The description of The Jimmy Hart Version says, to effect, "creators used a similar piece of music because they couldn't/didn't want to pay royalties for a song". But most of the examples themselves are just "Song A sounds like Song B".

It is entirely possible that a composer mimicked a song without realizing it.

I hate to pull a Wikipedia here and ask for cites, but I think we might want to clean up The Jimmy Hart Version the same way people want to clean up Mondegreen.

Sounds like Bland Name Product or Captain Ersatz, but for music. The Same But More Specific. The music section is a hellhole, full of the-same-but-for-music tropes, natter-filled YMMV tropes (Epic Riff anyone?) and nonsense. It's like what the anime ghetto would be like if anime fans weren't so extremely obsessive and willing to (try to) work with others.

edited 9th Aug '11 8:19:46 AM by Xtifr

More like, Poor Man's Substitute, but for music.

It's actually a little of column A and a little of column B.

There are certain songs that are so well known/iconic that it seems incredibly unlikely that a person composing in the same genre would -not- know the original— like how Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog" sounds quite similar to "Day Tripper". There are, however, only a limited number of audible tones, chords and melodies that can be formed out of them (without sounding like an atonal mess) and if you limit yourself entirely to the Western 12-pitch scale, you're eventually going to have SOMETHING that sounds at least PARTIALLY similar to someone else's work.

...and why exactly is a music trope named after a professional wrestler? At least, I've never heard of him, but that's what Wikipedia says.

According to the trope page, he was the WCW's music director for a spell.

edited 9th Aug '11 8:14:38 PM by BioTube

Now I want a name change. (Unless it's a pre-existing term.)

And the bad examples should be cut.

It gets only 6000 google hits, so it's not a widely-used existing term.

The most well-known example is probably the one in the page quote, which is from Vanilla Ice, so arguably Vanilla Ice Version would be a better name than Jimmy Hart Version.

Except the misuse isn't related to the name, just a classic case of Square Peg Round Trope.

I know, I just really dislike the name.

Suspiciously Similar Song sounds snappy.

I like that one.

+1 to that!

It does indeed sound good!

x4 I like it.

Fifthing.

That name sounds too much like it will attract YMMV. On the other hand, the example section has already been decaying that way.

Well it WAS just off the top of my head.

Suspiciously Similar Song sounds a bit too broad, though. As far as I can tell, this trope isn't "Song A sounds like Song B", but "Song A sounds like Song B because they intended it to".

(So Robo's theme from Chrono Trigger sounding like a Rickroll is not an example, but an amazing coincidence.)

Hence "Suspiciously". I seventh it, even if it is a dirty, dirty snowclone.

Also, should we hold examples to ones where the creator admitted to doing this and/or got sued over it? Because if we did "Song A sounds like Song B" without caveats we'd be here all day.

edited 19th Aug '11 5:30:33 PM by dotchan

Perhaps admitted examples and ones that are noted in the media (e.g.: a professional review of something notes that X song/part of the score sounds like Y).

I'm not very well versed in modern music, so any attempt to clean up on my part will rely on Google. Anyone else willing to pitch in?

To be clear, this is also limited to songs made by different people. A good example of what is NOT a Jimmy Hart Version is the World 9 map theme from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, as the song it copied (Rainbow Road from Mario Kart 64) is also from a Mario game.

Are there any admitted examples? Lawsuits happen from that kind of thing, after all.

I think that's an example of a Recurring Riff, not this trope.