of the credits music from Sonic 1 SMS/GG, without the Green Hill rendition in the middle.
- Sonic 3, according to popular belief, used to have Michael Jackson composing its score. Most of the zone themes can still be traced into being the Jimmy Hart Versions of MJ songs. Short documentary on the subject.
- In Carnival Night Zone, the beat from Michael Jackson's "Jam" is used, along with the trumpet riff and stock glass-breaking sound, and the melody is based on "Entry of the Gladiators", a famous orchestral circus piece that everyone has heard at least once.
- The Hydrocity zone music is reminiscent of the Mike Mareen song Heavy Water .
- The Ice Cap Zone theme has a bassline similar to Smooth Criminal, and a melody derived from "Who Is It".
- The ending theme is based on "Stranger in Moscow".
- The Launch Base Zone music uses elements of "Bad", as well as a bass hook similar to Nu Shooz's "I Can't Wait".
- The Marble Garden theme and "Thriller" are quite similar.
- Metropolis Zone resembles Van Halen's "Jump", with a touch of Prince's "1999".
- Sonic 1's Star Light Zone music is based on the J-pop song Kusuriyubi no Kesshin by Dreams Come True. In fact, the soundtrack was composed by Masato Nakamura, a member of that band.
- For the same reason, the music from the ending cutscene of Sonic 2 is essentially a 16-bit version of their song "Sweet Sweet Sweet" (though that may not count as a Jimmy Hart version, since it's pretty much the actual song).
- Scrap Brain Zone: Jimmy Hart version of the Blade Runner ending theme(twice as fast) complete with the drum hits. The latter half also sounds like Kraftwerk's Spacelab, and the bassline resembles that of another KW song, Metropolis(not Metropolis Zone).
- Oingo Boingo's Weird Science sounds like a precursor to Sonic music, particularly Flying Battery Zone.
- "Town Mission 4" from Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 bares some similarities to Flash Man's stage music in Mega Man 2, which was noted by Pokecapn and company in their Let's Play of the PS 3 version.
- The similar-sounding riffs in both songs also sound like a half-tempo version of a part of Guts Man's theme from the original Mega Man.
- "Crisis City 1" from Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 contains elements of the Battle Theme Music from Chrono Trigger as well as a possible reference to the Mission Impossible Theme Tune.
- The ending theme for the Revenge of Meta Knight subgame in Kirby Super Star (and Ultra) sounds suspiciously similar to The Animals' rendition of "House of the Rising Sun".
- And the Game Over screen sounds quite similar to the chorus of Queen's "You're My Best Friend". I started liking Queen when I heard that song and noticed the similarity.
- Katamari On The Funk, the title song from the PSP-exclusive Katamari Damacy sequel Me and My Katamari and one of the few original songs in the game, bears a striking resemblance to a tune from the PSP version of Ridge Racer. Somewhat justified considering the same person composed for both games, but still noteworthy.
- Guilty Gear has several examples of this: Potemkin's theme, Burly Heart is basically Led Zepplin's ''Kashmir'' shifted down an octave or two, and Venom's theme A Solitude That Asks Nothing in Return is Napalm Death's ''Breed To Breathe'' slowed down slightly with added keyboard.
- Guilty Gear is built on rock and roll references. Bridget alone has "Shoot The Moon", "Kickstart My Heart" and a teddy bear named for Roger Waters. Five characters were directly named after bands (Cloudberry Jam, Millia Rage, ABA, Slayer and Testament). Ky Kiske seems pretty normal (and not band related) until you learn that he was named after Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske, two former members of Helloween.
- In Mega Man, the music in Elec Man's stage is pretty similar to "All the Right Friends" by REM.
- It also somewhat resembles "Faithfully" by Journey, which was written not long before the REM song.
- The music in the first part of Dr. Cossack's castle in Megaman 4 resembles a certain Russian folk song.
- The Stage 5 theme from Blaster Master is a Jimmy Hart version of Bomb Man's theme from Mega Man 1, and one of the guys at Overclocked Remix did a mash-up remix of the two.
