Some songs don’t have an original, or it has become impossible to trace who wrote it or performed it first. You’d think this was just the case for any folk song pre-dating 1900, but it even happens for more recent classics. Take Hey Joe. Most people will say that the original (the one they know […]
This post is somewhat of a follow-up on the post about Coldplay. Sometimes a song is so coincidentally similar, that despite it being an original work, people have to be credited because otherwise there will be lawsuits. Radiohead are often praised as being musical geniuses who have made ‘difficult’ and ‘experimental’ music in a time where […]
If you want a heated debate among music lovers, then suggest that Queen stole their idea for Another One Bites the Dust from Good Times by Chic. Or sampled them even. But did they? Here’s the facts. Chic’s Good Times came out in 1979. Another One Bites the Dust came out in 1980 an was […]
Coldplay got a bit of flack in 2008 because their song Viva La Vida from the same year sounded a lot like If I Could Fly by Joe Satriani from 2004. Satriani sued, but dropped the charges when Coldplay and Satriani decided to settle out of court. Part of the deal was that they wouldn’t […]
Copyright and sampling is always an interesting issue. Certainly when something very old is involved. Take Ludwig von Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Everyone knows it and thanks to the fact that Ludwig has been very dead for a long time, his works are in the public domain. That means any one can do with it as […]
Here’s a sample that has toured the world. Initially we start our trip in Jamaica where reggae artist Slim Smith records the track I’ll Never Let You Go for his album Just a Dream. I have varying sources that say the album was released in 1972 or 1968 or simply don’t know. Likewise the sources […]
Here’s a really quick one I submitted to whosampled.com recently: In 2002 American lounge/triphop-duo Thievery Corporation released their album The Richest Man in Babylon. On it is the instrumental track Resolution. Around the same time another American triphop band named Etro Anime is making a small name for itself, though their effort seems to mainly […]
In 1966 saxophone Mike Sharpe and his band recorded an instrumental song titled Spooky. About a year later, the track found its way into the charts and got noticed. A band that mainly played covers named the Classics IV, decided to record a cover of the song also titled Spooky which was released in 1967 […]
I just submitted something to whosampled.com I found obviously missing. I was actually shocked it wasn’t on there. Today we’re doing a cover AND a sample! And a whole string of other artist who borrowed the same sample. In 1998 the band Limp Bizkit broke through to a major audience with their single Faith taken […]
I frequently use whosampled.com as a source, but I also try to give back finds not listed on the site. When I submitted the fact that 2 Hi use a sample from the Jungle Brothers in the 1992 track Jump a Little Hi-er, one of the moderators wondered out loud where another sample in that […]
