I happened upon a new collection of music that has nearly doubled my horde. I now have 20.2 20.6 days worth of non-stop, continuous listening pleasure. I’ll finish listening to all 7574 7740 songs (I just acquired more) about the same time I reach the end of the internet. I listen to a pretty diverse set of music. I have my favorites, but my tolerance levels are pretty high for genres most people I know wouldn’t consider. Going from oldies to 60’s/70’s to disco (haha, yeah right) to country (not-so-new, old, older) and even a little (very little) rap (hip-hop, R&B, rap… it’s all the same to me) and then to latin (salsa, mariachi, as little norteño as possible) and then some of my favorite, grunge & post-grunge. Nice, huh?

This post isn’t about all that. What I’m getting at is I’m really surprised at how much some artists sound like others, even if they aren’t trying to. I understand that some artists are admittedly influenced by their idols, like how Clint Blank sounds so much like Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam like Buck Owens, and Milli Vanilli like the guys who really sang for them. Ok, not so much that last part… I still want you to think I know what I’m talking about here! I’m not really referring to those. I’m talking about the ones that almost sound like a copy of others, but not in a bad way.

So, some of the discoveries I’ve made with the new music I’ve been listening to? Eric Clapton (circa 1974) sounds a lot like Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow (1996) sounds like The Jeff Healy Band on Stuck in the Middle (by Steelers Wheel), and Justin Timberlake sounds like Michael Jackson on his solo CD, but that one’s obvious and has already been pointed out.

Other notables involve Metallica. Not that they sound like anyone in particular, but every time a song comes on from the St. Anger album, I know it’s from St. Anger because of the repetative drumming by Lars Ulrich. It sounds the same on every song on that disc.