The latest song comes on the radio, it reminds you of another beat, but you don’t know where. You crank the volume up to a 10. It is nostalgic but just like meeting an old friend after a few decades with kids, you can’t help but look at them as smaller versions of the parent.
“Saturday Night Fever” playing in the back as you shuffle through songs trying to name the tune, you aren’t under a mandela effect or hearing ghosts. Why does the “Wild Thought” guitar riff sound close to “Maria Maria.”
It is time to think critically.
The practice is called sampling and interpolation, taking a piece of past music and adding a fragment of melody to make it ready to just hit a bit “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”
There are also remixes, producing a different version of a song and parodies an imitation for exaggeration for comedic effects. But those are already on the edgy of copycat song and original.
Not fearing the reaper, just filling a prescription adding more cowbell but being like Weird Al with “NOW That’s What I Call Polka.” Swing just a wrecking ball to the lyric to remake it in his madman vision.
In a world that desires originality, it really loves these songs, sometimes surpassing the original as iconic, doing a similar move to what the Oreo did to Hydrox.
Hydrox might have been the original but Oreo became the popular version everyone consume.
If you think your favorite song doesn’t have a sample it can be in there subtly, Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” might hide its cards well but its opening “Ma Ma Ma Ma” is from “Ma Baker” from Boney M in 1977.
Hip don’t lie from Shakira borrowed a sample from Amore’s “Como El Neustro” from Jerry Rivera and we can go on and on with songs that elements.
You may think it is all tainted love. I am not saying these melodies are a gold digger, talking dirty, saying the same old words to make you hit repeat one more time.
It isn’t so bad just because they might not be Prometheus but it doesn’t make these Frankenstein creations less impressive thing. They are original even though they might borrow some elements.
While creativity may be infinite, as time goes on artists will be influenced by other or past works. Creativity does not come from nowhere. People can be influence from other work to make something brand new.
But as in alchemy everything comes at a cost, you can’t easily take elements of popular songs and turn out albums because of copyright law but only protective elements.
There are multiple case, of artist suing each other for infringement even Katy Perry got out of a case because her song “Dark Horse” because the octave scale.
But that won’t people like Kylie Exum in the song “Bassthoven.” “I’m like Beethoven with the bass on him. Made classic hits, I went pop.”
It uses Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” and if you ask my honest opinion the song is an absolute bop. To me there is no debate on how the song take this classic song and with lyrics that reference and parody it can stand it own.
Now we come back spinning our heads right round like a record about this. Just because the door of destiny was knocked once doesn’t mean it can’t be replicated by another pair of hands.
But these songs do belong in pop culture just well, Peter Griffin can skate to a fifth of Beethoven as it plays in the background of Loki desperately looking for answers to the multiverse.
To me it may be concerning that a lot of song from 2010 popular were sampling a bit too much in frequently. But the practice was done during the 1970.
My solution or response if someone says that a song is unoriginal or just that an artist is uncreative and can’t get a song of theirs head, even myself at time.
In the words of Eminem’s lyrics of “Rap God,” “What I gotta do to get it through to you, I’m superhuman? Innovative and I’m made of rubber. So that anything you say is ricochetin’ off of me and it’ll glue to you.”