- The obscure isometric 3d NES shmup Tetrastar: The Fighter features several classical pieces, including Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" in the first level.
- One scene in Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak involves finding a spoon (which later gets used in a catapult). The scene wherein you remove the spoon from its pedestal is a direct send-up of the "removing the Master Sword from its pedestal" scene from The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and the music that plays during the removal is a Jimmy Hart version of the "opening a large chest" music from the 3D incarnations of Zelda - where the original arpeggios go up, the Jimmy Hard arpeggios go down.
- The BGM of Gyruss is based on Bach's "Toccata & Fugue in D Minor".
- In Mega Man X 3, the music in Neon Tiger's stage bears a remarkable similarity to "My Michelle" by Guns N' Roses. (but the MMX designers are probably GNR fans, considering the bosses of X5 are named after the band members, and the latter installments have a character named Axl)
- In The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the music in the Fire Temple bears a remarkable resembance to the Torla Mountan dungeon in Alundra, right down to the Muslim-esque chanting.
- Apparently those were real sampled Muslim chants("La illah ha il Allah", "Allah Akbar", etc), inciting many complaints from Muslim gamers and forcing Nintendo to change the music in later versions.
- Even weirder, "Saria's Song", the iconic theme music for The Lost Woods from the same game and Twilight Princess appears to be a Jimmy Hart version of... The Jupiter suite from Gustav Holst's The Planets.
- And as you may know, several pieces in Star Wars: A New Hope, including the opening Blockade Runner sequence, and the music right before the Death Star explodes, borrow from "Mars: The Bringer of War". The music when the rebels are approaching the Death Star also sounds similar to the Jupiter suite in parts.
- Additionally, Twilight Princess features a hidden area in the form of a town that's been abandoned for years, composed of one main street lined with buildings... with dust and tumbleweeds everywhere... and the buildings full of enemies launching arrows at you, necessitating a big bow-and-arrow shootout through the town. The music for this set-piece did a wonderful job of capturing the feel of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti Western scores.
- The Kakariko Village theme in TP is a pastiche/Jimmy Hart version of the Dark World theme from A Ltt P, which also uses part of the original Kakariko theme.
- Or more of a mix between the original Kakariko theme and the Goron village music.
- This troper swears the "Serenade of Water" from Ocarina of Time is supposed to mimic the Black Sabbath song... "I am Iron Man...' 'A down right right left...' Look, it fits. At least to her. And if the ocarina wasn't so high-pitched, she'd be even more sure.
- EarthBound had a bunch of musical references.
- The riff used by the Runaway Five in the tune before you get on their bus (and reused in the ending credits) is more or less "In the Midnight Hour."
- The "hippie battle" theme is based off Chuck Berry's musical style.
- The drugstore music has at least has the same meter and chord progression of "When I'm 64."
- The music for the coffee-trip scrolling text sequences is slightly similar to "Learning To Fly."
- The music outside the boarding house sounds awfully like "You Never Give Me Your Money."
- There's more...
- Apparently, the copyright concerns over numerous similarties to various Beatles songs is preventing Earthbound from getting a rerelease on the Virtual Console.
- Dragonball Z Budokai had a few pieces of background music which were rather obvious Jimmy Hart versions of Stratovarius music, as seen here.
- Many of the dancers you encounter in Final Fantasy IV do their routine to a short song that directly resembles the first section of Aram Khachaturian's Sabre Dance.
- The terrible NES RPG Hydlide has an overworld tune that sounds suspiciously close to John Williams' "Raiders' March", the theme song to the Indiana Jones films.
- Bizarrely, the famous "Fever" theme from the various incarnations of Dr. Mario appears to be a more upbeat Jimmy Hart Version of The Beatles' "Lady Madonna." Here's a comparison video.
- "Marginal Beast", one of the boss themes from Legend of Mana, sounds an awful lot like a Jimmy Hart Version of "Plosive Attack", the boss theme of Parasite Eve. Both are Squaresoft games with music by Yoko Shimomura.
