For many posts I rely on the site whosampled.com as a reliable source, but I also give back to the site to help improve it. Recently, three entries I made (all Björk-related I might add) got approved and I want to talk about one of them.

You may have noticed I take the definition of sampling quite broad, from literally using a fragment of a recording to taking a small ‘idea’ from a song and making it your own. In 2000 the Queens of the Stone Age did just that. When they released the song Better Living Through Chemistry, there’s one part of it that may seem familiar.

Although most of the song is an original work, the lyric “There’s no one here, and people every where, you’re on your own” that serves as a chorus in the song, comes directly from a track of Björk’s album Debut from 1993; the song Crying. In that song it isn’t the chorus, but it leads up to it.  The Queens of the Stone age creatively re-engineered it into a completely different song and put it to good use.