My daughter & I had a really @cerysmatthews conversation the other day. She noticed that Fleetwood Mac (in its Peter Green phase)'s "I Need Your Love so Bad" is like John Mayer's "I'm Gonna Find Another You"

@cerysmatthews is an amazing woman in many ways. I could listen to her reading the phone book for one. I love how she feels songs. Part of that is her ability to pick out phrases they recycle from other singers, often obscure

It's like - and this is as high a compliment as I can pay anyone - Bob Dylan's autobiography, where he parses the folk singers in the New York scene in which he was incubated as a songwriter

I'm really into the superband Fleetwood Mac, to which I introduced my daughter, & we both share "Say you love me" as a favorite song. One of the best songs ever written

But it was my daughter who introduced me to Peter Green in return, and to John Mayer, whose song that echoes Green's is here:

The @cerysmatthews moment came for me listening to "Need your love so bad" & thinking, this reminds me of something ...

It was James Brown's "Baby your right"! The same call & response which Brown, following in the footsteps of Ray Charles, had adapted from gospel & used to write love songs

Green: "I need some lips" (call) "to feel next to mine" (response)
Brown: "If you think I love you" (call) "well baby you're right" (response)

What I love about this is that if I'd listened to the Mayer song, I would never have heard the resemblance to Brown, because of the pace. So Mayer sounds like Green & Green sounds like Brown. It's one of those deeply composted resemblances

Of course Cerys would have heard Brown in Mayer, but she's a musician

Footnote. For those who question the comparison of James Brown to Ray Charles, listen to Brown channel his inner Charles on this melancholy number from his obscure Christmas album

And compare this from Ray Charles' "Now she's gone" in which, yes, there is a Christmas reference ("had to take my Christmas, in overalls") END of THREAD