- The stage music for Dracula's stage in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse sounds an awful lot like the Billy Joel song "Pressure" inverted (bass line on top, melody on bottom). Go into music demo mode, and what's that stage's music called? "Pressure."
- Most if not all of the music in the CAVE shmup Dangun Feveron are Jimmy Hart versions of Saturday Night Fever music; for instance, 2 stage themes are more than a little similar to "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever".
- In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, the music during the battle with Ernst is a Jimmy Hart Version of "Moon Over The Castle", the theme song from the Japanese versions of the Gran Turismo games. There's even a fan-made mashup of the two songs. Rumor has it that the composer of the latter had a hand in producing the former.
- Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys: "The Heat In The Blaze" eerily resembles the music from the first level of Doom (which came out the same year, dunno which was first), which itself was based on Metallica's "Master of Puppets".
- The guitar riff of "Walking The Path of Legend" sounds familiar, is it a completely original tune or a Jimmy Hart version of some real song?
- In Star Fox, in the secret "Out Of This Dimension" level, the background music is a Jimmy Hart version of Johann Strauss's "Voices Of Spring" waltz, and the boss music is a medley of When The Saints Go Marching In, Lightly Row, and some other tune.
- The music during the battle with Ganondorf in Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time is kind of a Jimmy Hart version of one of the boss themes from Star Fox 64.
- In Halo 2, the "Ancient Machine" music, heard in the hangar during the Arbiter mission, sounds like a mashup of the "evil source music"(Devil's Wind) from Ys Book I and II and the Woodfall Temple theme from Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask(may use some of the same Stock Sound Effects). Pure High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
- In turn, Devil's Wind is a Jimmy Hart version of the Twilight Zone riff.
- The High Charity theme, with its new-agey Ethereal Choir and background synth effects, is reminiscent of the Forest temple music in ''Ocarina of Time''
- "Peril" is reminiscent of Sirrus's leitmotif from the Myst series, especially the Channelwood version, while "Covenant Dance" resembles the Mechanical Age music.
- "Farthest Outpost" resembles the "World Vector" music from the old Future Crew demo Unreal (not to be confused with Unreal the game).
- In Mother 3, the "Mr. Batty" enemies have theme music that sounds strikingly similar—especially in its intro—to the 1960's Batman theme. You know—"Nahnahnahnahnahna nana nahnahnahnahnahna nana BATMAAAAAN!"
- In addition, the Jealous Bass music sounds rather similar to the Grease Lightning song.
- There's also more...
- In the Animaniacs game "The Great Edgar Hunt", the main Studio Lot theme is basically a Jimmy Hart version of the Cartoon Show's theme tune.
- Depending on who you talk to, the Metal Gear Solid melody could be a shameless rip-off of the Speed theme tune or an up-beat Jimmy Hart Version of "The Winter Road" by Sviridov. In each case the stylistic similarity is more obvious when looking at Gregson-Williams' orchestral version of the theme from the 2001 MGS2 trailer, but the melody's present in TAPPY's original 1998 version. The group of Russian games journalists who first spotted the Sviridov similarity confronted Kojima on-camera during the development of Portable Ops and Guns of the Patriots, in popular You Tube clip. Although the Norihiko Hibino is quite adamant that Sviridov has nothing to do with the tune, Konami was sufficiently disturbed by what they took as a threat of a lawsuit to put a moratorium the melody, and so it was removed from both those games and will not be used in the future. Speculation abounds as to what was changed and where (Sunny's various maths tunes sound "MGS-ish") but given that they didn't comment on the events until about six months after MGS4 came out, it's unlikely the changes will be publicly revealed. Suffice to say, fans got angry and the absence of a version of the Metal Gear Solid theme in MPO and MGS4 is commonly cited as a negative point in reviews of the games. Gregson Williams' countermelody from the MGS3 version of the theme seems to be groomed for use of a replacement, appearing in the MGS 4 end credits as "Metal Gear Saga".
