Radio 2 has been playing Thank You by Diana Ross all week. I wondered why I’d never heard it before, and discovered it’s because it was just released and, therefore, I presume, written sometime after 1972. I wondered whether someone with more musical knowledge/understanding than I have (which is nearly everyone who reads this) would listen to the first 36 seconds of Kevin Coyne’s “Need Somebody” from his first solo album, Case History, and compare it with the first 29 seconds of Thank You. They sound unnervingly similar to me.(And, the home recorded version sounds even more like Thank You to me).

If I’m right, can you suggest examples of artists ‘borrowing’ from other artists that are more unlikely than the Ross/Coyne pair?

Just to be clear, I don’t actually think this is a case of borrowing: I don’t imagine for a second that anyone of Ms. Ross’s team has ever heard of Kevin Coyne, let alone heard anything he wrote, and if I am wrong about that I will admire her even more than I already do.