Songs that strictly color within the lines have no appeal, but indiscriminate scribbling is hardly the answer.

Every now and then, you’ll come across a page in the coloringbook of pop music where someone has put the wrong color in just the right place. What might have been a perfectly neat but bland time-killer is instead worthy of framing.

“No One Else on Earth” opens with a very basic chord progression. If you played it on a piano, you’d be using only the white keys. Wynonna is singing about how she fences off her heart, and the music reflects this stable but dull existence.

Then comes the pre-chorus, where love sneaks in under the wire. Two black keys are brought into play—just for two quick beats. In our coloringbook, a boundary has been crossed. But the colorist could not be accused of getting carried away. This is a restrained, surgical transgression.

In fact there are two other places in the song structure where nonstandard chords are used, and for longer durations. But, after that first exquisite stab of chromaticism, they’re not surprising. It’s all part of a design the coloringbook-maker never even contemplated.

Who owns a melody? It’s a question not only for intellectual property lawyers but also for listeners sensitive to similarity.

Case in point: The Dukes of Stratosphear’s “Vanishing Girl” (1987), which, intentionally or not, borrows a melody with an already fraught copyright history.

Disney’s original “The Lion King” (1994) rebooted for a new generation a 1961 single by the Tokens, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The song grafts simple lyrics onto an essentially wordless recording from the previous decade. And the building blocks of that song come from a 1939 recording by South Africa’s Solomon Linda — whose estate fought a long legal battle with Disney for royalties.

There are three key elements in the Linda version that inform future adaptations. For the sake of comparison, the following examples have been transposed to begin on the note C.

Exhbit A: “Uyimbube.”

First there’s the backing vocalists repeating “Uyimbube,” which means “You are a lion” in Zulu. Pete Seeger and the Weavers distorted this into “Wimoweh” circa 1955. Their sped-up chant has remained the foundation of other versions of the song up to the present day.

Exhibit B: Falsetto.

The next element is Linda’s high-pitched, improvised vocal line. Seeger imitates it, and it features as a wordless introduction or interlude in subsequent versions.

Exhibit C: The mighty jungle.

Finally, toward the end of the original recording (2:23), Linda’s improvisation finds approximately the melody that the Tokens later made the focus of their rendition. This is the element that interests us here, because it’s also the melody of “Vanishing Girl.”

Exhibit D: “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The Tokens’ lyrics are confined to the first four notes of the major scale, and they are harmonized in the most obvious way, using the corresponding I, IV, and V chords. The wordless introduction uses the same melody, but reaches down at the end to a low fifth.

Exhibit E: “Vanishing Girl.”

The Dukes’ melody also reaches down at the end, but then climbs back up one semitone. This final note, a flat sixth, puts a twist on the Tokens’ melody, shifting it from the standard major scale to the harmonic major scale and requiring a different harmonization scheme. Instead of I-IV-I-V, it goes I-iv-I-iv. In other words, both chord progressions start in the same place, but where the Tokens proceed to a major subdominant chord, the Dukes’ subdominant is minor.

Some listeners have dismissed “Vanishing Girl” because of its similarity to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” perhaps forgetting that the Dukes’ whole schtick is homage and liberal borrowing from their musical forebears. Granted, the early ’60s Tokens aren’t quite of the same ilk as the late ’60s psychedelic bands the Dukes are openly emulating.

The Dukes of Stratosphear are actually the alter egos of XTC, who borrowed at least one other melody before. Frontman Andy Partridge confided in Todd Bernhardt in a 2007 interview that “Meccanik Dancing” (1978) is a condensation of “Shortnin’ Bread” (see “Complicated Game: Inside the Songs of XTC,” page 55).

Bassist Colin Moulding (aka “The Red Curtain”) wrote “Vanishing Girl.” There appears to be no public acknowledgement from him of its similarity to “Lion.” He does remark in “XTC Song Stories” (page 220): “All I had was this very smooth-sounding melody. […] So we amped it up and got the tempo going and Hollies’d it up.” Chronicler Neville Farmer refers curious listeners to the Hollies’ “King Midas in Reverse” and “On a Carousel.”

Those influences are discernable, but not nearly as explicit as the borrowed melody. Regardless, the subtle alteration and reharmonization of that melody — and the unique direction the song takes from there — make “Vanishing Girl” worthy of another listen. Whatever the melody’s provenance, it’s clear the Dukes put a unique spin on it.

Printed on 8.5×11 or scribbled on a napkin. Painstakingly constructed or thrown together at the last minute.

