It's the Same Old Song
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"It's the Same Old Song" is a 1965 hit single recorded by the Four Tops for the Motown label. Written and produced by Motown's main production team Holland–Dozier–Holland, the song is today one of The Tops' signature songs, and was notably created—from initial concept to commercial release—in 24 hours.
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-o'clock PM that afternoon, the Holland brothers and Lamont Dozier penned "It's the Same Old Song". Four Tops tenor Abdul "Duke" Fakir recalled:
- 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" and reversed it using the same chord changes."
The engineering team worked around the clock perfecting the single's mix and making hand-cut vinyl records so that Berry Gordy's sister Esther in the Artist Development department could critique them and select the best ones for single release. By 3 P.M. the next day, 1500 copies of "It's the Same Song" had been delivered to radio DJs across the country, and the song eventually made it to number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number two on the R&B chart.
"It's the Same Old Song" is very similar in melody and chord progressions to "I Can't Help Myself", which in turn is even more similar in melody and chord progressions to "Where Did Our Love Go" by the Supremes, who also covered "It's The Same Old Song" in 1967.
John Lennon sang a bit of the song in The Beatles annual Christmas Message for 1965. They sent these records to members of their fan club every year. George Harrison can be heard cutting Lennon off for fear of copyright infringement.
In 1971 Jonathan King covered the song with a completely different arrangement under the name The Weathermen and his version reached the UK Top 20 selling over 250,000 copies.
Later in the 1970s, KC and the Sunshine Band also covered the song.
Claude François released a cover version of the song in French called "C'est la même chanson".
In the mid-1990s, The Four Tops appeared in a Velveeta commercial, where they spoofed "It's the Same Old Song" with a song called "It's Not the Same Old Side" (as in the Velveeta side dish, Shells and Cheese). The Four Tops also spoofed "It's the Same Old Song" with a song called "It's Not the Same Old Show" for a promo on The Rosie O'Donnell Show.
The song features prominently in the Coen Brothers film Blood Simple.
As well as Rod Stewart's cover on his Soulbook album, a mash-up with Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" was used as runway-soundtrack for the 2009 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.
Personnel
- Lead vocals by Levi Stubbs
- Background vocals by Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Lawrence Payton, and The Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow, and Louvain Demps
- Instrumentation by The Funk Brothers and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (strings)
- Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland, Jr.
- Produced by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier
