Suspiciously Similar Song / Live-Action TV

• A favorite running gag on Mystery Science Theater 3000 was to sing along to Suspiciously Similar Songs with the real song's lyrics.
  • 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 Kenny Loggins (from Top Gun.)
  • Their theme song sounds like (read: is all but identical to) "Legs" by ZZ Top.
    • Another incidental music sounds similar to "La Grange."
  • They did a Suspiciously Similar Song to Indiana Jones theme for "Motorcycle Flip," but Adam also sings a bar from it during the episode.
• 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. (Eric Idle, who played a Rutle and wrote the TV movie, didn't write or perform a note of any of the songs.) However, EMI thought they didn't sound different enough, and, one lawsuit later, several 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."
  • Which has led to a severe case of Misattributed Song, because due to these credits, a whole lot of people think Rutles songs are "lost" Beatle bootlegs.
    • Absolutely true — the generally shoddy mid-1970s bootleg Indian Rope Trick even listed "Cheese and Onions" as a lost Lennon demo. To be fair, Innes' take on Lennon's vocal style is uncanny.
• 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 ^note In the U.S., one has to contract separately for the right to use a song for broadcast purposes and the right to include the song for distribution purposes. Even ten years ago, who would have thought consumers would spend good money on box sets of old TV shows?. For instance, the original 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. The newer releases do retain the song, however.
  • Also, the show used Queen's "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" rather frequently. The DVD used Suspiciously Similar Songs.
• The opening theme to Alcatraz resembles the main synth riff on "The Brazilian" by Genesis.
• Lewis Black's segments on The Daily Show were prefaced with a Suspiciously Similar Song to 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 within the realm of possibility that he'd heard their theme song and had a bout of cryptomnesia later on.
• 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 agonizingly painful.
• Saturday Night Live
  • Discussed Trope in a sketch featuring 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.
  • In another sketch, fake soap opera The Californians uses a poor man's version of America's "Ventura Highway" during the between-scene bumpers. For those who recognize what the music is supposed to sound like, it also serves as a nice little in-joke... Since the main theme of the sketch revolves around stereotypical surfer-accented blondes making repeated references to the Los Angeles street grid/highway system.
  • Crystal Pepsi, a transparent variant of Pepsi, had a famous commercial featuring Van Halen's "Right Now." SNL parodied the commercial with one of its own for "Crystal Gravy", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The SNL version features an original song with a very similar instrumentation and melody; the lyrics are even mostly rephrasings of the real lyrics.
    It's now (Hey)
    Make your decision
    It's now (Hey)
    You can be anything
    It's now
    See the magic moment, the time is here and now
    You'll see everything
    Take a chance on tomorrow
    Say goodbye to yesterday
    Start your livin' for the future
    Can't you hear the wise men say
    It's now (Hey)
    It's now
• Doctor Who and The X-Files- the "oooh wee ooooh" of the former and the whistling in the latter sound very much similar.
• One of the background songs used in Robot Wars from Extreme onwards sounds eerily similar to Metallica's "Enter Sandman".
• 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 Suspiciously Similar Song to the Doctor Who theme tune.
• A track from early in the first series of Doctor Who "Westminster Bridge" is an admitted Suspiciously Similar Song to The Pixies' "Cecilia Ann."
  • "Song for Ten," from "The Christmas Invasion," is a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for the Phil Spector version of "The Bells of St. Mary's."
  • The beginning of "Which One Is The Flesh?" sounds exactly like the beginning of "Flying" from Resident Evil: Afterlife.
• The Knight Rider theme is lifted almost note-for-note from "March and Procession of Bacchus" by Delibes.
  • In turn, it was suspiciously similar to the "chase theme" in Inspector Gadget.
• 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.
  • Predictably, WCW did this with Randy Savage when he jumped to there.
    • 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-Universal Suspiciously Similar Songs.
• 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 American game show Bullseye used "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by Santa Esmeralda as the theme. When the show made it to air, a new theme with similar instrumentation was used.
• Alan Thicke has written Suspiciously Similar Songs to themes for several 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 its 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 Joker's Wild stopped using Jean-Jacques Perry and Gershon Kingsley's "The Savers" as its theme, they briefly switched to a Suspiciously Similar Song to the theme, written by Thicke. They later switched to a rearrangement of "The Savers".
  • The pilot episode of Wheel of Fortune used "Give It One", composed 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.
