I think it was Camy or Kev, regular listeners both, who mentioned that Springsteen's My Lucky Day, from his most recent album Working on a Dream, was reminiscent of...something else. I'd been thinking the same thing for weeks. And tonight, after a bit of trawling through Google and YouTube (I could hear those words, 'in the midnight, moonlight hour') I found it.
Except Here Comes My Baby is twenty times the song My Lucky Day is. It has, for example, not just a proper chorus, but one that soars and develops through three separate sections. It's a genuinely joyful, pop classic. Springsteen just repeats (and repeats and repeats) the same seven-note riff that comprises Here Comes My Baby's first line.
Cat Stevens, AKA Yusuf, AKA Yusuf Islam is, without doubt, one of the great pop songwriters. Matthew and Son, here Comes My Baby, Father and Son, Moonshadow, Bitterblue and if nothing else, The First Cut Is the Deepest. Springsteen, an avowed fan of the British beat boom, would most certainly have known the Tremeloes version of Here Comes My Baby, maybe even have performed it. Any bootlegs out there?
Anyway, compare and contrast. The studio footage, where Springsteen asks for 'a retro feel', is particularly revealing.
2 comments:
I don't know enough about music to say but I enjoyed the clip. But Springsteen has always very publicly said how much influence the Brit Invasion had on him and has played loads of such covers over the years Yarbirds, Kinks, animals and yes The Clash all big influences.
Are we talking rip-off deliberately or strongly influenced by?
Nice try, but ultimately kind of a stretch... there are similarities but not enough to constitute plagarism...the changes are different, the groove is totally different, the structure between verse and chorus are different.
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