Artists who reference other's songs

Cheap Trick's "Stop This Game," the first track off their album, ALL SHOOK UP, starts with a slowly fading-in note that was purportedly a painstaking recreation of the final dramatic note of "A Day in the Life" on the Beatles' SGT.PEPPER'S.

Elastica's "Waking Up" -----> the Stranglers' "No More Heroes."

Killing Joke's "Bloodsport" -------> Neu!'s "Negativland."

The Doors' "Hello, I Love You" ------> the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night" (this one's arguable).

Simillarly, on UNDER A BLOOD RED SKY, Bono messed with the lyrics to "Send in the Clowns" in the middle-eight, until another lawsuit stripped the album of it (you cannot hear it on the CD version, thanks to Jimmy Iovine's editing).

Oh, and on UNDER A BLOOD RED SKY, the track where Bono tried to send in the clowns is "Electric Co."

Public Enemy made Party For Your Right To Fight. Was (Not Was) claimed I Feel Better Than James Brown. I think the Butthole Surfers's No, I'm An Iron Man was a Sabbaf reference, Half Man Half Biscuit's Reasons To Be Miserable must be a riposte to Ian Dury, Helen Love's Rockaway Beach For Me, Heartbreak Hotel For You is self- explanatory, as is Meatmouth's Meatmouth Is Murder, and the JAMMs' Don't Take Five (Take What You Want) refers to Dave Brubeck.

Plagiarism is usually fine with me, but I have to say I felt sick when I heard that Blur song where Damon starts singing 'Space is the place' with all the heart and soul of a fucking courgette.

Less lists! more talking!

I believe Sofia Coppola took notice of this.

o The TV Personalities casually drift into the Byrds' "8 Miles High" riff on one "King & Country."
o Cornershop's "England's Dreaming" collapses into Morrissey's "I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour..." before seemingly indicating their disdain with a "Fight the Power!"
o There's a Moose song (probably "Boy"?) which appears to steal most of its chorus from a Tim Buckley song I can't quite recall the name of. Can anyone confirm that I'm not fabricating this?

The list is endless, everyone stills from everyone, really. I once read that our civilization has a much bigger legacy of imitation than creativity, and I have to agree. But I do like when people take parts from other songs and write a much better one. If they make something better than the original, that's o.k. by me.

Others off the top of my head.

Sonic Youth: Bubblegum (the vocal melody is the riff to Till the End of the Day by the Kinks)

Kinks: Sittin' On My Sofa shares a lyric with Lovely Rita and a guitar riff that is similar to the aforementioned Taxman song.

Another example is "Twisted Logic", which is a rip off Radiohead's "Electioneering"

...Elvis Costello drops two lines of "Dancing Queen" into "When I Was Cruel Pt.2"

Here's one more:

R.E.M.'s "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite" opens with Stipe's approximation of the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" falsetto (hence, probably, the song name - in R.E.M.'s grand tradition of holding on to blatantly provisional titles: "Country Feedback" etc).

examples:

"all or nothing at all" (referencing sinatra)
"mansion on the hill" (hank williams)
"wreck on the highway" (roy acuff)
"downbound train" (chuck berry)
"dancing in the dark" (sinatra again)
"two faces" (lou christie)
"walk like a man" (four seasons)
etc etc

you could argue that a lot of them are coincidences, but some of 'em have further lyrical references within, and when you add the book titles and movie titles he's also referenced with abandon, it's fairly obvious he's doing it on purpose.

Empereror does a small part of Metallica's For whom The Bell Tolls in Anthems To The Welkin At Dusks' The Acclamation of Bonds.

This section of Time Trap by Built to Spill sounds like a pretty direct nod to Gates of Steel by Devo.

https://youtu.be/goV57pGmiCk?t=11s

https://youtu.be/1F9amPUZokg?t=1m48s

Rabbit heart by Florence references house jam by gang gang dance

SSION's recent "At Least The Sky Is Blue" strings multiple borrowed elements together, most conspicuously "In Every Dream Home...", "Not In Love" and "Hey Hey, My My".

(Come to think of it, Roxy Music themselves do similar in the latter half of "Remake/Remodel" innit. Classical works have likewise been known to pay tribute via borrowed melodic elements. Or so I keep reading in liner notes; they're often too subtle for me.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to9ggdpiSyk

Cool ^