  • One of the prize cues on Wheel in the early days sounded a lot like "Temptation Eyes" by The Grass Roots. Another was the Blank Check theme.
• The short-lived 1998 revival of Match Game used a Suspiciously Similar Song to 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 suspiciously similar to "Tuning Up", the theme that had been used on all 1970s incarnations of the Pyramids. This is actually a subversion, as "Tuning Up" was a piece of stock music that Bob Cobert arranged, and the $25,000 theme was his own composition.
• 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 Suspiciously Similar Song.
• 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.
  • They also retooled (just barely) the Peter Gunn theme for "THE BISHOP!"
• 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".
  • Related to the copyright issues with the MMPR theme, when Tommy fought the iconic Green Ranger during a dream sequence in Dino Thunder's "Fighting Spirit", the Dragon Dagger's music was this, because Saban owned that music too.
  • In the trailers leading up to Operation Overdrive, a song was used that sounded like Rage Against The Machine's "Guerilla Radio."
  • As in Dino Thunder, when Overdrive did a teamup episode featuring MMPR's Adam plus four rangers from Disney seasons, each fought to theme music from their show...except for Adam. Disney wasn't willing to cut the check to Saban.
• The Psych episode "Extradition: British Columbia" uses Suspiciously Similar Songs to the anthem "O Canada", including a rock version and a guitar version.
• Alton Brown's Good Eats has an episode called "The Egg Files," which features a tune that sounds quite similar to the theme of, you guessed it, The X-Files.
  • A suspiciously similar song to the James Bond is used for W's appearances (Herself a parody of Bond's Q).
  • He also did the main theme in the style of "Tubular Bells" for the episode "Give Peas A Chance", which spoofed The Exorcist.
  • When combining hardware to make new devices, the music is generally in the style of The A-Team.
• One Cake Boss trailer used a Suspiciously Similar Song to Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger".
• Modern Marvels episode '70s Tech had a segment comparing the speed of a calculator to that of a slide rule. The background music playing was a rendition of the Jeopardy theme.
• Gerbert had a scene in which the title character gets upset over losing a spelling bee. The very dramatic music playing during this scene sounds like a Suspiciously Similar Song to the Twin Peaks theme.
• The game "Safecrackers" on The Price Is Right originally used The Pink Panther theme when introduced, but two different songs replaced it, the latter being a Suspiciously Similar Song.
• A episode of The UFO Files has a just-off version of The X-Files theme.
• Suspiciously Similar Songs to the Superman: The Movie movie theme by John Williams show up in the 1988 The Adventures of Superboy TV series and Lois & Clark. Smallville, however, averts this.
• The theme to Sandra Lee's Sandra's Money Saving Meals sounds like a poor man's Good Times by Chic.
• In this Jimmy Kimmel Live segment, Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz sings a Suspiciously Similar song to "Indeed, I am very glad that I finally am returning home", aka the Trololo song.
• The theme song for this Singaporean drama series (starts at about 9:18) is a Chinese version of "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz.
• When the 2000s version of Ripley's Believe It or Not! aired a segment on a man spinning 25 basketballs at once, they played a Suspiciously Similar Song to the Harlem Globetrotters' whistling theme song ("Sweet Georgia Brown") with footage of the team.
• The entire soundtrack of The Wayans Bros. consists of these. People who are fans of East Coast hip-hop from the mid-90s will recognize most of the instrumentals played between scenes.
• You could easily make a Drinking Game out of this while watching a few hours of HGTV. "Hey, that sounds almost like "All Star" by Smash Mouth! And this sounds almost like that song from Zoolander!"
• A Hong Kong period drama has a piece of background music that's really a suspiciously similar instrumental of "I Dreamed a Dream".
• The theme tune to America's Got Talent is a simulated version of the theme tune from The X Factor. It must be noted that both shows were created by Simon Cowell.
  • As a consequence to this, Britain's Got Talent mostly averts the trope with a different theme tune.
• The opener for the 1990 Logie Awards telecast (the Aussie version of the Emmys) was designed to evoke Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire".
• Better Off Ted episode "Secret and Lives" has a Suspiciously Similar Song to "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" when the magic starts.
• Cartoon Network original movie Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins has a scene featuring a Suspiciously Similar Song to "Battle Without Honour Or Humanity".