Musicians’ setlists fall into two basic categories that could be said to align with Freud’s concept of anal fixation.

They can be faithful pre-creations of a performance, or merely a jumping-off point. They may list actual song titles or the performers’ pet names for songs. They can get pretty involved as far as font selection and stage directions.

The truly professional or daring or carefree call out songs as they come to mind, no need for an agenda. But it can always be written down afterward.

The setlist’s Platonic ideal is the album track listing, which is an itemized receipt not only for rehearsal and preparation, but also the extermination of mistakes and awkward pauses.

For some musicians a setlist is a locus of anxiety. It’s a treasure map, but one that implies every unseen pitfall. A flight simulator that actually takes off.

Presumably it’s different for those on the expulsive side of the equation.

But all musicians crave validation; they may even settle for acknowledgement. If the gig is the service rendered, then the setlist is the documentation: an invoice, a timeslip, a W2. Redeem this coupon at checkout for half off obscurity.

The shuffle function on my iPod never seemed to do that great a job at giving me variety. Not that I really minded hearing two Neko Case songs in a row now and then, but I felt it could do better.

One day I hit upon the idea of listening to the iPod’s contents in alphabetical order. This succeeded in randomizing selections in a more satisfying way and had some lovely unintended consequences.

Organizing by title can produce runs of songs that sound wildly different but share thematic material — see for example the group of “I Can’t” songs that deal with the more frustrating aspects of being in love.

Listening in alphabetical order can also give you multiple versions of the same song back to back. Provided your library is comprehensive enough, you can trace the song’s evolution from artist to artist, or even from demo to studio to stage (though not necessarily in that order).

This is as good a substitute as I’ve found for the excellent but apparently defunct podcast “Where’s That Sound Coming From,” each episode of which focuses on a single song through the lens of a dozen or more covers, with lots of research and interesting anecdotes about the performers mixed in.

Exhibit A: A GarageBand drum sequence in progress.

Rolling Stone has a fascinating read about GarageBand on the occasion of its 15th birthday. Fascinating for me, at least, because I use the software every single day. Mainly as a practice tool: Rather than use an amp at home, I plug my bass into my laptop and listen to myself on headphones. This makes it very easy to play along with songs and demos, and especially to record and listen back to myself as a way to better understand and improve my performance. (Practice via self-recording is a key takeaway from one of my favorite blogs, by the opera timpanist Jason Haaheim.)

The thesis of the Rolling Stone article is that GarageBand has democratized music by making the means of production accessible to the masses, but that this has come at the expense of music becoming more homogeneous. My take: Sure, a lot of people, including pop stars, can and do use the loops that come prepackaged with the software. But stock loops are just the beginning. GarageBand lets you create so many of your own sounds, and the palette is expanding all the time.

Exhibit B: Susanne.

My band has been without a full-time drummer for a few years now, but rather than let that bum me out I decided early on to use GarageBand and our trusty JamMan loop pedal to make a substitute. I’ve gotten pretty good at building backbeats and fills, blending available drum samples and nudging beats ever so slightly off the grid to make what comes out sound almost like it was played by a real person on real wood, aluminum and polyethylene terephthalate.

We call our robot drummer Susanne. She never drops a stick and she never speeds up or slows down (unless we tell her to). She’s enabled us to keep up the high-volume rocking even in the absence of someone bashing a kit. Only trouble is, if we mess up, she can’t adapt.

Exhibit C: A template.

Exhibit D: A reconstruction.

Creating Susanne’s beats, I started pretty simple. Eventually I got a little obsessive recreating the performances of human drummers we’ve played with over the years. Sometimes I brought in other instruments — from pianos and synths to tablas, taiko drums, and a Persian santoor — to flesh out the backing tracks. GarageBand became my basement orchestra.

Perfecting all this audio down to the smallest detail was very satisfying for the Aspergian side of my brain. On the other hand, spending hours making microadjustments would always give me a megadose of self-loathing.

Nowadays, for my sanity’s sake — and thanks to the realization that my simulacra will never sound “real” — I’m working in another direction. These new percussion sequences ought to embrace their artificiality. I’m still figuring out what that means and what it sounds like.

As to the notion that GarageBand constrains music? The opposite has been true in my experience.

Moderate to severe Crohn’s disease and back pain threaten to keep two hip, young frontwomen from the spotlight. Only after they’ve popped some pills can the show go on.

It’s a riff as old as rock ‘n’ roll.

