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3.41am
22 March 2013
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Hello there, I'm a newie around here, so give me a chance if this has been posted before or anything else.
I was watching the 1978's film Grease with my sister yesterday (I haven't seen it since I was 8 or 9) and in this song I noticed a very similar melody to Back In The USSR (we all know it was released a decade before.)
Especifically in the "Well the ukraine girls really knock me out they leave the west behind and moscow girls make me sing and shout" part.
It was a plain reference to the Beatles song? or it was just a copy? Did you think about it before? I am delusional? lol discuss. 
4.31am
14 December 2009
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That melody is indeed pretty similar, but I'm pretty sure it's not a reference to "Back In The USSR ", just an attempt at a typical blues-based 1950s-styled rock 'n roll song. Many songs have that same kind of ascending-descending melody based on a blues scale. The Beatles song took its title from Chuck Berry's "Back In the USA", and as such it was also partly inspired by the rock music of a decade earlier, Chuck Berry's era.
One day, a tape-op got a tape on backwards, he went to play it, and it was all "Neeeradno-undowarrroom" and it was "Wow! Sounds Indian!"
-- Paul McCartney
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