• FOX's 2010 baseball playoff promos used a very close instrumental knockoff of Aerosmith's "Dream On".
  • Also, the NFL on FOX theme bears a very close resemblance to the bridge of Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride" (which they have been known to Lampshade during the holiday season).
• The theme from the Disney Channel Original Series The Jersey is almost identical to the instrumental chorus of Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song".
• The Edison Twins' animated educational segments used a quite obvious Suspiciously Similar Song to the Laurel and Hardy theme music.
• In Torchwood, Captain John Hart gets a Suspiciously Similar Song to "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" by The Beatles as his theme music.
• TLC's What Not to Wear occasionally uses a Suspiciously Similar Song to Duran Duran's "Rio" for the subject's post-makeover interview.
• The broadcasts of Newton's Apple used Kraftwerk's "Ruckzuck" from 1983 to 1989, and a remixed version from 1990 to 1994, but due to licensing difficulties, the home videos used a Suspiciously Similar Song.
• When something very slick and spy-like is going on in Chuck, an obviously James Bond-like theme tends to play.
• Conan had an Audience Game sketch called "Basic Cable Name That Tune"; because they couldn't afford the rights to play the actual songs, the band performs a suspiciously similar version of an actual song with lyrics parodying the originals, and the contestant has to guess what the real song was.
  Conan: What song does that sound like, but I can prove to you legally it isn't?
  • In the segment where Andy joins a curling team, Andy "records" a song called "Roll the Rock" which sounds very similar to "Eye of the Tiger". In the end of the segment knock-off of "Chariots of Fire" plays.
• Arrested Development has great fun lampshading this trope in the episode "Making a Stand". The narrator muses, over a series of still photographs played in lieu of interesting footage, that no matter what theme music is played underneath, it still isn't very interesting. He comments that they even tried The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine", but they couldn't afford it. Over a subsequent photo montage, an obviously Suspiciously Similar Song called "Yellow Boat" can be heard.
• Red Dwarf's original theme tune was in the style of Also Sprach Zarathustra but with the tune of its closing theme. Also, Ace Rimmer's leitmotif is a clear version of Take My Breath Away. Meanwhile, the theme tune used from the third series onwards contains a riff lifted straight from David Bowie's "Life on Mars".
• In Treme, violinist Annie takes a stab at writing her own songs. Her first attempt results in a slightly altered version of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."
• NCIS Los Angeles season 2, episode 23 featured a recurring tune that sounds a lot like one of the instrumental songs from the video game Legend Of Mana.
• Every single MADtv song parody, ever. Likewise, any time the show parodied a movie or a TV show, the background music was suspiciously similar to the music most associated with the parody source.
  • Which is hardly a surprise as In Living Color did the same thing years before MADtv existed.
• The South Korean drama "Myeongweol, the Spy" has Suspiciously Similar Songs to the James Bond theme and the Mission: Impossible theme running in the background during scenes.
• In the last episode of Just Cause, when Patrick runs in slow-motion down the street to deliver a document on time, a Suspciously Similar Song to the theme from Chariots of Fire plays.
• The fanfare used for the 1990s-early 2000s version of the Paramount Television Vanity Plate is actually a Suspiciously Similar Song to the Star Wars opening theme.
  • It's actually a remix of the last six notes of the rarely-heard Paramount Pictures theatrical fanfare, but does sound similar.
  • Which is ironic when Paramount's former ownership of Star Trek is taken into account.
• An in-universe example: Jeremy's song "Outrageous" sounds a lot like "Firestarter" by The Prodigy if you removed everything musical about it and made a music video full of confusing political "satire".
• Whitest Kids U Know- Let's Wake Up The Neighbors is suspiciously similar to Daddy Yankee's Gasolina, and rather dangerously close to the original.
• The instrumental portion of the Remote Control theme song (which you hear over pretty much half the show) very closely resembles "Fire" by the Ohio Players.
• I'm Telling! (The Newlywed Game FOR KIDS!) has a Footloose ripoff as its theme.
• In the episode of Saved by the Bell where Bayside gets a new school song, the new song is based on the theme song from Cheers.
• Super Sentai
  • Tsubasamaru's theme from Ninja Sentai Kakuranger is an uptempo version of the famous Blade Runner ending titles.
  • A commercial for Kagaku Sentai Dynaman's Dynarobo uses BGM that sounds strangely like Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger".
  • The beginning part of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger's opening uses some motifs from Total Recall (1990).
  • Engine Sentai Go-onger's opening sounds like the theme of Power Rangers S.P.D..
  • And of course, among other Star Wars nods, the Gorma leitmotif in Gosei Sentai Dairanger is a slightly-altered Imperial March.
• The opening theme song to Touch (2012) sounds quite a bit like Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place". This similarity is practically confirmed by the original closed captions used on the pilot episode (and still present on the Hulu stream); suffice it to say, apparently the version submitted for captioning did use the Radiohead track, before it was overdubbed for the final broadcast.
• WKRP in Cincinnati used a ton of licensed music, but those licenses eventually expired. For syndication and DVD releases, the music was replaced. The new music tends to sound nothing like the original, except when a specific song was central to a plot point or mood. One notable example was at the end of the episode "I Want To Keep My Baby," where Johnny Fever plays James Taylor's "Your Smiling Face." The syndicated version replaces this with an obvious soundalike.
  • Later (mostly) averted in the Shout Factory DVD release, which reacquired the rights for about 80% of the music, and tried to use more similar substitutes when necessary.
  • The famously unintelligible closing theme song strongly resembles "China Grove" by The Doobie Brothers.
  • Also the background music played during a basketball game in the episode "Kisses and Basketball," sounds like "Unsung," by Helmet.
• The background music used on Anderson Cooper's talk show, sounds like "Luxury," by Imperial Teen.
• The Theme Tune to Press Your Luck is relatively similar to the stock music used on the pilot — nearly-identical arrangement and some chord patterns.
• Done in Storage Wars when resident Smug Snake Dave arrives in his enormous truck; the accompanying tune is not quite The Imperial March from Star Wars.
• In an early episode of Quantum Leap where Sam jumps into a boxer, there's a Training Montage set to a noticeably less triumphant yet suspiciously similar version of the music from the Training Montage in Rocky.
• Joel McNeely's score for the Young Indy episode "Phantom Train of Doom" features setpieces with similar segments to the tank fight score from Last Crusade, as well as the finale to Hook.
• The Sons of Anarchy episode "Small World" is named for a snow globe that plays a tune that isn't quite "It's a Small World", the copyright for which is owned by Disney.
• The opening theme and credits for a Russian show named Freud's Method looks awfully similar to the opening theme and credits to Sherlock. The main character of the former is also described as a special consultant to the police who solves "complex cases using outstanding insight and brilliant logic".
• The Family Channel Game Show It Takes Two had a Theme Tune (complete with words) suspiciously similar to "It Takes Two" by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston.
• The theme song to Jeremy Kyle's daytime talk show blatantly copies Kool & the Gang's "Celebration"
• BBC One's 2013 "Love Spring" station idents used a Suspiciously Similar Song to The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun".
• The song featured in History's 2013 preview trailer sounds a lot like OneRepublic's "Everybody Loves Me". That's because History couldn't get the rights to the OneRepublic song and thus commissioned the company Jingle Punks to come up with something "suspiciously similar". The song on the trailer is titled "Winning Is Everything".
  • The new History Channel promo featuring Pawn Stars, American Restoration and Counting Cars uses a song that sounds suspiciously like Tame Impala's "Elephant".
• The Hancock's Half Hour episode "The Bowmans" revolves around the recording of a radio drama very obviously based on The Archers, and with a theme tune suspiciously (and appropriately) similar to that series' theme "Barwick Green".
• Jeopardy!'s theme song "Think" sounds suspiciously similar to "I'm A Little Teapot".
• Doctor Who's "I Am the Doctor" and Mass Effect 2's "Suicide Mission" have parts that sound remarkably similar to each other.
  • Speaking of "I Am the Doctor", it also sounds similar to the beginning of "His World" from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
• The old HGTV series Simply Quilts has a theme song that sounds just way too much like R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming".
• The theme to American Horror Story sounds like a dark version of the theme to the Austin Powers film series.
• The pilot to Marry Me (2014) has "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes as its theme song. From the second episode on, it has a vaguely similar generic song that evokes "Home", but most certainly is not.
• On Silver Spoons when Michael Jackson^note actually an In-Universe impersonator Alfonso hires to cover up his Celebrity Lie shows up at the local hangout his bodyguards carry a boombox which is playing a song similar to "Billie Jean."
