It is amazing the amount of copying in the radio friendly bands these days. When one record company has a band that gets popular on radio, another record company quickly runs out and produces a copy. They use the same formula.

We reviewed a band making waves on the radio recently entitled Skillet. They are a direct copy of a band called Three Days Grace. The same song structure and same musical style. 

Let's start with Three Days Grace latest single The Good Life off the album Life Starts Now. The album was released on September 22, 2009.



Things to note about this song:

Song starts out in your face. Rocking.

(0.24 seconds) Song breaks down for stanza one with just basic drums and one guitar riff through stanza one.
Vocals on stanza basically Adam talking.

(0.40 seconds) Chorus is up beat and back to rocking.
Chorus vocals are catchy and Adam actually sings (if you call taking a shit while attempting to sing vocals singing) The singing and up beat nature make the chorus the hook part. Listening to this song, the chorus will be what you remember.

(1.08) Stanza two repeats stanza one.

(1:24) Back into chorus.

(1:45) Then stanza three is the b-section where musical structure changes from the previous.

This is all basic song formulation, by the way. It is how songs are written. But the musical styling is exactly the same for Skillet's radio hit Monster. Monster is off their album Awake released August 25, 2009.



Song starts out with basic drums and one guitar. This continues until chorus.

John's voice is similar to Adam's.
Stanza one is spoken much like Three Days Grace

(0.45 seconds) Chorus begins and is upbeat, John is actually singing, and it is catchy through the vocals.

(1:08) Stanza two repeats similar to stanza one.

(1:30) Chorus nothing changed.

(2:00) B-section that changes the musical style of the song slightly.

The kicker I want you to realize is the use of what I will call a capstone. Sometimes the capstone is a blood curdling scream. Think Iron Maiden. But in radio friendly rock world, it is different. Powerful screams have been done, guitar solos are too much work, so you can growl or add a computer voice. The capstone generally comes toward the end of the song.

In the Three Days Grace song at 2:18 you will hear the computer voice repeating the song title. In the Skillet version at 2:17 you will hear the growl of the song title. I suppose this is designed to help you remember the song title.

The timing is almost identical, the use of effects is exactly the same. There is no originality in radio rock these days.