- Big Boss's Leitmotif is a Jimmy Hart version of the Metal Gear Solid theme, which sounds a little more tender than the actual melody due to the changing of two chords in the progression.
- The song Old Snake seems to be a Jimmy Hart version of the main theme as well, slower and sadder.
- And the Metal Gear KODOQUE theme in Metal Gear Acid and its sequel was a Jimmy Hart version of the Metal Gear Solid main theme with the same chord progression but a different melody. Its use was a bit of a Hallelujah Moment.
- The main Recurring Riff in the original Metal Gear Solid(ambience, alert music, boss music, etc.) resembles Kraftwerk's Radio-Activity, especially with that synthesized choir.
- The theme tune of the festive fan parody game, Merry Gear Solid, finished with a Jimmy Hart Version of "Snake Eater" from Metal Gear Solid 3, called "Secret Santa".
- The indoor infiltration theme in the NES version of Metal Gear features a tune similar to the Mission Impossible theme.
- In Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil, the Mother boss music resembles the Knight Rider theme.
- The song that plays in the early routes of the first generation of Pokemon games sounds suspiciously similar to Polly Wolly Doodle.
- In Stuntman, most of the films you work on are Jimmy Hart versions of existing ones, complete with suspiciously familiar music that's surprisingly good in matching the mood of the original while never being identical. For example, see this video of a scene from the latest Dakota Scott movie. Honestly.
- The SNES/Genesis game Cool Spot used Jimmy Hart Versions: the pool level's music resembled, but was not quite, Fats Domino's "Walkin' to New Orleans," while the train level used a song that was just a few notes away from The Magnificent Seven theme.
- One guess as to what the theme of James Pond II: Robocod is The Jimmy Hart Version of. (Amazingly, the prior game did not use a knockoff of the James Bond theme.)
- The music playing in the Team Fortress 2 trailer "Meet the Sniper" begins sounding like the Jimmy Hart version of the theme to Magnum Force, but as the song continues, it stops being a Jimmy Hart version and just becomes the theme to Magnum Force played with more Australian instruments.
- The theme music to online freeware game Legend Of Princess is a Jimmy Hart Version of the Legend Of Zelda theme because the game is the Jimmy Hart Version of the Legend Of Zelda.
- No More Heroes's Thunder Ryu Building is a gym in which Travis can upgrade his abilities. The background music is almost, but not quite, Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger."
- Also, the credits music sounds very similar to the Star Wars theme. The version that appears on the official soundtrack makes it even more obvious: not only is it played by an orchestra, as opposed to the 8-bit style version in the game; but the track itself is called "Staff Wars: Episode I"
- Done in Elite Beat Agents, when most of the songs are covers. Most of them are exactly the same, but with different vocals, although some become faster (such as Let's Dance, which is incredibly jarring listening to the game and original versions back-to-back). The exceptions are Sk8er Boi and September, which might as well be the original versions, and Jumping Jack Flash; if it weren't for the lyrics, you'd think it was an entirely different song. This was for the better to the extreme.
- "Jungle Bouncer", the Ikari Warriors theme in both 94 and 2002 King Of Fighters installments for the most part sounded quite like Faith No More's "Surprise, you're dead!"
- Earlier versions of Eversion used music from the obscure Famicom game Cocoron for their title screen and first world. Version 1.7, however, uses tunes that are clearly The Jimmy Hart Version of the original Cocoron music.
- The doujin game Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekitou features Konata and Akira from Lucky Star as unlockable secret characters. In the stage where you fight them, The Jimmy Hart Version of "Motteke Seifuku", the latter's Theme Song, can be heard.
- One of the shmup Armed Police Batrider's boss themes, "Let Ass Kick Together", has an opening riff like the main riff from Iron Maiden's "Powerslave", just in a different key and with a couple of notes different, although the rest of the theme is different.
- The Red Faction: Guerilla commercial features a stock music track that appears to be a Jimmy Hart version of Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil".
- The Heliport theme in Double Dragon II: The Revenge sounds eerily similar to the Phil Collins song "Easy Lover".