• The Late Show with David Letterman: When it came up during a show that Eagles charge a flat fee of $250,000 for using one of their songs on TV - in order to keep people from using one of their songs on TV - the staff discovers that CBS has the rights to a song similar to "Life in the Fast Lane" and played a little bit of it.
• In the Ice Capades special based on Super Mario Bros., the appearance of the eponymous duo is accompanied by a song that sounds kind of like the Mario series theme if you're not paying attention. Oddly, the actual theme was played earlier in the special with no alterations.
• Some of the themes in the between-scenes bits on That '70s Show sound quite a bit like popular rock songs from the 1970s. Notably, the "baby baby baby" wail sounds like Led Zeppelin 's "baby, baby, baby do you like it" (from "Misty Mountain Hop"). And there's a riff in the later season that sounds exactly like "Same Old Song and Dance" by Aerosmith.
• One Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt episode plays with this trope as Kimmy has a cassette called Now That Sounds Like Music, a collection of songs where the instrumental is mainly the same but the lyrics are altered drastically (a take-off on soundalike records). Examples include "Hiking on Starlight" ("Walking on Sunshine") and "I'm Freaking Out" ("All By Myself").
• The theme of Video and Arcade Top 10 is similar to Crash Man's stage in Mega Man 2.
  • "This Was a Shitshow" is one of these for "My Way" by Frank Sinatra, with elements of "The Way We Were" by Barbra Streisand.
  • "His Status is Preferred" has elements of "Making Whoopee".
  • "Cold Showers Lead to Crack" is basically "Ya Got Trouble" from The Music Man with even more absurd moralizing.
• Many songs on the Galavant soundtrack are clearly inspired by previously-recorded music. Alan Menken even self-plagiarizes his past Disney soundtracks:
  • "Let's Agree to Disagree" is a take on "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"
  • The melody of "Off With His Shirt" is clearly a remixed version of "It's Raining Men".
  • "Maybe You Won't Die Alone" takes its inspiration from "Kiss the Girl" from The Little Mermaid, albeit executed as a mariachi number rather than as a calypso.
  • "Dwarves vs. Giants" takes multiple cues from West Side Story, specifically the whistling from "Prologue" and the single soprano contrasting the male gangs from "Quintet".
  • "Finally" is clearly inspired by "Summer Nights" from Grease.
  • "Do the D'Dew" is an evil version of "The Silly Song".
  • "My Dragon Pal and Me" is a lot like the theme song from That Girl
  • The Angry Mob Song "Today We Rise" is very similar to "One Day More" from Les Misérables.
  • "Jackass In A Can" sounds awfully similar to "Gee, Officer Krupke" from West Side Story.
• The theme song to several of the Power Rangers series, "Go Go Power Rangers", is a poor man's version of "Kickstart my Heart" by Mötley Crüe. Other comparisons include "Electric Eye" by Judas Priest, which was actually used to pitch the series.
  • The song played when Mike and Kevin morph against Epoxar sounds a lot like Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide's theme.
• NBC's Thursday Night Football theme appeared to heavily interpolate "The Final Countdown".
• The theme song to Full House sounds like a low-pitched version of Delicate Ni Sukishite from Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel.
• The theme song to Video Power sounds like a poor mans version of 3 A.M. Eternal by The KLF.
• In-Universe in Malcolm in the Middle when Malcolm tries to expand on his creative side by composing an emotional melancholy song, which he sings and plays on a guitar in front of his family. The musical genius of the family, Dewey, starts singing "Meow Meow Meow Meow" (the Meow Mix cat food jingle), since the song had the exact same tune.
• The second theme song to Trucks & Tractor Power sounds similar to "Gimme Three Steps" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
• The Zoobilee Zoo theme sounds like "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South crossed with the "Raiders March" from the Indiana Jones series.
• The main theme of Two and a Half Men has a beat similar to Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons."
• The version of "Kiss Me" used as the theme song for the sixth and seventh seasons of The Cosby Show is almost a Dead ringer for "Shotgun" by Junior Walker and the All-Stars.
• The main theme of That's My Bush! resembles "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz.
• From season 2 onward, Funny You Should Ask uses a theme song that sounds similar to Pharrell Williams' 'Happy'. It used the real deal during season 1.
• The soundtrack in season 3 episode 7 of Money Heist, during the chase when the Professor and the Inspector are trying to escape in the ambulance (about 33:12 on), is a beat-for-beat recreation of Brothers In Arms" from Mad Max: Fury Road.
