I’ve mentioned Radiohead a few times before. In fact, I’ve mentioned that their biggest hit ‘Creep‘ is loosely based on another song. I’ve also mentioned a clone song taken from Karma Police. Guess what? Karma Police itself might not be so uniquely original itself either.
I’m certainly not the first to mention this and I certainly won’t be the last, but you can compare The Beatles song Sexy Sadie from 1968 to Karma Police and hear a some familiar hints. Try it yourself:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’99, wear sunscreen.” You may recognise this line from film director Baz Luhrman’s hit Everybody’s free (to wear sunscreen) from 1999. That hit song however is composed of a number of ‘samples’.
First off, the ‘speech’ sampled in the song is actually an essay written by Mary Schmich in 1997. That essay in turn is somewhat inspired by the poem Desiderata from 1927. The essay by Schmich was recorded by Baz Luhrmann using a voice actor who reads the essay word for word.
Half way through the song, some vocals kick in which are borrowed from the song Everybody’s Free (to feel good) sung by Quindon Tarver on the soundtrack of the 1996 film Romeo + Julliet. The film was directed by … Baz Luhrmann. Hence the title of Baz Luhrmann’s song is Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen).
The acapella version sung by Quidon Tarver however is a cover of the 1991 dance hit Everybody’s Free (to feel good) by Rozalla. Baz Luhrmann/Quindon Tarver haven’t been the only ones to ever sample/cover it. The lyrics of Rozalla popped up in Bob Sinclar’s 2007 song Sound of Freedom. According to whosampled.com, Moby also sampled the song, but since the video they link to is down, I can’t verify this. It’s not on the single I own in any case.
One more important thing about the Rozalla version; it also uses a sample. It uses the classic drum break from the 1972 track Think (About It) by Lyn Collins. But since I could list tons of tracks that sample Think , here’s Rozalla – Everybody’s Free.
In 2004 the Shapeshifters (or Shape:UK if you live in the US) scored a modest hit with Lola’s Theme. Before that in 2003 however, it was already circulating as an instrumental only. The version with vocals had its entire instrumentation re-played from the instrumental version that contained a sample. That sample is Johnny Taylor’s 1982 hit What About My Love. So technically speaking the 2004 doesn’t contain a direct sample.
There’s a second sample in the song and that’s also not direct. The vocals sung by a singer named Cookie were mostly original. The chorus however was directly borrowed and resung from Love Me Tonight by Anthony White from 1994.
Gary Moore died yesterday so I decided to switch the post I had in mind for today around to make room for this one.
Gary Moore was undeniably a very creative musician who had good control over his instrument of choice the guitar. And though he wrote quite a bulk of original work, his most famous song of all, Still Got the Blues, seems to borrow very slightly from an older song. Check out the song Nordrach by Jud’s Gallery at around 6:18 and 9:16 (source: whosampled.com). It sounds very identical.
The leader of the band thought so too and sued Gary Moore in 2008 (why so late?) and won. Gary Moore denied having heard the songs and while the court acknowledged he probably didn’t steal it on purpose he may have heard it on the radio or live back when it was played in 1974, even though the music had never been put on a record. Honestly, even if Gary Moore did hear it, forgot it, but remembered it sub-consciencely when he recorded his song, I think the claim is a bit too far. But such are copyright laws.
Gary Moore (1952-2011) – Still Got the Blues
In honour of the International Film Festival Rotterdam that’s going on right now, not only a posts about samples from other songs, but also from film!
In 1990 Primal Scream released the song Loaded. Most prominently, it features a sample from their own song I’m losing more than I’ll ever have from 1989. Whosampled.com says the bass-line is replayed from the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil from 1968. You’ll also hear a drumloop taken from the 1989 white label remix of What I Am by Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians. On a side note, you might recognise that song from the version that Tin Tin Out and former Spice Girl Emma Bunton covered in 1999.
But there’s also some spoken word samples in it. The most striking comes from the the 1966 film The Wild Angels (imdb + trailer). A biker film in which Peter Fonda plays a biker that tells off a preacher and says they want to be free to do what they wanna do … and they wanna get loaded.
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 best) is by Jimi Hendrix, but this is not the case. Jimi Hendrix covered it and gave it his own spin as was usual in those days. But who did he cover it from?
Hey Joe was a song that emerged in the early sixties and become one of those songs every band covered. Even the WikiPedia article can’t seem to figure out who wrote the original. The earliest know recording of Hey Joe is by the Leaves from 1965. Jimi Hendrix recorded his version in 1966. Some say it was a traditional song. The first copyright on it was claimed by a traveling musician Billy Roberts. He however may have composed the song out of mix of different originals, including Baby, Please Don’t Go To Town from 1955 by (his girlfriend) Niella Miller.
After the success of the sixties versions, just about every body seems to have done a cover of the song: Tim Rose (1969), Deep Purple, The Who (1989), Patti Smith (with a really awful solo), The Offspring (1991), Type-O-Negative (1992), Ice-T (1994, with his band Bodycount), Willy Deville, an all-star band, ZZ Top, Seal, Vai, Satriani, May and Walsh, and many many many many many more. It makes you wonder how rich Billy Roberts actually got from the copyright, whether he did at all.
