A particular song by Bob James, Nautilus, has been sampled by dozens of hiphop (and other) artists. Since this post would be too long if I went into the entire list, there’s another song I want to focus on: Sing of the Times from 1981.
It first re-appeared as a sampled in the 1991 De La Soul track Keepin’ the Faith. A few years after in 1994 it probably made it’s most famous appearance in Regulate by Warren G. and Nate Dogg. That track also samples Michael McDonald’s 1982 track I keep forgetting and borrows the ‘Let Me Ride‘ lyric from Parliament’s Mothership Connection (1975).
In 1995 the sample pops up again in Menelik & No Sé’s track Quelle Aventure, which also uses a sample from Pino D’Angio’s 1980 track Ma Quale Idea (did I hear anyone say Don’t call me baby?).
Finally in 1998 Buzzy Bus also takes on Bob James and puts it in their track Jump. This tracks also samples the Jungle Brother’s I’ll House You with it’s lyric “jump, jump, a little higher” (and I may need to devote a post to that track as well some time in the future). You may know the Buzzy Bus guys (Koen Groeneveld & Addy van der Zwan) under their various release names: The Klubbheads, The Ultimate Seduction, their remixes for the Turn Up The Bass compilations and a dozen more names.
The song Barbra Streisand by Duck Sauce has been taking the world by storm for weeks. The video is loaded with tons of artists including Pharell and Kanye West. Duck Sauce is DJ’s Armand van Helden and A-trak and like the title DJ suggests, apart from making records themselves, they like to spin other people’s tunes too.
So it should come as no surprise that Barbra Streisand is literally sampled from Boney M’s 1979 disco hit Gotta go Home with a few added beats, scratches, sounds and of course the ‘Barbra Streisand’ sample. You’d think that was the end of it, but no.
Gotta go home is in fact a cover of a German song Hallo Bimmelbahn from 1973 by a band called Nighttrain. The original song already includes the ‘woohoohoo’ and same notes as the Boney M. version minus some steel drums and vocals. The same elements Barbra Streisand leans on.
But how did some German song about a train who took some guy’s love away end up as a disco song about going to a sunny beach? Simple; Boney M., despite being headed by Caribbean singers, was in fact based in Germany and the product of German producer Frank Farian who undoubtedly figured a more internationalised cover of Hallo Bimmelbahn would be more successful. Frank Farian was also responsible for the ill-fated band Milli Vanilli, by the way.
So, a German song about a train, became an English song about heading for Caribbean islands and that in turn became a dance song with a video celebrating the diversity New York. Here’s Hallo Bimmelbahn by Nighttrain (though I dare you not to say “Barbra Streisand” throughout the song):
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.
Sometimes I use this weekly column as an excuse to point out a song I love. The Sneaker Pimps scored a few hits in the mid-nineties. Most notable of those is the song 6 underground from 1996. The song itself leans heavily on a sample from the soundtrack of the 1964 film Goldfingerby James Bond-composer John Barry, however it’s not the epic main-theme from Goldfinger that featured Shirley Bassey.
The other prominent sample is the “a 1-2, a 1-2”. That comes from De La Soul’s Breakadawn from 1993 and that track contains a ton of samples: A Quiet Storm (1975) by Smokey Robinson, Sang and Dance by the Bar-Kay’s (1970), I can’t help it (1979) by Michael Jackson and Yes We Can Can (1973) by the Pointer Sisters. Of course the irony here is that the Sneaker Pimps used a tiny part of the lyrics of that song that De La Soul had written themselves.
Usually a famous sample gets used over and over again by a range of artists, but occasionally, multiple samples from the same track find their way into very different tracks by other people. Take Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three’s classic hip hop track from 1984: The Roof is on Fire.
If I say “the roof is on fire” you’ll either chant along with the original, sing the mopey version in Fire Water Burn by the Bloodhound Gang from 1997, bounce to the 1998 song “Follow the Leader” by the Soca Boys, remember you danced to the 1989 dance track The roof is on fire by Westbam (which features a ton of other samples too), you may have headbanged to Sway by Coal Chamber from 1997 or if you’re really hardcore you remember Atari Teenage Riot using the lyrics in their 1999 track Anarchy 999. That or you heard the lines “the roof is on fire, we don’t need the water, let the motherfucker burn” in any other song that the Wiki article on the song mentions.