• The famous bass Epic Riff that opens the Barney Miller theme was improvised in the studio by session musician Chuck Berghofer, but he later said he based it around a riff from James Taylor's "Rock 'n' Roll is Music Now". Indeed, the Taylor riff starts off on bass toward the end of the song and is picked up by the other instruments in a Boléro Effect.
• Friends: The producers wanted to set Ross and Rachel's first kiss to U2's "With or Without You" but couldn't get the rights in time to use it. The scene is instead set to a similar sounding instrumental. They managed to get the rights cleared up in time to use the song in the next episode where it plays on the radio.
• The theme song to British geriatric cop show New Tricks is 'It's Alright' (sic) written by Mike Moran and sung by Dennis Waterman. The words and melody are very similar to 'The End of the Line', by The Traveling Wilburys. A version of this, also sung by Waterman, was used for the pilot episode.
• Sesame Street's parodies almost always have original melodies, as PBS shows do not have the budget to license song rights.
  • "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 one of the few exceptions, directly borrowing the melody of Huey Lewis and the News' "Hip to be Square", with Lewis being credited as co-writer.
  • Billy Idle's "Rebel L" is a sound alike of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell."
  • Bruce Stringbean's "Born to Add" and "Barn in the USA" spoof Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA," respectively.
  • Sesame Street's composers being the creative people they were, sometimes these deviated pretty far from their sources. "Kids Just Love to Brush" was clearly based on "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", but really doesn't sound much like it at all. And word has it that Cookie Monster's famous rap "Healthy Food" was based on... "Walk This Way"!
  • The "Monsterpiece Theater" theme is slightly different from the "Masterpiece Theater" theme it is meant to parody, which was unnecessary since the "Masterpiece Theater" theme is public domain.
  • Sesame Workshop (then Children's Television Workshop) almost got sued by ATV Music over "Letter B," their parody of The Beatles' "Let It Be". Then Michael Jackson bought the Lennon/McCartney catalog, so CTW only paid $50 (which came from composer Chris Cerf's pocket).
    • "I in the Sky"^note which predates The Alan Parsons Project's "Eye in the Sky" by a decade is a more subtle pastiche of "Yellow Submarine".
  • The song Elmo pounds on the piano at the end of Elmo's World sketches is eight notes (in the end) away from "Jingle Bells," with a different word repeated 28 times.
  • In one jogging montage, they played music suspiciously similar to, but legally different from, Vangelis' main theme to Chariots of Fire.
  • Possibly unintentional, but the song at the end of the "Journey to Ernie" segments is, especially in the final bars, quite similar to the ending theme from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
  • "Monster In The Mirror" sounds like a slower version of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" by Elton John and Kiki Dee.
  • The second part of "The Geometry of Circles", composed by Philip Glass of all people, resembles "The Dignity of Labour, Part 3" by The Human League (MK 1).
  • "Above It All" is suspiciously similar to "Gloria" by Umberto Tozzi/Laura Branigan.
  • "New Ball in Town", oddly, is similar to "Up on the House Top", which is a public domain Christmas song.
  • "Listen to the Bells" is a close sound alike of The Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann".
  • "Beginning, Middle, and End" is a pastiche of Talking Heads' "And She Was".
• The Sunny Side Up Show:
  • "Kwanzaa Candles" is similar to "Do Wah Diddy," primarily the Exciters version.
  • "Chica's Little Baby Chick" is a pastiche of Renée Zellweger's "Roxie."
  • "Days of the Week" is similar to Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown."
• Bill Nye the Science Guy featured parodies of pop songs with scientific lyrics for its music videos, in addition to Suspiciously Similar Songs to several tunes, e.g. La Bamba, the 007 theme, Wipe Out (the surfing song), etc. Some of the parodies, much like Sesame Street, deviated rather far from their source material, such as "The Moon Cycle" (Queen's "Bicycle Race"), "My Favorite Star" (Deep Purple's "Highway Star"), and "G.R.A.V.I.T.Y." (either 2 Unlimited's "Twilight Zone" or The Immortals' "Techno Syndrome").
• MythBusters 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 Kenny Loggins (from Top Gun.)
  • Their theme song sounds like (read: is all but identical to) "Legs" by ZZ Top.
    • Another incidental music sounds similar to "La Grange."
