Tag: Lady Gaga

  • That Metal Riff

    Yet another pointless controversy surrounding Lady Gaga. You can say a lot about her, but her listing on WhoSampled.com is relatively modest compared to other artists. Still, Dutch punk band The Heideroosjes took note on their website after a fan pointed out that the intro to their song We All Share The Same Sun from 2004 sounded a lot like Lady Gaga’s Electric Chapel from 2011. The Heideroosjes honestly said they wouldn’t sue (cause they hate it too when little artists go after big ones like greedy bastards, which they are not) and weren’t doing it for attention (even though it did caught the attention of the national press).

    As some people pointed out in the responses to the news, Lady Gaga did not steal anything from the Heideroosjes at all. In fact, both of then used the same over-used metal riff that has been around for some 30+ years. Curt King wrote a brilliantly detailed article about this including some audio-samples. Listen to those and you’ll note that with only slight variations, they all sound ‘the same’. So no, Lady Gaga didn’t steal from anyone specifically, just rehashed yet another bit of pop-culture.

    And just to be obstinate,here’s one of my favourite versions of the riff:

    Gary Moore – Hiroshima

  • Human Resource – Dominator

    Let’s talk about a sample that isn’t a sample at all. Lady Gaga can and has been accused of a lot of things involving theft of other people’s music, but one thing that’s hardly ever done in her music is sampling. And by that I mean direct sampling; recording a loop and playing it back in your own track.

    There’s been outrage a few weeks back that Lady Gaga’s new single Born this Way would be creepily similar to Express Yourself (1989) by Madonna. By the way you can say Madonna borrowed parts of that song from Respect Yourself (1972) by The Staple Singers. I don’t want to get into the Born this Way/Express Yourself-discussion, but it reminded me of something going on a few years back when Bad Romance (2009) by Lady Gaga came out in The Netherlands.

    Apart from really hard to distinguish drumloop from Ballanation (2000) by DJ Jean, Bad Romance doesn’t use any samples. But Dutch people instantly recognised the ‘electronic saw’ noise in Bad Romance as a sample from one of Rotterdam’s finest classic rave formations Human Resource and their 1991 hit-single Dominator. If you Google “Lady Gaga Dominator” you can find a pile of discussions in Dutch about whether or not Lady Gaga stole the sample.

    Guess what? She didn’t. That distinct sound is what’s known as a ‘hoover’ among rave-lovers and is actually a preset on many synths, in this case the Roland Alpha Juno. It’s quite commonly used in rave and later hardcore tracks and you can find tons of videos of people recreating it. Even on a Casio.

    The Prodigy became famous for introducing the ‘hoover’-sound into the rave scene with their 1991 song Charly (you can see the Roland-synth in the video) and they certainly didn’t sample it from Human Resource either. It’s interesting considering the Prodigy have sampled a lot of people, but most of their synth-noises come straight from the electronics. I mean, the band is named after a synth, the Moog Prodigy for crying out loud.

    So: no, Lady Gaga did not sample the hoover from Human Resource:

  • David Bowie – Fame

    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 from their 1997 album Three Dollar Bill, Yall$. The song Faith is a cover from George Michael’s original version from 1987. Limp Bizkit went on the next few years to score a string of hits, including the song Take a Look Around which I mentioned two weeks ago.

    As sort of an in-between-albums thing, Limp Bizkit released a remix album titled New Old Songs in 2001 which featured new remixes of their old songs (go figure). One was released as a single and was a remix of their very first big hit: Faith. The new version was entitled Faith/Fame Remix.  Why? because instead of just doing the cover again, they also mashed up the riff from David Bowie’s 1975 track Fame (co-written by John Lennon) into it and had Fred Durst sing the word ‘Faith’ in the same manner Bowie sang ‘Fame’. Is it a cover? Is it a sample? Or is it both?

    They’re not the first and certainly not the last to cover that track though.  James Brown borrowed the tune in the same year Bowie released it in his track Hot. Public Enemy used it as a small hidden snippet of it in their 1988 track Night of the Living Baseheads. EPMD used a very slowed down sample of Fame in their It Wasn’t Me, It Was The Fame in 1989. When Vanilla Ice had dropped off the radar and released another album, he used Fame in his own track also titled Fame in 1994. Dr. Dre used it quite prominently (is it a cover? is it a sample?)  in 1996 track Fame. Even Jay-Z borrows the lyrics in the 2001 track Takeover. To top it off, Lady Gaga sampled one her heroes and lifted the riff from Fame in her 2009 track Fancy Pants.

    Here’s the original: David Bowie – Fame.