Why Don't Songs Have Sequels?

let me tell you about my favorite Metallica song. it's not on the Black Album, but we'll start there anyway. this era marked a huge shift away from the band's thrash metal origins and into something slower and more introspective. it's most famous for Enter Sandman, but a couple tracks later is an unassuming little ballad called The Unforgiven. (bang) as the Black Album's second single, The Unforgiven was well-received, and while it never reached the mainstream success of Sandman, it became a bit of a fan favorite. but again, it's not my favorite. no, my favorite Metallica song comes a couple years later, on Reload. during those sessions, James Hetfield was messing around with a new guitar, and instinctively began playing the riff from Unforgiven. by the time he recognized it, he'd fallen in love all over again, and that initial seed grew into my actual favorite Metallica song, the Unforgiven II. (bang) that's solid wordplay. you gotta give him that. I love this song, and clearly so did Metallica, because despite the lukewarm reception that audiences gave Reload, they decided to do it again on Death Magnetic, with the Unforgiven III. (bang) and I find this fascinating. sequels happen all the time in lots of different media, from movies to books to tv shows. but not music. why not? (tick, tick, tick, tock) there's a lot of places I could start this discussion, but I'd like to begin by taking a closer look at the Unforgiven trilogy. in my mind, The Unforgiven II is the quintessential song sequel: released 7 years later, it develops not just the original song's narrative, but also its music. there's lots of parallels between the two tracks: the riff from part 1: (bang) gets developed in part 2: (bang) the verse chords are borrowed from the chorus in part 1: (bang) and speaking of choruses, the opening lines have similar, although not identical, melodies: (bang) to complement their reused lyrics. and for a sequel, this all makes sense: if you went to see John Wick 2 in theaters, you'd be going in with certain expectations, from bombastic fight scenes, to glimpses of an elaborate criminal underworld, to a grumpy Keanu Reeves. a movie that didn't give you that wouldn't feel like John Wick. but you're also not expecting a copy: if they just gave him another dog and had the bad guys kill it again, that'd feel redundant. and The Unforgiven II understands that, which is why so much of it is new. most notably, they flip the dynamic contour: part 1 has these loud, angry verses that settle into calm, almost acoustic choruses, while part 2 does the opposite, starting low and building high. the music evolves, taking enough pieces to keep it recognizable while also bringing in new ideas. and that's why it's a little disappointing that The Unforgiven III mostly doesn't bother. there are some parallels: the piano arpeggios in the intro: (bang) are reminiscent of the guitar in part 1: (bang) and it has that same dynamic contour thing with the heavy verse into a more acoustic chorus. (bang) but mostly I feel like I'm listening to a completely new song. there's not a lot that ties this to the first two. if it weren't called The Unforgiven III I don't think most listeners would make the connection. and narratively, this does make sense: part 3 is about realizing the root of all the previous songs' anger and trying to move past it, so it should sound different. but part 2 already showed us how flexible these musical motifs are, so doing nothing with them feels like a missed opportunity. I enjoy the song, it's just not the same kind of sequel. it's like if, after Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, Peter Jackson closed out the Lord of the Rings trilogy with District 9. it's a different vibe. and vibe is a lot of what I'm talking about here. I'm not gonna be rooting around for subtle references and easter eggs: the connection should be apparent to a casual listener. that might mean sticking faithfully to the original: Harry Chapin's Taxi: (bang) tells a beautiful story about old friends reconnecting by chance. when fans asked him what happened next, he responded with a song literally called Sequel: (bang) that uses pretty much the same music. on the other hand, George Harrison's This Guitar Can't Keep From Crying: (bang) is still a clear spiritual successor to While My Guitar Gently Weeps: (bang) despite, on the surface, sounding pretty different. there are some parallels, like the way the harmony of This Guitar alludes to the line cliche from Gently Weeps, but more than anything, what ties them together is the vibe.