• One episode of Zoey 101 had the "Macalana," which was nearly identical to the Macarena.
• 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 within the realm of possibility that he'd heard their theme song and had a bout of cryptomnesia later on.
• In one episode of That's So Raven, Raven knocked over a lamp while compulsively dancing to "HER JAM!", which sounded suspiciously like the understandably danceable song "Crazy In Love" by Beyonce.
• The first theme song written for Sigmund and the Sea Monsters sounded very similar in some respects to I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (AKA: the famous Coca-Cola "hilltop song"), so much so, that Sid and Marty Kroft were allegedly sued, leading to the creation of the show's second theme song.
• The theme from The Suite Lifeof Zackand Cody sounds like a blatant rip-off of "Ballroom Blitz," by Sweet.
  • Also the background music played during a basketball game in the episode "Kisses and Basketball," sounds like "Unsung," by Helmet.
• Horrible Histories lives on this trope. Once an Episode there is a song that is usually a parody of a song with a style that fits the characters, or occasionally a loose pastiche of someone's musical style:
  • Cleopatra's song is a takeoff of "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga, as a melodramatic fashion-loving queen, and the video uses a Homage Shot to the music video for "Telephone" when we're looking at the people she murdered to get the crown.
  • The Luddites sing a song very like "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols.
  • The four bad Roman Emperors sing a thinly-veiled version of "Bad" by Michael Jackson.
  • "My name is, my name is, my name is Charles the Second..."
  • The Norman family tree is a pastiche of "Knowing Me Knowing You" by ABBA.
  • The Borgia Family? The theme to The Addams Family.
  • The Georgian Navy's song is very like football novelty single "Vindaloo".
  • Patchacouti's song is a lot like "Agadoo" by Black Lace, only with lyrics about dismemberment and torture.
  • Mary Seacole's song is a lot like "Single Ladies" by Beyoncé, and she does some of the dance moves in the video.
  • Owain Glendyr sings a song much like "Delilah" by (famous Welsh Singer) Tom Jones, which morphs into "Kiss" by Prince (covered by Tom Jones) when he mentions becoming Prince of Wales.
  • The Aztec Priests' song is an obvious spoof of "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees.
  • Mary I performs a number which sounds suspiciously similar to Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights", along with the misty music video elements, down to Bush's out-of-the-ordinary singing style.
  • Marcus Crassus has a Boastful Rap about how rich he is which sounds an awful lot like Dizzee Rascal's "Bonkers".
  • The song about Australia's founding is a lot like Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky".
  • Charles Dickens' song about his life is an almost note-for-note take of "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by The Smiths.
  • Dick Turpin's song is based on "Stand and Deliver" by Adam and the Ants.
  • Joan of Arc sings about her story to a tune very similar to "Price Tag" by Jessie J.
  • The song about heiroglyphics? "ABC" by Jackson 5.
  • Boudicca's song is a lot like "That's Not My Name" by the Ting Tings, though the middle eight is a reference to "Pop Muzik" by M.
  • The monks, when partying, sing like "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" by Black Cherry.
  • The Pilgrim Fathers' song is very close to "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z.
  • The song with the transportation pioneers singing about their inventions is a pretty obvious take-off of "Greased Lightning" from Grease.
• The theme from the Sprout series Noodle and Doodle sounds like the minor enemy encounter (i.e. Hammer Bros.) theme from Super Mario Bros. 3.
• The Good Night Show: According to writer and composer Tim Burns, the 2009 opening song has a Beatles-style feel to it.
• Zoom
  • The "Email or Z Mail" song sounds like "Freedom '90" by George Michael.
  • The Season 7 theme song sounds like "Rock Steady" by The Whispers.
• The theme tune to the CBeebies show Topsy and Tim sounds exceptionally like Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe", right down to the instruments.
• The Amanda Show: In the first Melody and Thad sketch, the song they sing about the nasty restaurant sounds similar to "Piano Man" by Billy Joel.
• The Zoobilee Zoo theme sounds like "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South crossed with the "Raiders March" from the Indiana Jones series.
• The main theme of Two and a Half Men has a beat similar to Tennessee Ernie Ford's "Sixteen Tons."
• The theme song of Between the Lions sounds an awful lot like "I Just Can't Wait to be King" from The Lion King. Since both are about lions and the former began airing six years after the release of the latter, the similarity is probably not accidental.
