Battle Of The Songs With The Same Title: "I Need Your Love"

It's funny to think about the process of naming a song. You want the title to express what the song's about, certainly. Clarity is king. And you want it to something that's easy-to-remember, especially if you're hoping for a hit. All too often we overthink ourselves away from the first, best idea we've come up with. So we're wary of that. Keep it simple, stupid, someone smart once said.

But that leads to a problem. There have been so many songs recorded already. So many titles have already been used. There are only so many subjects to make songs about, how important is originality in this regard?

Not so very important, it seems. Lots of artists choose titles for their songs that have been used lots of times before. One of the bigger hits of the summer is a good example. The Scottish electronica producer Calvin Harris (who named his first album the cheeky, nothing-if-not-original, I Created Disco in 2007) has been a fixture in clubs and on the radio for months with his dancey thumper, "I Need Your Love," which features the vocal stylings of Ellie Goulding.

There have of course been many songs with that very same title, or one very much like it, in clubs and on the radio throughout pop music history. We decided to do a comparison. How does this new, familiarly-named song stack up? Welcome, on this sunny Sunday, to Battle Of The Songs With The Same Title: "I Need Your Love."

Written by Foster Kamer (@weareyourfek) and Dave Bry (@davebry9)

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This song is mostly notable for being the very first song ever recorded by John Oates. Just a teenager when he wrote it, Oates would of course go on to achieve far greater fame alongside Darryl Hall in Philadelphia's all-time champion blue-eyed soul duo. He would record far better music, too. ("She's Gone"! "Sara Smile"! "I Can't Go for That"!) All Tom-Jones slick and burdened with corny, cloying horns, this one's sounding awfully dated in 2013.

Final Verdict: John Oates was very lucky to meet Darryl Hall.

It's fine, this song. You can see why it's a hit. The nice piano figure leading into the EKG-screen of synth blips. A nice, feather-in-the-wind melody sung in Ellie Goulding's attractively unadulterated British accent. The big disco beats. But it's also, well, it's just kind of there, isn't it? Not so distinctive. Like a lot of club songs you hear. And the lyrics, super-straightforward, of a sort we've heard so many times before, they're not doing a lot of work here, are they? Same with the song title.

Final Verdict: Sometimes the simple, the tried-and-true, is best. But sometimes it's just gonna get lost in the shuffle.

The Patterson Twins may need your love, but if listening to the opening twenty seconds of this song doesn't make you want anyone's love, or make you question how little love you have in your life compared with the love you need? Then you need hormone therapy. Because the first twenty seconds of this song have a silky soul guitar line, horns, and a backup chorus sung by velvet-throated back-up singers. And granted, the first line is a sliiiiightly uncomfortable moment. ("I don't like to feel/Like I forced myself on you/I don't want you to do nothin'/That you don't want to do!") But if you felt threatened by it, by by the time you get to the bridge about how "deep inside this heart/I just need your admiration," you'll forget that you were worried about being sexually assaulted. With the crisp voices of the Patterson Twins singing and, in parts, ad-libbing over one another, the chorus bangs, and in the end, after a short 3-minutes-8-seconds, the song pulls off with flawless execution one of the great tenets of showmanship: You're the one left wanting more.

Final Verdict: One of the most convincing and underrated cases for someone needing your love, somewhat rapey quotient aside. —Foster Kamer

"Hawkmoon 269" is one of the most unlikely great songs in U2's discography.

It's unlikely as a great song because it's the rare song of theirs that's aged extrodinarily well. This is partially due to its not being as over-licensed for film and TV, like so many other great U2 songs that we've grown tired of.

It's unlikely beause you wouldn't really think "Hawkmoon 269"—which came out on the companion album to the band's seminal Rattle and Hum rockumentary—was the song they mixed more than any other. But it was, and yes, that's the "269" of the title. They mixed this song for three weeks. 269 times. In this light, "Hawkmoon" is absolutely an unlikely great U2 song.

But despite all that production work, it's one of their grittiest sounding songs, and it remains that way despite being as bombastic and thundering in scale as any other great U2 song, replete with a gospel choir bellowing in over the end as The Edge shreds into his guitar. And don't get it mixed up: This is a band that always relied on studio tricks and overly-refined sounds, and with "Hawkmoon 269" the band yet again struck that perfect balance between organic Irish rock balladry (see: Van Morrison) and sonic studio production magic to create that U2 essence that makes songs like "With Or Without You" so perfect—but with less wedding-day desperation, and more "Gimme Shelter." And when the chorus comes rolling in at the end—despite not even having "I Need Your Love" in the title, or even being inspired by Sam Shephard—your love is something you're more than willing to hand over, not so much to U2 as, really, the universe.

Final Verdict: This song plainly rocks. The louder you play it, the more it kicks ass. This song makes me want to be turned into a Cactus, or a Coyote God. In the middle of the desert. In Arizona. As a monsoon approaches. Ominously. —Foster Kamer

One of the very best American bands of 1970s, Cheap Trick succeeded in large part by going against the grain. At a time when so many rockers were indulging in the kind of overlong space noodling that would have put fans to sleep if weren't for all the drugs everyone was on, the great Chicago foursome focussed on tight, muscular pop songs with an unabashed respect for catchy hooks and just a hint of punk-rock snarl. Clocking in at over 7-minutes long, first appearing on the seminal live album Cheap Trick at Budokan, "Need Your Love" is a sort-of exception-that-proves-the-rule. "Epic" in a way that used to make sense before that word was rendered meaningless by 21st-century lack of specificity, and full of dynamic instrumental interplay, the song seemed to say: Hey, hippies, we can do this just as well as you can. And with a stronger melody and bigger changes and a better sense of humor. And Robin Zander's flowing blonde locks are more beautiful than yours, too.

Final Verdict: One of the very best needings of your love ever put to tape. Very tough to match.

This is why it's so dangerous to record a song with a common-sounding title. Listen to that teardrop guitar opening, the way the bassline winds its way around the insistant piano plinking, how that soft sax blows so muted, so tasteful and restrained. Hear how Little Willie John's voice cracks with feeling when he's delivering those words, so simple and basic and right-to-the-heart-of-it true that of course they're going to be used in a million songs throughout forever and all of time. "Listen to my plea/Bring it home to me/I need your love so bad..." And that was 1955. How are you going to live up to that?

Final Verdict: The very sound, the very epitome of needing your love. Needing it!

As far as songs about needing your love goes, this one is the gold standard. It's also one of Motown Records's gold standards. Opening with horns and strings, and then, harmonizing over slightly subdued drumlines, it's one of those songs that you just know the people at the label knew they had a hit on their hands. It's also probably the least sophisticated song on this list, lyrically—but don't let that obscure the brilliance in the full composition. The song's sweet, swelling chorus is something like the sound of Spring, of new beginnings, of brilliant potential. And the perpetually-convincing case for its fulfillment gets blasted through the melody like a cold glass of Coca-Cola on a muggy day via Levi Stubbs's stunning, desperate, aching vocal track. It clocks in at under three minutes. Few pieces of art that inform the way you hear everything you ever hear again after experiencing them take so little time to consume, and leave such a disproportionately indelible mark.

Final Verdict: If you don't fuck with this song, we don't fuck with you. —Foster Kamer