- Many Touhou fans feel that "Heian Alien," the Bonus Boss theme Undefined Fantastic Object is The Jimmy Hart Version of "U.N. Owen Was Her?", the Bonus Boss theme from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, to the point of referring to the former as "UF Owen Was Her?"
- The main in-game theme of Transformers: Convoy no Nazo sounds very similar to the main theme of the Jaleco arcade/NES Shoot Em Up Argus.
- ''I Sawed The Demons'' sounds almost exactly like AC/DC's ''Big Gun''
- The overworld theme in the original Wild ARMs has a few bits taken from "The Ecstasy of Gold" from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
- Final Fantasy VIII has a track called "The Landing" that plays when your team lands in Dollet to fight the Galbadian army. In the demo version of the game, the track was an altered version of the main theme from The Rock. Apparently, it wasn't altered enough, as the track was changed for the actual game. Apparently, someone involved with the movie complained.
- Another same franchise example: the NES Rambo game features a Jimmy Hart version of the original First Blood theme as the title theme, as well as a Jimmy Hart version of "Peace in Our Life" as the ending theme.
- The title theme to Snake Rattle N Roll is, as one might expect, a knockoff of "Shake, Rattle and Roll".
- Parts of the Mantid Hive theme in Turok 2 resemble the credits music from Future Crew's Second Reality.
- The Theme Tune of the first three SpaceQuest games is a Jimmy Hart version of "Attack of the Hawk Men" from the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, while the fourth game uses a pastiche of the Star Trek'' theme.
- Blaz Blue's Bang Shishigami has a Theme Music Power Up during his Astral Finish, and that particular song ("Reppuu" by the one-and-only JAM Project) sounds like the Gurren Lagann intro "Sorairo Days".
Kinda serves them right for Viral's theme sounding like "Points of Authority".
- The PC game Interstate '76 had a number of Jimmy Hart Versions on its soundtrack, mostly of '70s funk songs like the Ohio Players' "Fopp", The Isley Brothers' "That Lady" and Curtis Mayfield's "(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go". Even the theme song bore a certain resemblance to the theme song to the TV series S.W.A.T. (albeit a bit sped-up).
- Backyard Skateboarding has a Jimmy Hart Version of the James Bond Theme.
- The town theme of the PC game "Torchlight" appears to be a Jimmy Hart version of the Tristram theme from the original Diablo. Not suprising, considering several of the people from the Diablo team worked on Torchlight.
- The "Snowy Roads" music from Twisted Metal Black sounds similar to the beginning of "Lux Aeterna" from Requiem For A Dream, but even scarier.
- Gruntilda's Lair from Banjo-Kazooie is a Jimmy Hart version of "Teddy Bear's Picnic". It also became well associated with the character.
- The music from the stage builder of Super Smash Bros Brawl sounds similar to Ravel's Bolero.
Web Animation
- When a Web Animation series reaches a certain level of success (typically when it starts selling DVDs), the creator often goes back and removes any copyright infringement that was safe when the series was unknown. Bonus Stage is a good example: Matt eventually removed a multitude of unauthorized cameos from his earlier episodes (such as one by the Homestar Runner cast) and replaced the ska song in the credits with an instrumental facsimile called "Total Soundalike."
Web Original
Western Animation
- The Simpsons hangs a lampshade on the trope when, at the opening ceremonies of a nationwide Spelling Bee, celebrity moderator George Plimpton announces "And now, our unlicensed knockoff of the Olympic anthem."
- It also played this one straight, in quite a lot of episodes. Who can forget 'Springfield, Springfield', or the whole of the episode 'Supercalifragalisticexpiali(annoyed grunt)tious'? The latter was a parody of Mary Poppins, and had some of the best of these you're likely to see anywhere - particularly Barney's version of 'Feed the Birds' ('Buy Me A Beer') and the family's version of 'Spoonful of Sugar' ('Cut Every Corner').