Most drug commercials have main characters — and presumably also target demographics — around middle age. But two ads in heavy rotation today prominently feature twentysomething indie rockers. Why the aberration? Part advertising industry co-optation of youth culture, part Big Pharma setting its sights on a new generation of consumers.

Both spots must’ve cost small fortunes to produce. There are multiple locations, including outdoor festival stages, a music hall, a recording studio and a tour bus. There are gaggles of extras to populate the concert crowds. And there’s loads of genuine musical equipment, including several auxiliary instruments that merely decorate the stage. The guitarist in the 60-second “Not Always Where I Needed to Be” ad for Humira plays what looks like Jerry Garcia’s Doug Irwin Tiger, but with a tapered headstock.

The 15/30-second “Rock On (And On and On),” promoting Aleve, even features indie music, sort of. The backing track is “Give It Up” by Sarah McIntosh, who was affiliated with commercial music group The Den, which described itself as “home to a specially curated roster of independent artists who craft original music for visual stories. Our talented artists collaborate in order to create a more informed and original catalog with the highest production integrity.”

Older rockers are a bit of a trope in drug commercials.

One for the blood thinner Eliquis is set at an outdoor concert and has a few extra prop guitars, just like the Humira and Aleve spots. But instead of a young woman, its protagonist is a silver-haired dude who says, “I accept I’m not 22.”

A Xarelto ad features a guitarist and singer staving off stroke long enough to play at least one more wedding with his band. An epic 90-second spot for the diabetes drug Ozempic corrupts Pilot’s “Oh Ho Ho It’s Magic” and features among its three story lines a singer with an old-timey microphone at a classy soiree.

And of course there are the ads for Cosentyx featuring psoriasis sufferer and real-life ’80s rockstar Cyndi Lauper.

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Another drug commercial featuring indie rockers: Biktarvy TV Spot, ‘Keep Being You’

A girl gave me my first mixtape in high school. On a real cassette. Actually it was all of David Byrne’s “Uh-Oh” (1992) with “What I Like About You” and other songs added on the leftover tape.

Then there was the tape I never gave that girl from my summer internship. It started with Fugazi’s “Do You Like Me.” Asinine.

Over time the subtext of the mixes I gave and received modulated from romance to respectability. Friends introduced me to pivotal material (The Dismemberment Plan’s “Memory Machine,” the Persuasions’ cover of “Man in Me,” The High Dials’ “Desiderata”), while I tried to get others excited about XTC, Chicago and Medeski Martin & Wood.

In modern times I exchange mix CDs with a friend at the end of every year. All year I’m assembling playlists of candidate songs that, starting around Thanksgiving weekend, get juxtaposed and winnowed until the perfect mix emerges. All this preparation is done in anticipation of receiving a CD that’s just as carefully curated.

There’s still a hint of that ulterior motive; at the very least there’s a little friendly competition going on. Each creator wishes to have found the most obscure gem, or to have demonstrated the most legit taste.

There’s at least a little altruism at work here too: the desire to expose others to worthwhile music. But following any exchange comes anxious anticipation. Will others see my darlings as I see them? Will anyone remark on them?

There’s much to be said for placing a familiar favorite at just the right spot. But the real excitement is in the unknown, and the new favorite songs or albums or bands hiding there.

For this reason my policy is to withhold the tracklist. The listening experience ought to be free of any prejudices the listener may have formed about a band whose name they recognize. The song titles should not make an impression before the sound itself does. Only once a recipient has satisfied me that they’ve listened carefully do I divulge my secrets.

That said, the contents of Spotify playlists are not anonymous, and I want to share one here. You may listen only if you promise to keep the openest of minds.

A note about my nom de mix: DJ Welfare Mockeries is the weirdest anagram I could make out of my name. I would never mock welfare or its recipients.

This will be a blog not so much about music as about everything around music. Perceptions and impressions. Emotions, ideas. Tangents.

It won’t be reviews or criticism per se, although sometimes I might write about shows I went to years ago or albums that came out decades ago.

It won’t be about musicians or their craft, necessarily. I may interview a musician here or there. From time to time I might transcribe a melody or chart a chord progression that strikes my fancy.

It won’t be scientific, but it will have a lot to do with hearing and perception. There are fascinating differences in how music is consumed, experienced and remembered from listener to listener.

While I will certainly make recommendations, I also will resist snobbery. Perhaps somewhere there’s an antidote to the oneupmanship and shaming that so often infects our conversations about music.

About the title of this blog: In musical notation, zögernd means to play hesitantly. That is how I plan write — without much certainty even after much reflection.