Not only is this one of the catchiest songs of all time but the story behind the song is remarkable… and lives up to the title.

That’s because it’s almost the same as The Four Tops’ previous hit, I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)… which was almost the same as Where Did Our Love Go by The Supremes (who in turn would cover It’s The Same Old Song).

Confused?

Well that’s not surprising because Motown really was a hit factory, churning out records like the conveyor belts that produced automobiles in the car plants up the road in Detroit. And early adopters of recycling.

Remarkably, in this case the entire process – from the original idea to commercial release of the single – took just 24 hours.

It all began in June 1965 when the Tops topped the chart with I Can’t Help Myself and their previous label, Columbia (one of four companies the quartet had recorded for before joining Motown) decided to cash in by re-releasing a song from five years earlier.

Motown boss Berry Gordy furiously demanded a spoiler, ordering an instant follow-up from his in-house songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland.

At 3pm Lamont Dozier was enjoying a few drinks with Tops singer Abdul ‘Duke’ Fekir and fiddling with a radio dial to find a station he liked. Unimpressed with the choice, Dozier commented: “It sounds like the same old song.”

Then inspiration struck. In Fekir’s words, “He took I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch) and reversed it using the same chord changes. The next day, we went to the studio and recorded it, and then they put it on acetate, and shipped it out to disc jockeys across the country.”

Motown’s engineering team worked around the clock to perfect the single’s mix and made hand-cut vinyl records so that Berry Gordy’s sister Esther in the Artist Development department could select the best ones for single release.

By 3pm the next day, 1,500 copies of It’s the Same Old Song had been delivered to radio DJs across the country, and the song eventually made it to number five on the US singles chart.

A year after that, The Rolling Stones released their album Aftermath… and “borrowed” the earworm melody for Under My Thumb.

The lawyers at Motown might well have uttered the same words as the title of this song.