the sequel may not sound like the original, but it's clearly heard the original. the two songs are in a sort of musical conversation, and that conversation is what makes it work. of course, the idea of songs based on other songs isn't new. in fact, it's probably about as old as songs themselves, but prehistoric records are sparse, so instead, let's consider Greensleeves. the version we know today began its life in 1580 as a broadside ballad, a form of popular folk music where balladeers would sell lyric sheets that were meant to be sung to popular pre-written tunes. the first known publication was Richard Jones's "A new Courtly Sonet of the Lady Green sleeues", but it seems likely that some version of the song was already popular, since on the very same day, Edward White released his own take, called "A ballad, being the Ladie Greene Sleeves Answere to Donkyn hir frende". Jones's song blew up, inviting more broadsides, including a second from White called "Greene Sleues and Countenaunce in Countenaunce is Greene Sleues" and no, I don't know what that means either. few of these broadsides survive today, but for over a century, publishers kept releasing new songs to the tune of Greensleeves. some simply used the melody to set unrelated lyrics, but others returned to her story and developed her character, tying themselves back to the original through their shared musical structure. but while these new songs had plenty of musical similarities, they probably didn't have much musical development. they couldn't, really, because of how broadsides worked: the thing you bought was a set of lyrics. everything else you either already knew, or you made up. if you want development, you need a way to reliably communicate musical details. historically, that's mostly been oral traditions, with students learning by ear from a master, but those can be difficult to track from hundreds of years in the future. over time, though, western music began to shift toward notation and, eventually, recording. it's hard to pin down the first recorded sequels, but my best guess is they were probably on early country and blues records. one candidate might be the work of Son House, who did a couple two-part songs, including My Black Mama, part 1: (bang) and part 2: (bang) although as far as I can tell, those were actually just one 6-minute song that got split into two 3-minute pieces to work around the limited storage space of early vinyl records. but searching for sequels in this era is tricky, because back then, songs weren't quite the same thing. if I can get academic for a second, any experience of a musical work consists of two kinds of information: fixed and unfixed. the fixed components of a song are the ones you would expect to be the same every time you hear it. they're the song's core identity. unfixed components, on the other hand, are the ephemeral details of that particular moment, things you wouldn't expect to hear again next time. for most of human history, the only way to hear a piece of music was if someone performed it: that introduces a ton of unfixed elements, from the acoustics of the room to the condition of the instrument, to the performance quirks of the individual musician. by necessity, then, the concept of a song was pretty abstract, limited to the handful of aspects you could control. basic notes, rhythms, lyrics… that sort of thing. but recording technology changed everything. suddenly, you could capture not just a composition, but a specific performance, with all its subtle nuances of timbre, intonation, and timing, and eventually, the recording itself became the song, at least in popular music. that new, more concrete version of the work concept gave artists lots of new toys to play with in making interesting sequels. but that change didn't happen overnight. the early 20th century was the jazz era, and while jazz bands made recordings, it was still very much a live performance scene. jazz artists borrowed and developed ideas both from each other and from their own work, but there didn't seem to be much room for direct sequels. the best I could find is things like Duke Ellington's The Sergeant Was Shy: (bang) which he says was based on Bugle Call Rag: (bang) but that feels more like an homage. by the late '50s, though, music radio and the rise of the single had bolstered the status of the recording, and as jazz gave way to rock and roll, sequels soon followed. The Bobbettes had a break-out hit with Mr. Lee: (bang) before things took a darker turn in the follow-up. (bang) around the same time, Chuck Berry continued the story of Johnny B. Goode: (bang) with Bye Johnny: (bang) and Jimmy Dean capitalized on the success of Big Bad John: (bang) with a couple sequels, including one about his son, Little Bitty Big John. (bang) these are some of the earliest examples I could find of an unambiguous sequel in the modern era, with both lyrical and musical connections tying them together.

seeing so many sequels in just a couple years might actually be a good clue as to why they're not as common these days: in the '50s and '60s, music sales were dominated by singles. albums were a collection of songs, but each song stood on its own as a complete musical work, and the hits had to be sold individually. in that market, riding the coattails of a previous hit was just good business. by the '70s, though, there was a shift toward album-oriented music, and once a song is part of an album, giving it a sequel feels less obvious. it's like writing a sequel to a particular chapter instead of a whole book. which brings up an interesting question: is a reprise a sequel? a reprise is when you bring back a previous song within the same larger work. these are most common in musical theater: act 1 of Cats ends with this short aria by Grizabella: (bang) that eventually becomes the big showstopper, Memory. (bang) so is Memory a sequel to that earlier song? and outside the theater, we can also find these on concept albums, like Another Brick In The Wall parts 1: (bang) 2: (bang) and 3. (bang) are these sequels? if they were on three different albums, I'd say absolutely yes, but they're all part of The Wall. do they still count? that's a real question, by the way. there is no right answer. it's just a judgment call. personally, though, my instinct is no. to my mind, part of what makes something a sequel is closure. the first part has to end before the sequel can begin. if they're all meant to be heard together, then sequel doesn't feel like quite the right word for their relationship. but if that's the case, then what do we do with Voodoo Child (Slight Return)? side A of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland ends with Voodoo Chile, an extended studio jam that runs for almost 15 minutes: (bang) and side D ends with Voodoo Child (Slight Return): (bang) a shorter, more controlled jam on the same themes. there's no overarching story, no larger structure connecting them beyond the happenstance of being on the same album. so does it count? I've spent an embarrassing amount of time debating this, but ultimately, it's just not black and white. there's shades of grey here, and Slight Return is one of many songs that falls into that space. and speaking of grey areas, another thing I ran into a lot in my research was what I'm calling lyrical continuations. that is, sequels in the story sense but without much musical connection, like Rebecca Black's Saturday. now, you probably know who Rebecca Black is, but my parents watch these videos, so for their sake, Rebecca Black is the most famous client of Ark Music Factory, a novelty label that sold a sort of pop star experience in the early 2010s. clients, often children, would pay them a fee to record a pretty bland pre-written track and make a music video that they would then promote. I'm not gonna get into the ethics of that, but the point is, in 2011, Black's song, Friday, was released, and it was… not great. (bang) the song went viral for all the wrong reasons, and suddenly everyone was bullying this 14-year-old girl for wanting to make music. sometimes the internet sucks. she actually handled it with a surprising amount of grace, but when it came time to make a tongue-in-cheek sequel: (bang) I can understand why she might not have wanted to reuse much from the original. still, it makes me wonder why this is such a common kind of sequel. reusing musical material feels so obvious to me, and it honestly seems like it'd be easier, too. and yet, in the rare cases where artists do make follow-up songs, there's almost never much of a connection beyond the lyrics. why is that? my best guess is that a lot of people just don't really think of musical gestures as having narrative significance. if the words are the story, then only thing you need to keep. in fact, it might even seem lazy to reuse other aspects. but that's not true. repetition, as they say, legitimizes. I mean, think about film scores. this fanfare: (bang) has appeared in every Star Wars film. it's a fundamental part of what makes them feel like Star Wars films. is that because John Williams is too lazy to come up with new ideas? of course not. it's because sequels should sound like their predecessors. I'm not saying copy the whole song. I'm saying be like John Williams. find the parts that make the song unique, and develop them in interesting ways that communicate how your story is changing. for a particularly obtuse example, consider Ashes to Ashes, David Bowie's sequel to Space Oddity. for the life of me, I'm having a hard time identifying any recycled sounds. best I've got is that the original often has two voices panned hard to each side

(bang) and the sequel also occasionally has a sort of panned chorus thing: (bang) but most of the time it doesn't, so that feels like a reach. and yet I do buy it as a sequel. both songs have this sort of ambient weirdness to them that gestures at the vastness of space. this moment in particular: (bang) really feels like a clear reference to Space Oddity. I just have no idea what that reference is. maybe the muttered conversations in the background remind me of the countdown? I don't know. I went back and listened to Space Oddity multiple times to see if I could find a moment that sounds like this and there isn't one, but in some abstract way I can't quite put my finger on, I'm still convinced there should be. someone please tell me what I'm hearing, 'cause I'm kinda losing my mind here. but Ashes to Ashes isn't the only song that continues the story of Major Tom. there's also this one. (bang) except that's not by David Bowie: it's Peter Schilling. which opens up a whole new can of worms: response songs. these are like the musical equivalent of fan fiction, with new artists borrowing someone else's characters to tell their own story. like sequels, but unofficial. Schilling's version also doesn't sound much like the song it's based on, but that's pretty normal for response songs. over the last few weeks I've listened to half a dozen different responses to Jolene for, y'know, research, and none of them have anything that reminds me of Dolly Parton. the closest they get is they sometimes start the chorus with a woman's name, like in Cam's Diane: (bang) but they don't even repeat it four times, and at that point, why even bother? but, of course, there's actually a pretty good reason for this: copyright. Dolly Parton doesn't own the name Jolene, nor does she own the idea of a man cheating on his partner with an attractive woman. there are actually many stories about that. it's probably even happened in real life a couple times. but the more you borrow, and the closer your song gets to hers, the more you're inviting a lawsuit, so if you're already playing with someone else's toys, there's a lot of pressure to be careful. but copyright doesn't cover everything. in fact, technically it usually only covers the words and melody, although recent court cases have made that a little more complicated. still, there are examples of response songs that manage to capture the spirit of the original without infringing on it, like Brandy and Monica's The Boy Is Mine: (bang) which uses the conversational duet structure and some spoken interjections to evoke Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney's original: (bang) while still being different enough to avoid any accusations of plagiarism. which brings me to a weird one. I don't know what I want to say about this song, but I know it exists, and if you've made it this far, you deserve to know that too. a couple years ago, Claudio Sanchez, the lead singer of the band Coheed and Cambria, approached Rick Springfield with a proposition to make Jessie's Girl 2. yeah. in it, we see the narrator has successfully woo'd the girl, who still doesn't get a name, away from Jessie, only to find that she's a manipulative sociopath who goes on to ruin his life. despite Springfield's involvement, it still sounds pretty different, although the riff: (bang) does read to me as kind of a cross between the original: (bang) and Bryan Adams's Summer of '69. still, I wish there was more, especially in the chorus. Jessie's Girl has such an iconic chorus, and it'd be nice to hear some of that in the sequel. and actually, I should probably talk a bit more about Coheed and Cambria. if you don't know them, the short version is they're a concept band whose albums are all companion pieces to a series of comic books called the Amory Wars, also written by Sanchez. this means almost all their songs are, technically, sequels, although they're not as relevant here as you might think because they don't tend to do a lot of musical overlap. they do use leitmotifs, like this three-note sting from Second Stage Turbine Blade: (bang) that comes back in a couple songs, including On The Brink: (bang) and is generally believed to represent the Keywork, the mystical energy field that binds the worlds of Heaven's Fence. yes, I've read the books, I have complicated feelings about them, I may make a video about it at some point. but these motifs are often buried, twisted into new forms that hide their significance from a casual listener. the songs themselves rarely resemble each other, at least not more than you'd expect given they're by the same band. so while the events of, say, No World For Tomorrow: (bang) happen after the events of A Favor House Atlantic: (bang) I wouldn't

really consider it a musical sequel. it's more like episodes of a TV show, if that makes sense. another band in a similar vein is, of course, The Mountain Goats. and here's where I admit that, while I respect the heck out of John Darnielle, I haven't listened to a lot of Mountain Goats music. it's not really my thing. I did reach out to a friend for some insight, and the sense I got was that, while they have a lot of song series, the actual music doesn't tend to overlap much. that said, I don't feel qualified to speak on the full breadth of the Mountain Goats catalog. they've made a lot of songs, and I don't know how many of them do the thing I'm asking for here. I just know that if I didn't at least mention them, every comment would be asking me why. half of them probably still will. there's also plenty of artists who, while they may not be quite as committed to the bit, do have long-running song series of their own. one of my favorites is the Story series by clipping., although again, I don't hear a lot of musical overlap. Story 2 is a chaotic odd-meter monstrosity: (bang) while Story 5 is a straight-up choir piece. (bang) there's also Kendrick Lamar's The Heart series, which again runs mostly on lyrical connections, although to be fair to both artists, hip-hop is a genre built on the musical nature of words, and there are definitely ways to make lyrical connections feel musical. check out Snoop Dogg paying tribute to Nuthin' But A G Thang: (bang) with this lyrical flourish in Still A G Thang. (bang) but while sequels can be too distant from their source material, they can also stick too close. the Charlie Daniels Band's Devil Went Down To Georgia is an absolute classic: (bang) so when Mark O'Connor set out to write a sequel, he was in for a challenge, one made even tougher by the all-star ensemble he put together including Johnny Cash and Charlie Daniels himself. in the end, The Devil Comes Back To Georgia stuck to the exact same form as the original, pretty much beat for beat. (bang) and maybe that makes sense, since the story winds up in roughly the same place: Johnny once again outplays the devil and keeps his golden fiddle. it's an interesting song, but it's not really doing much as a sequel. making something that feels enough like the original to carry its legacy while still being different enough to add to the story is a really difficult balancing act, which may be why so few bands even try. but there's one important genre we haven't covered yet, so before we wrap up, I think it's time to talk about prog. sequels are exciting because they extend a song beyond its natural boundaries, and pushing the boundaries of song form is what progressive rock and metal are all about. it probably won't surprise you to learn that, when I asked for suggestions of song sequels on Bluesky, the bulk of my responses came from prog fans with whole lists of examples ready to go. I won't run through all of them, although I'll put a link to that post in the description if you want to see, but when it comes to prog sequels, there's one that, in my mind, stands head and shoulders above the rest: Metropolis part 2: Scenes From A Memory. buckle up. like the Black Album, Dream Theater's Images and Words marked a major turning point for the band. not only was it their first album with singer James LaBrie, it also contained their first real hit, Pull Me Under. the song we're interested in, though, is Metropolis part 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper. according to John Petrucci, this was never actually supposed to have a sequel: it was originally called Crumbling Metropolis, then just Metropolis, before he added the "part 1" as a joke. but fans didn't get it, and as the song became a fixture of their live sets, audiences were clamoring for a follow-up. so they made one. but not just any follow-up. prog songs can be long, sprawling things: part 1 was already 9 and a half minutes, so if they wanted to go bigger for the sequel, it'd have to be even longer. say, 12 minutes. 15. maybe 20. or how about 77? that's right, Metropolis part 2 isn't just a sequel song. it's an entire sequel album, with 12 songs and 9 scenes spread out across two complete acts, all telling the story of… um… ok, how do I explain the story of Metropolis part 2? it's a lot. in typical prog fashion, the narrative here is convoluted as hell, and this video's already long enough without me trying to explain it all, so I'm just gonna say it's about murder, love triangles, and past life regression therapy, and you can go listen if you want to know more. now, obviously, expanding a song into a full album requires a lot of new material, like the slow, gentle interlude of Through Her Eyes: (bang) that doesn't have any real parallel in part 1. but it's also not as disconnected as, say, the Coheed example. large parts of the album feel like they're in direct conversation with the original. sometimes that's a direct quote, like how this drum groove: (bang) comes back in Home: (bang) and this 13/8 riff: (bang) plays

in the background of the intro to Dance of Eternity. (bang) there's even some lyrical quotes, like this: (bang) becoming this. (bang) but again, I'm more interested in vibe. so much of Metropolis part 2 feels like it's taking the ideas of part 1 and expanding them, and nowhere is that clearer than the infamous Dance of Eternity. that name comes from the final line of the original, and the music is inspired by the four-minute instrumental that takes up most of the back half of part 1. that instrumental explores all sorts of different time signatures and tempos, with sections in 4/4, 3/4, 6/4, 7/8, 13/8, and more, even throwing in some advanced techniques like polymeter and non-repeating additive meter for good measure. it's a respectable showcase of odd meter chops, and the band stays locked in through all the various metric modulations. so Dance of Eternity asks the question: what if they did that over 100 times? (bang) honestly, at this point I don't even know if time signatures are a useful way to notate this, but positioning such a bombastic odd-meter set piece near the beginning of act 2 is a clear nod to the structure of the original, just taken to an almost unrecognizable extreme. which brings me back to the question from the beginning: why aren't song sequels a thing? in this modern media landscape where content never dies and everything even remotely successful from the past is getting dragged back up for one more go, why is music immune? why is there no Despacito 2, no Bad Guy Strikes Back, no Increasingly Toxic? I've gone through a couple reasons already, from the changing market for singles, to the belief that stories are just for lyrics, to the simple fact that it's hard. but I can think of one more reason, one that puts music in stark contrast to film sequels: creative continuity. a film is made by hundreds of people, each with their own career. they all intersect on this one project, then go their separate ways. the appeal of a sequel isn't just seeing what the characters do next, it's seeing those people reunite to recapture the magic they had the first time around. but a band isn't like that. a band doesn't need that, because the people mostly stay the same, and the characters they portray are, more or less, themselves. a sequel is a nice nod to the fans, but there's not much you can do with it that you can't do with a brand new song. either way, you're showing what you're gonna do next. so does that mean song sequels aren't worth it? of course not. that'd be a terrible conclusion. the whole point of this video is to convince you to make them. but it does mean they're not necessary. no one expects them, so you can save your sequels for the songs that need them. most of the examples in this video aren't revisiting the artist's big hits. they're based on songs that had real room to grow, by artists who recognized they hadn't said everything they wanted to say the first time around. I think that's beautiful. let me know your favorite song sequels in the comments, and if you're a musician, maybe go out and write your own. and as always, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, Geoff, and Michael Mol! check out Patreon for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'!