And that’s kinda ironic, since The Roof Is On Fire was actually the B-side of the single that was intended as a hit song: Request Line. You may recognise the intro to that track as the same as that to Missy Elliot’s Work It from 2002. Somehow the simple but effective lyrics of the B-side found its way into pop culture and became just as standard for MC’s as “put your hands up for Detroit“.
Even more ironic is the odd’s you will know yet another sample from The Roof is on Fire even though it completely ignores the famous lyrics involving lack of a fire department. Hey Girl Hey Boy by the Chemical Brothers from 1999 directly samples the opening of this original version of The Roof is on Fire.
So hey girls and hey boys, we don’t need no water despite that The Roof is on Fire:
I’ve talked about clone songs; when artists copy the style and sound of a song without using the actual notes and lyrics, for quick financial gain because of instant-recognition by the audience. Taking that up a notch is when it’s not other artists borrowing the sound, but the same artist makes nearly the same song twice.
True, most artists have a recognisable ‘sound’. You can instantly recognise a U2 song, even when Bono isn’t singing. You might notice a gradual change in that sound making it easier to discern a song from the 80’s or 90’s. But most people will argue it’s not the same songs, unless you really hate the artist.
But some times when an artist scores one hit single, the pressure is on (usually from the record company) to replicate that success and as fast as possible too. In the rush, the same song that brought success earlier is grabbed, some notes are rearranged and some new lyrics are written and hey presto the new hit single that sounds very recognisable.
A very good example of this are Technotronic, because they didn’t do it just once but twice. Technotronic is a Belgian producer Jo Bogaert and an assortment of rappers who have lended their vocals for the tracks. In 1989 the hit Pump up the Jam came out of nowhere. For the video they used a girl to lip sync over Ya Kid K‘s vocals. Interestingly though a year before in 1988 one of the grand masters of house music, Farley Jackmaster Funk, released the track, The Acid Life. Undeniably, the music from Pump up the Jam is borrowed heavily from The Acid Life and should be considered ‘The Original’.
Since Pump up the Jam did so well, a string of single was released in 1990. The first two following Pump up the Jam were Get Up! and This Beat is Technotronic. If you listen to those three songs in sequence and ignore the lyrics, you notice the instrumentation, the buildup, nearly everything is identical. So much so, that there’s a video on YouTube that is labelled as Pump up the Jam but is ‘clearly’ Get Up! . And even though This Beat is Technotronic contains a male vocalist, you can still hear a female singer sing ‘Get Up’ in the song. Confusing innit?
With the track Spin That Wheel, there finally became some variation in the music, but Technotronic was now named Hi Tek 3 (same vocalists, same producer). When they went back to using Technotronic, they finally used a totally different sounding song: Rocking over the Beat (all still in 1990!). But by now, Technotronics triumph parade was over. Technotronic has kept releasing singles well until 2005, including a Megamix and a remix of their Greatest Hits every few years. Or should I say Greatest Hit?
Still, a lot of artist are considered one hit wonders. At least Technotronic became a one hit wonder with three songs, including this one: Technotronic – Pump up the Jam:
Today a real whodunnit mystery in the series The Origin of Samples that seems to be forgotten by the internet, judging by the fact I can find very little info about this minor scandal in the world of pop music.
In March 2003 R&B trio Mis-Teeq released the first single off their second album. The single was Scandalous (wiki) and was produced by the Stargate production team, who are also responsible for a ton of hits by Rihanna, Lindsey Lohan, Beyoncé and Ne-Yo. The song went on to become Mis-Teeq’s the biggest hit.
Also in March 2003, the final of the first Dutch edition of Idols is held. The contestant coming in second is Jim Bakkum, who then still used ‘Jim’ as his artist name. Despite being the loser, he is quickly signed to Wilde Productions (owned by Phil Wilde, one of the creators of 2Unlimited) and releases a a few singles and an album Impressed. In July 2003 he releases his second single This Love is Real on BMG records.
The song this Love Is Real is a cover of CB Milton‘s version of the song on his 1998 album From Here to There on Byte Records (owned by one of the men behind 2Unlimited: Jean-Paul De Coster). CB Milton got most famous for his songs Send me an Angel and It’s a Loving Thing produced by the guys behind 2Unlimited. CB Milton’s version was never released as a single, nor was the album it was on a major commercial success. The writers credited on the CB Milton version are Peter Bauwens and Phil Wilde of the production team Soundsational … and of Wilde Productions, the men behind 2Unlimited. On the Jim version Joey Balin is also credited as one of the writers, besides Wilde and Bauwens. If you listen to the CB Milton version, you’ll notice only the lyrics were covered.