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 recycled pop-tunes reign. But even their biggest and most covered hit, Creep from 1992, is not a isolated work of brilliance.
The songs credits list Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood as co-writers of the song. Both of them are song-writers who have quite a few well-known songs from the sixties and beyond. One of the hit songs they wrote together is The Air that I Breathe from 1974 that was performed by The Hollies.
While most people will recognise the subtle similarities in feel and even some chord progressions. And while Radiohead never confirmed they were inspired by the song by the Hollies, they were forced to put the credits on it regardless.
Of course a whole string of people covered the Radiohead version. It was included in Rodeohead (a country & western cover/medley of Radiohead by Hard ‘n Phirm) in 2005. Tears for Fears have done it, Richard Cheese has done it, Amanda Palmer has done it, even Korn have done it and many many more.
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 written by bass-player John Deacon. According to Wikipedia: Chic co-founder Bernard Edwards stated, “…that Queen record came about because that Queen bass player… spent some time hanging out with us at our studio”.
If you analyse the notes quite clinically, you can easily say that they are not exactly the same, but the arrangement of both is at least similar. The Queen version is much more simple. Still, on WhoSampled.com the comment-sections are filled when Queen as a sampler is not only linked to Chic, but also the track Christmas Rappin’ by Kurtis Blow from 1979. So Queen sampled Kurtis Blow? You could even argue that Rapture by Blondie was ‘sampled’ from Chic. Or Kurtis Blow.
The versions by Chic, Queen, Blondie and Kurtis Blow have all been sampled so many times, (including the hold it now!-lyric by Kurtis Blow) it wouldn’t even be funny to list them all here. A few are very notable however.
Of course the Sugarhill Gang’s Rappers Delight from 1979 was one of the first hip hop hits. As a result that track has been sampled a zillion times also (Hotel, Motel, Holiday-Inn) and the entry for that song alone on WhoSampled is two pages long. The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel by Grandmaster Flash from 1981 mixes, Chic, Queen, Blondie and quite a few others together in one track. KRS-One’s Step Into a World (Rapture’s Delight) from 1997 borrows it’s slightly differently sung vocal line break Rapture by Blondie, but it’s ironic that the Rapture’s Delight references both the Blondie song, but also Rappers Delight, even though KRS-One doesn’t sample that at all in the song.
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 talk about it any more. Personally, I think they may have heard the song and got inspired by it subconsciously. Either that or it’s poor coincidence.
Still, Coldplay has got a track record of borrowing tunes. And some times it makes sense. The opening of Life In Technicolor from 2008 sounds a lot like the Jon Hopkins track Light Through the Veins, also from 2008. But there’s a really good reason for that. Jon Hopkins was one of the producers of the Coldplay track and he let them borrow it.
A different case however is the song Talk from 2005. It became a massive hit, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the main theme is borrowed directly from a motif from Kraftwerk’s 1981 track Computer Love. But in all honesty, Chris Martin did try his best to write German to ask Kraftwerk if they could use it (they said yes).
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 they please, except re-copyright the exact same song. But here’s the tricky part.
If you rearrange it, you have created something new and therefore a new copyrighted song. This has happened over the years when several artists did their own version. In 1969 the Dutch progressive rock band Ekseption, who were known for redoing countless bits of classical music, released The 5th. On the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is Walter Murphy’s A Fifth of Beethoven, released in 1976. There’s even a metal version by At Vance from 2006.
But something odd happened when a lot of artists sampled the Walter Murphy song A Fifth of Beethoven. Technically speaking, they need to obtain a license to use it. So, if art musician Christian Marclay uses only a tiny snip of it in Second Coming in 1997, he needs to pay up. When A+ samples A Fifth of Beethoven in Enjoy Yourself in 1999, yep. House-DJ/producer Paul Oakenfold could’ve used any version of Beethoven’s 5th, but instead opted to use a sample from A Fifth of Beethoven in his track 1975 from 2002 it seems. Robin Thicke also sampled A Fifth of Beethoven in 2002 in When I Get You Alone, but uses a more clearly recognisable part. Even master-remixers 2ManyDJs/Soulwax have taken on A Fifth of Beethoven.
So while the Electric Light Orchestra can cover the original Chuck Berry song Roll over Beethoven (which includes nothing by Beethoven), they’ll have to get a license to do so, but when they play it live they can include part of Beethoven’s 5th symphony for free and without an extra license from Beethoven. Oh, and to make things more complicated for you; if you’re a symphony orchestra, you can play Beethoven’s 5th for free, you can’t own a copyright of the song, but you can own a copyright on the recording. So no one can put your recording on a compilation of “Beethoven’s Greatest Hits” without getting a license from you. But of course they can always play their own version and put that on there instead.
Let’s forget about the confusion, here’s ‘my favourite version, the 2ManyDJs remix of the originally copyrighted cover of A Fifth of Beethoven by Walter Murphy: