Musical quote: They Might Be Giants and Darlene Love

12 Jan 2015

For the first time today I noticed that the They Might Be Giants song “Lucky Ball and Chain” off Flood quotes melody and reversed lyrics from a Phil Spector produced Darlene Love song “(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry“. Hear the two segments back to back:

I wrote a bit about musical quotes in the context of a lawsuit involving Alicia Keys two years ago. We see it all the time in film (Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson make an art of it) but it still feels uncommon in pop music.