- And "The President Wore Pearls," an episode-long knock-off of Evita. Also lampshaded in the closing subtitles, which insist the producers (as advised by their lawyers) "have never heard of a musical based on the life of Eva Peron."
- The end of "Life on the Fast Lane" parodies the end of An Officer and a Gentleman; you have to listen very carefully to the BGM to notice it isn't really "Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong".
- The rambling song Homer sang in hopes of becoming a food critic was based around West Side Story's "I Feel Pretty".
- Then there's "See My Vest," Mr. Burns' PETA-unfriendly ripoff of Beauty and the Beast's "Be Our Guest."
- Lampshaded again during a Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs parody with a song called "Ho Hi" ("this song's not like any song you know...if Disney sues we'll claim Fair Use").
- Some earlier episodes repeatedly underscored action sequences with a pastiche of the "Axel F" theme from Beverly Hills Cop.
- Histeria, an educational cartoon about history, parodied a lot of songs with similar, but original, melodies. In the episode on Teddy Roosevelt, adapted versions of "Wooly Bully" (as "Bully Bully") and "Ghostbusters" (as "Trustbuster") were both used, altered enough to be free of royalties.
- Family Guy used to do this in its early seasons — e.g. "Give it Up" from the toad-licking one, which was a pastiche of "You're the One That I Want" from Grease. Lately, however, they've been going with straight lyrical parodies.
- The apotheosis: Peter singing about his Diplomatic Immunity with Can't Touch Me!, which includes the line "so Hammer you can't sue!" while talking to an animated MC Hammer.
- Can't Touch Me used a Jimmy Hart Version of the music. However, the show has more recently been able to get the rights to almost any music they want; one aversion occurred when they couldn't get the rights to the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon theme, so they had Peter sing the Batman TV show theme (owned by Fox), replacing "Batman" with "Spider-Man." It was much funnier.
- The Season 3 episode "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" has Peter crooning a song called "I Need a Jew", which sounds suspiciously like "When You Wish Upon a Star", from Disney's Pinocchio. The publishers of the Disney song apparently thought so, too, as they unsuccessfully sued Family Guy producer Seth MacFarlane and composer Walter Murphy for copyright infringement.
- In the episode "Love Blactually", Brian dresses up as Snoopy for a costume party. When Peter demands that he "do the dance", Brian complies, accompanied by a Jimmy Hart Version of Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts theme, "Linus & Lucy".
- In "Saving Private Brian", the music in the US Army commercial is The Jimmy Hart version of the intro to Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me".
- Jimmy Neutron does this all the time with their montage sequences. One notable one is a couple notes off from "Hey Ya" by Out Kast.
- Chowder has done this twice so far. In the episode "Grubble Gum", where Chowder's gigantic, all-consuming wad of gum starts picking up everything in its path: the background music, appropriately enough, is a lawyer-friendly version of the Katamari Damacy theme. The episode "Sniffle Ball" also has one scene blatantly parodying the classic Super Mario Bros fight with Bowser, to the tune of a variant on the classic underground theme.
- The sleepeating episode uses the first few notes of "Thriller".
- An early sketch in Robot Chicken features Voltron in a dance-off against a Robeast to "Work It Out On The Floor", an obvious parody of DMX's "Get It On The Floor". On the DVD version and all future airing, the song is replaced with a horribly generic, lawyer-friendly take on the song.
- A large amount of the music used for Robot Chicken are Jimmy Hart versions of many popular tunes from movies, television shows, and even video games. This makes sense as parodies are a big part of Robot Chicken.
- During their "Greatest American Hero" parody, the theme song is "Believe it or don't I'm flying around."
- Used in-series when a sketch about the Libertarian Party have them needing to use the Jimmy Hart version of various songs because they can't afford the real ones. Such as "Friend choo-choo" (Love Train) and "We are the Victors" (We are the Champions).
- The Teletoon-animated seasons of Johnny Test use their own theme song, which is The Jimmy Hart Version of... the original Johnny Test theme song (from when the series was animated by Warner Bros.). The "same franchise as the original music" deal strikes again!
- Also occurs on the Cartoon Network broadcast version.
- And the Netflix Watch Instantly releases.
- Incidentally, while the original Johnny Test theme sounds highly styled after your average top 40 rock band, the second series theme song is actually a Jimmy Hart Version of "American Idiot".
- The eighth episode of Samurai Jack opens with a jukebox playing the Jimmy Hart Version of Quincy Jones's "Soul Bossa Nova" (which you may recognize from Austin Powers).
- In the Angry Beavers episode "You Promised", Norbert and Daggett race around their dam on bikes to The (instrumental) Jimmy Hart Version of "I'm A Believer" by The Monkees.
- Futurama does some almost indistinguishable please-don't-sue-us versions of songs like "Happy Birthday To You" and "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" - the latter has to be listened to very, very closely. The excuse in the director's commentary was 'we thought it'd be alright because the songs would have changed over the years'.
- Actually the melody of "Happy Birthday to You" is public domain since they're from an older song; it's the lyrics (which were changed) that are under copyright.
- No, that's exactly backwards. The tune to "Good Morning To You" (which the lyrics to Happy Birthday were set to) is still under copyright, owned by the descendents of the original writers, which is why the song never appears in any media. (Frank Sinatra actually spoke the words in one of his films to avoid having to pay the royalties).
- Not to mention the theme song itself is the Jimmy Hart version of Pierre Henry's "Psyche Rock".
- Listen to the theme song of Teen Titans, then listen to Johnny Rivers' Secret Agent Man. Tell me they don't sound similar.
- "When there's trouble you know who to call! Secret... Agent Man! Secret... Agent Man!"
- In Drawn Together the ukulele riff that sometimes accompanies Wooldoor is an obvious pastiche of a similar one from Spongebob Squarepants.
- Whenever another DCAU hero shows up on Static Shock they are accompanied by The Jimmy Hart Version of their theme... it's even more jarring than the Off Model moments that tend to accompany them.
- The Totally Spies theme is totally a ripoff of Moonbaby's "Here We Go", with (very slightly) different lyrics. May be the reason why they removed the vocals in later seasons.
- Super Jail—as explicitly pointed out by the bumps on Adult Swim—could not get the rights to "Love Shack", so the Warden sings the royalty-free, lawyer-friendly, not-gonna-get-sued-for-it "Love House" during the episode where they build a bar in the jail.
- One episode of the Angry Beavers featured a Jimmy Hart version of "Say You'll Be There" by the Spice Girls
- For The Little Rascals' Christmas Special, a 1979 animated holiday special featuring Our Gang, the producers didn't get the rights to use Leroy Shield's classic theme music, so the special's music composer wrote a Jimmy Hart Version of it.
- Doug used Jimmy Hart versions of the Raiders March from Raiders of the Lost Ark, for Race Canyon, Superman's Theme Tune for Quailman, the James Bond theme for Smash Adams, and the Mission Impossible theme (in Doug's Secret Song when Porkchop is sneaking into Bebe's house), among others,
- A dance scene in the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Jellyfish Jam" uses a techno song called "Stadium Rave A" that sounded a LOT like "Get Ready For This" (A.K.A. "NBA Jam") by 2 Unlimited.
- The Krusty Krab Training Video uses a soundalike for Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger".
- 'Done frequently on South Park.
- South Park had one episode where the adults put on some Cher. The song on the stereo sounds a lot like Cher's "Do You Believe?".
- When Stan's grandfather wanted Stan to understand how awful it is being old, his grandfather puts on a song that sounds a lot like Enya's "Orinoco Flow".
- Pretty much the entire soundtrack to the The Powerpuff Girls episode "Meet the Beat-Alls" is Jimmy Hart versions of (you guessed it) songs by The Beatles, including "A Hard Day's Night", "Eleanor Rigby", "Across the Universe", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "The Ballad of John and Yoko".
- Also, the Rowdyruff Boys' Leitmotif is Jimmy Harted from the PPG's theme song.
|
|
