The Laboratorium

The Flaming Lips’ “Fight Test” has what is easily the catchiest tune of any song on its album. It was therefore in one sense quite surprising and in another not surprising at all when I heard Cat Stevens’s “Father and Son” and realized that the melody was identical.

I’m not the only person to have noticed the similarity, though. Mr. Islam (né Stevens) apparently noticed, too. He and the Flaming Lips reached a settlement to split the royalties from “Fight Test.”