SEGER STIRS UP A STORM WITH SOUND-ALIKE SONG

Talk about rock deja vu .

If you’ve heard Bob Seger’s big new radio hit, “American Storm,” you may have the funny feeling that you’ve heard the single somewhere before. Don’t worry--Seger hasn’t lifted the chorus from an obscure Bruce Springsteen song.

It’s just that his new tune sounds like . . . well, an old Bob Seger song.

In fact, “American Storm” sounds so much like a 1983 Seger single called “Even Now” that a top Chicago rock station, WLUP-FM (known as “The Loop”), has been airing a homemade tape of the two songs edited together.

“We call it our Loop custom cut,” boasted WLUP music director Bill Evans. “We took the two songs and go back and forth between them, using the verse of one and the chorus of the other. They really sound like the same song--you can’t tell the difference. It’s so obvious that we couldn’t help but do it. Seger’s always been pretty derivative, but this is ridiculous.”

Evans said the station’s morning deejay played “American Storm” one day and came back on the air singing “Even Now.” “So we gave him the medley to play, and our afternoon jock’s played it a few times too. We haven’t done it that often, but we’ve played the medley enough to drive the point home. It’s just our way of saying that this station doesn’t take our music all that seriously.”

Evans added that the station also plays the regular version of “American Storm” as well, so it hasn’t received any complaints from Capitol, Seger’s record label, which will release a new Seger album later this month.

If Capitol is upset, the label isn’t squawking in public. According to a Capitol spokeswoman: “If WLUP thinks the songs sound alike, that’s their business. We don’t think so. And we just hope they play lots of Bob’s new music.”