On Friday nights, we take two songs with questionable similarity and put them side by side for some musical forensics. Have any plagiarism suspicions in your iTunes playlist? Post suggestions for next week's Friday Night Ripoffs (?) in the comments.

The Airborne Toxic Event's "Sometime Around Midnight" is a fantastic song, and it's great to see this LA band's hard work over the years pay off. As fantastic a song as it is (and the lyrics and impassioned performance from singer Mikel Jollett are what really make it great, not the melody and feel, to me at least,) said melody and feel bear an uncanny resemblance to the verses of Radiohead's "High and Dry". What do you think? Lift or coincidence?

It's Friday, and that means it's time for our weekly dose of plagiarism speculation, Friday Night Ripoffs (?), though I must say that the question mark barely belongs this week.

Tom Petty has a respectable row of great songs well past his career's 15 year mark, and Mary Jane's Last Dance (1993) heads the list. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, on the other hand, have had a barrage of mostly tossed off, derivative and sterile Grammy-winning drivel since 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magick, and "Dani California" heads that list. If you think the similarity of the first verses of these songs is merely coincidental, please inquire about the bridge in Brooklyn I am trying to sell.

Anyway, good artists borrow and great artists steal, and without a healthy dose of both, we would've missed out on a lot of great songs over the years. I can hardly fault the Peppers for wanting to build on Petty's gem. Leave some suggestions for next week's finger-pointing in the comments.

We're not trying to start any lawsuits here, but let's face it; some songs just sound too much like other songs to be a coincidences. Or do they? Music doesn't usually come with footnotes or bibliographies, so on Friday nights we engage in wild speculation about where our favorite songwriters might have owed someone a hat tip. Welcome to Friday Night Ripoffs (?) at the LNMC.

"Warning" (the title track from your DJ's favorite Green Day album) sure sounds a helluva lot like The Kinks' "Picture Book". Green Day are clearly no stranger to the creative lift (See: "Boulevard of Broken Dreams/Summer of 69 or Brain Stew/25 or 6 to 4) and to me, this sounds too close for chance. What do you think? Coincidence or theft? What other songs pose that same question to you?

(h/t to Dylan for the heads up on this one.)

We're not trying to start any lawsuits here, but let's face it; some songs just sound too much like other songs to be a coincidences. Or do they? Music doesn't usually come with footnotes or bibliographies, so on Friday nights we engage in wild speculation about where our favorite songwriters might have owed someone a hat tip. Welcome to Friday Night Ripoffs (?) at the LNMC.

It pains me to pit two of my favorite songwriters against each other, especially ones that I have lifted a riff or three off of for one band or another, but I just can't see any way that Blake Schwarzenbach of 90's melodic punk gods Jawbreaker wasn't bowing directly toward Bob Mould of 80's melodic punk gods Husker Du when he wrote "Ache". Schwarzenbach has always been a gifted and original songwriter, but it's time he fess up to this here theft (and also high time that he release the supposedly finished album by his new band Thorns of Life, come to think of it.) What do your ears say?

What are some other ripoffs (that don't involve Coldplay) that come to mind?

It's Friday, and that means it's time for the new installment of Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.

Parisienne Walkways by Gary Moore and Phil Lynott (both of Thin Lizzy, but not a Thin Lizzy song) sounds an awful lot like Kenny Dorham's Latin jazz staple Blue Bossa. Coincidence? Or was Gary Moore aping his jazz records knowing that most of his fans would never know?

Tell us what you think, and leave some suggestions for next week's theft investigation in the comments.

This is the third post in a series called Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Here's the deal: every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.

Commenter Uncle Joe McCarthy and C+L blogger Logan Murphy both piped up about this one. Did Green Day lift the riff for "Brain Stew" from Chicago, or is 5th fret, 3rd fret, 2nd fret, 1st fret, open something that just exists in the air? And what about Papa Roach?

Tell us what you think, and leave some suggestions for next week's plagiarism investigation in the comments.

This is the second post in a series called Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Here's the deal: every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.

Commenter PLH225 came up with tonight's in the discussion of last week's thread. Did Jack White borrow a little too gratuitously from Joe Jackson for The Raconteurs' "Steady As She Goes," or is it just a coincidence?

Tell us what you think, and leave some suggestions for next week's plagiarism investigation in the comments.

This is the first post in a series called Friday Night Ripoffs(?). Here's the deal: every Friday, two songs, where one of them might very well be a gigantic ripoff of the other.

When I was 9 years old watching The Escape Club's "Wild Wild West" on MTV, my stepfather explained that the song was nothing more than a total lift of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and then took me out to Tower Records (RIP) to buy the cassette and drive the point home.

What do you think? Ripoff, or just musical cadences that exist in the ether?

What are some other suspicious musical borrowings you've encountered? We'll go through the comments and post a prime suspect next week!