• The title song from the Wimzie's House episode "Achoo!" sounds quite a bit like the "Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!" song from Madeline's Christmas. Especially since both songs feature Sonja Ball, who voices Wimzie here and Nicole in the Madeline special. They were also both produced by Cinar.
• LazyTown:
  • "Bing Bang" sounds like a mashup of the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" and The Human League's "Don't You Want Me".
  • "No One's Lazy in LazyTown" sounds like an awful lot like Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca".
  • The main riff to "Cooking By The Book" sounds similar to the opening riff for TLC's "No Scrubs".
  • "I Am A Prince", while mostly a pastiche of the late-90s Cheiron Studios style, has similarities to "Larger Than Life" by the Backstreet Boys.
• The opening theme to Donkey Hodie sounds like the one to the 2003 The Berenstain Bears animated series.
  • "Blow Your Troubles Away" sounds like "It's All Right" from Soul.
• "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher" from The Witcher sounds slightly similar to "City Ruins" from NieR: Automata.
• The theme song for Good Luck Charlie sounds very similar to "Sk8er Boi" by Avril Lavigne.
• The theme used by National Geographic from 1964 to 1987 is almost but not quite Jupiter from Gustav Holst's "The Planets" symphony.
• WandaVision: The four-note Recurring Riff uses nearly the exact same note structure as the first few notes for Danny Elfman's The Simpsons theme. And then Elfman's score for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness arguably made it full circle, as he works in the WandaVision riff into one of the tracks.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi: John Williams's leitmotif for Kenobi sounds like John Paesano's theme for Spider-Man (PS4).
• The Dinosaurs episode, "Into the Woods" features a scene where Baby plays a Fictional Video Game called Tarpit Idiots, which reminds him that he should be saving Earl, Robbie, and Roy, who really are sinking into a tarpit (just to drive the point home, the characters in Tarpit Idiots closely resemble Earl, Robbie, and Roy). The BGM for Tarpit Idiots sounds like an off-key rendition of the BGM for Marble Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog.
• In the Kindergarten episode "Movin' Up", an offbeat version of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" plays as the class recalls past memories. Given that the piece is public domain, it's unknown why they did this.
• The Days of Our Lives theme was modeled on "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof.
• The Instrumental Theme Tune that General Hospital used for their famous "ambulance" opening in The '80s (called "Autumn Breeze", complete with Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics), is an obvious pastiche of Burt Bacharach's musical style (the horns, the syncopation, the big buildup toward the end).
• The second part of the "True Creation Requires Sacrifice" from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power sounds suspiciously similar to the second half of "Light Of the Seven from Game of Thrones. The ominous solo violin with the "impeding doom" crescendo and the epic climax of the cello toward the end have almost same chord progression as those heard in "Light of the Seven".
• The Murder, She Wrote episode "Murder Among Friends", which is set during the filming of a popular sitcom about "a group of twentysomethings sitting around discussing their sex lives" opens with some music that is almost, but not quite, the outro of "I'll Be There For You" by The Rembrandts.
• The theme song to The Noddy Shop sounds similar to the theme song for Peppermint Park, the infamous Sesame Street ripoff from The '80s.
• One episode of Doom Patrol (2019) sees Rita imagining herself as part of a glamorous crime-fighting duo with Vic called "Beekeeper & Borg". The theme song sounds incredibly similar to the classic theme from The Avengers.
• Sherlock: In "The Empty Hearse", the track that plays during the Cold Opening seems to owe a lot to "The Heist" from Trance.
• The opening credits theme of The Orville, especially the third-season remix, derives from "Life Is a Dream," the main theme of the first and fifth Star Trek films and The Next Generation.
• The theme song to Pinoy Big Brother, "Pinoy Ako", is clearly derived from the new wave song "Chandeliers" by The Care. Orange & Lemons frontman Clem Castro later admitted in an interview that he cites The Care as one of the band's influences, subconsciously deriving "Pinoy Ako"'s main riffs from "Chandeliers", though he also maintains that the song's chord progression is a common musical trope across genres such as blues and reggae.
• Tots TV's intro has a repeating line ("I'm a tot / Je suis une tot / Tilly, Tom and Tiny") whose melody sounds very similar to a repeating line from The Paragons' 1967 song "The Tide is High" ("I'm not the kind of man who gives up just like that").

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