Sure Seems Like I’ve Heard It Before: New Song by Brit Singer Adele Sounds a Heckuva Lot Like “Kaw-Liga”

Spending almost 2 hours a day commuting these days, I hear a lot of music on a variety of stations.  I don’t know all the new artists, but my ear tells me there’s a lot of lifting from older music.  I can appreciate Lady Gaga’s stands on gay issues, but despite her over-the-top outfits, she’s hardly an original; nor is her music.  A lot of her songs sound a lot like pieces of Madonna’s and other dance groups’ hits.  Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” sure sounded to me like I was hearing the old Swedish group, Ace of Base’s “Don’t Turn Around” at the beginning, then segueing in to what seemed very near to Madonna’s “Isla Bonita.”

There was a song with a male singer a month or so ago that was playing that I would have sworn was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”  However, I have yet to catch the title or singer of that song.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Sirius radio lately, especially to BPM (the dance music station) and BBC Radio 1.  On both, I’ve recently been hearing this song with a female singer, and I was sure I had heard it before, but just couldn’t place it.  The song is “Rolling in the Deep” by a new British singer-songwriter, named Adele.

I’m thinking that Adele might have been listening to a lot of Hank Williams Sr., the popular singer-songwriter, who died in the early 1950s.  The melody that comes from “Rolling in the Deep” sounds very similar to that of Williams’ “Kaw-Liga,” which I remember hearing a lot when I was a very little kid, because everyone in my family loved that song.  When I listen to the Adele song, I can’t help hearing “Kaw-Liga was a wooden Indian . . . .”

Adele’s version, of course, is a bit more up-tempo and ventures away from the main tune at times,  but it even has a similar drumbeat in the background.

Take a listen to both versions; play the beginnings of both songs, switching back and forth a few times, and you’ll definitely hear how similar the melodies are.  Despite not being able to get “Kaw-Liga” out of my head, I still like the Adele song quite a bit.

Here’s the Adele song:

Now here’s Hank Williams’ “Kaw-Liga”: