Artists ripping themselves off.

[buzby]

The KLF - recycling their Pure Trance singles into the Stadium House trilogy, and giving the unreleased White Room album a refresh to suit. They then polished up It's Grim Up North, with Bill replacing Pete Wylie on vocals, remade What time Is Love? again in dance-rock style before remaking Justified And Ancient from The White Room (which itself originated as Hey Hey We Are Not The Monkees from their 1987 debut) with Tammy Wynette.

As well as recycling their songs, they also started sampling themselves, with vocals samples (for example Katie Kissoon/PP Arnold session vocal chants of "Mu Mu", "KLF!" etc.) and dating from their pre Pure Trance era tracks (and from tracks from the aborted first version of the White Room) appearing on the new Stadium House versions of the tracks.

They made a little go a long way - still geniuses though.

[thecuriousorange]

Up and Down by the Vengaboys was essentially a dry run for The Vengabus is Coming.

[idunnosomename]

i bet it was

[phantom_power]

The KLF - recycling their Pure Trance singles into the Stadium House trilogy, and giving the unreleased White Room album a refresh to suit. They then polished up It's Grim Up North, with Bill replacing Pete Wylie on vocals, remade What time Is Love? again in dance-rock style before remaking Justified And Ancient from The White Room (which itself originated as Hey Hey We Are Not The Monkees from their 1987 debut) with Tammy Wynette.

As well as recycling their songs, they also started sampling themselves, with vocals samples (for example Katie Kissoon/PP Arnold session vocal chants of "Mu Mu", "KLF!" etc.) and dating from their pre Pure Trance era tracks (and from tracks from the aborted first version of the White Room) appearing on the new Stadium House versions of the tracks.

They made a little go a long way - still geniuses though.

Yeah their stuff is riddled with re-use, even on things like Chill Out, but it seems almost like they are all of a piece that re-uses motifs in an artistic way rather than a lazy rip-off

[Jockice]

An oldie from a future comedy hero. I heard I Don't Want To Live With Monkeys by The Higsons on Six Music at the weekend and immediately thought about how their follow up, Conspiracy, has exactly the same chorus but with different words.

[Ray Travez]

New Order ripped off the theme from Reportage for World in Motion

[jobotic]

C'mon Everybody and Let's Get Together by Eddie Cochran are exactly the same song.

[buzby]

New Order ripped off the theme from Reportage for World in Motion

Technically, although it was credited to New Order, the Reportage theme was by The Other Two ("Gillian never contributed to the band", eh Hooky?)

[Icehaven]

Harry Nillson:  Everybody's Talking / I Guess The Lord Must Be in New York City

I believe "I Guess The Lord..." was supposed to be on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, but it wasn't ready in time or they didn't like it or something so they used "Everybody's Talkin'" instead. ET is a cover anyway.

[purlieu]

Simple Minds claim that the chorus of Sense of Discovery being almost identical to that of their famous hit Alive and Kicking was not only accidental, but went unnoticed until after the album was finished. Being the sappy bastard I am, I much prefer the wistful, sentimental nature of the 2018 song.

After years of moderate success with largely mediocre hard house tracks, Tin Tin Out threw a curveball with their MOR acoustic cover of The Sundays' 'Here's Where the Story Ends'.
How to follow-up its unexpected success? By changing a couple of notes and calling it a new song. Actually, while the verses are absurdly similar, the chorus goes into a minor key with a lovely string arrangement. The string arrangement, of course, was take from their earlier single Strings for Yasmin.
I'm actually quite fond of 'Sometimes', as mellow pop songs go, but it really is a shameless mashup of their previous two singles.

That actually made me think, is there a "most unexpected change of musical direction" thread? Because, other than 'Here's Where the Story Ends' being on both, their two albums are unrecognisably different and were released a year apart from each other.

[TheMonk]

One of the better known examples of this...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/27501/time-john-fogerty-was-sued-ripping-john-fogerty

[greenman]

Spacemen 3 give the KLF a run for their money in terms of reworking the same tracks multiple times, Walking with Jesus, Transparent Radiation, Come Down Easy, Feel So Good, Rollercoster, etc.

[Crabwalk]

I love the chutzpah shown by The Four Tops, H-D-H and Berry Gordy in following up 'I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)' with 'It's the Same Old Song'.

After "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" hit #1 in June 1965, The Four Tops' former label, Columbia Records, wanting to cash in on the group's success, re-released the Tops' 1960 Columbia single "Ain't That Love". Berry Gordy ordered that a new Four Tops single had to be released within a day's time.

At 3:00 PM that afternoon, the Holland brothers and Lamont Dozier wrote "It's the Same Old Song". Four Tops tenor Abdul "Duke" Fakir recalled:

"   (Songwriter), Lamont Dozier and I were both a little tipsy and he was changing the channels on the radio. He said, 'It sounds like the same old song.' And then he said, "Wait a minute." So he took "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" and reversed it using the same chord changes. The next day, we went to the studio and recorded it, and then they put it on acetate, shipped it out to disc jockeys across the country."

Of course, many of the mid-60s Motown bangers are highly formulaic ('I Can't Help Myself' is itself highly redolent of 'Where Did Our Love Go'). But what a fucking formula.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

The Fall ripping off their cover version of "Old White Train" for their song "The Remainderer".