Mac DeMarco is playing tonight at the Moore Theatre. Emily Nokes says it’s going to be good and she’s pretty much always right. (Also, openers The Courtneys sounded fantastic on KEXP last weekend.) DeMarco is fairly new to my radar screen, and his style is down my alley, but something about his song “Salad Days” wasn’t sitting quite right. Then I realized it was its similarity to the Kinks’ song “Picture Book.” (Then I found out the internet was a few months ahead of me on this, so my apologies to everyone concerned. I never asked to be born.)
Obviously, pop songs sounding like other pop songs is neither new nor a crime in any way. It’s all fine. He has lots of other good songs. Everything is totally FINE. Unless, of course, we’re discussing the mother of all “Picture Book” ripoffs, which is inexcusable:
But then again:
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