If you listen to Scandalous and This Love is Real (by Jim), you’ll notice than other than a slight pitch change, the instrumentation is nearly identical. In fact, this mashup might convince you:
So it looks like not only are the lyrics not original in the Jim track, neither is the music. Then again, if the music industry wants to quickly push out a hit single for their newest star baby, I guess this is what happens. Now I do remember when this ‘scandal’ made it into the Dutch press back in 2003 someone did indeed find a link between the writers of both songs and that indeed someone had recycled some one’s idea, but nowhere on the web can I find a record of this. Tips are welcome. For now this remains a whodunnit ‘mis-teeq’ mystery.
Groove is in the Heart by Deee-Lite is one of those songs that doesn’t have one original, but a whole string of originals that were sampled. In fact, only the vocals on that song are ‘original’. Still all the samples mashed together did indeed create something genuinely new. I’ll try to go through them in the order that they appear in the song.
The opening is from a 1969 record entitled Music for Belly Dancing by (take deep breath) Bel-Sha-Zaar with Tommy Genapopoluis & The Grecian Knights. In the introduction track of the album Bel-Sha-Zaar explains some basic moves and tells you “We’re going to dance” (…) “and have some fun“.
Enter Herbie Hancock’s Bring Down the Birds from 1966 with it’s characteristisc bass-loop. On top of that comes a drum loop from Vernon Burch’s Get Up from 1979. If you fast forward Get Up to 2:23, you’ll not only hear the drum loop but also the crazy flute sound you hear later on in Groove is in the Heart.
When you hear Deee-lite’s singer Lady Miss Kier sing “I couldn’t ask for another“, the I is doubled with with I sung by actress Eva Gabor in the opening credits of the 1966 version of the tv-show Green Acres (“I get allergic smelling hay“).
Lady Miss Kier starts singing the familiar lyric “Groove is in the heart” and if you listen closely you hear the high popping noises from Ralph MacDonald’s Jam On The Groove (skip to 3:53) from 1976.
Then before the next loop starts and a few times more in the song, you can catch the drum break opening from Ray Barretto’s Right on Barreto Power from 1972. Just before rapper Q-tip from A Tribe Called Quest does his thing, the drum break is the opening break from Uptight by Billy Preston from 1966.
Lastly, right after the break you can hear an odd mouth-sound, that comes from Hateful Head Helen’s self-titled Hateful Head Helen (skip to 3:06) from 1989. There’s a few more samples in there, mostly little sound effects (the scream/horn at 0:39, the shout at 2:27, the 1-2-3), but sadly my trusted source in these things, WhoSampled.com hasn’t got all of them.
In 1970 a soul group from Chicago called the Chi-Lites (formerly the Hi-Lites with an added C from Chicago) released the single Are You My woman (Tell Me So). Though it did chart in the US, the Chi-Lites wouldn’t score any big hits till a year later.
In the early days 90’s, DJ Polo dug up the the track in 1992 for #1 With a Bullet by Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo featuring Big Daddy Kane. The sample serves no greater purpose in the track and again went mostly unnoticed.
I’ve touched upon the work of Fatboy Slim before. I actually don’t want to devote too many posts in this series to him (or Daft Punk or DJ Shadow for that matter), because that could go on forever. Suffice it to say, most of Norman Cook‘s work consists of copy-pasting other people’s work together to form something new, without actually adding any instruments or vocals himself. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it can be annoying if you keep digging up the exact same originals.
Take the massive 1998 hit The Rockafella Skank. If I say “Right about now …”, you say “the funk soul brother”! Cause you know the song. Or do you know the intro Lord Finesse did in 1997 on the song Vinyl Dog Vibe by The Vinyl Dogs? Cause that’s where the lines come from.
You’ll also instantly recognise the Just Brothers’ Sliced Tomatoes from 1965 in the song. In ’65 it was just a B-side, but it got promoted to single in 1973. And then it got sampled.
Years before that, in 1960, a film entitled Beat Girl came out. Apart from now legendary actor Christopher Lee, it also featured opening music by the John Barry Orchestra. Which you will also recognise as part of The Rockafeller Skank. If you think that tune sounds a lot like the guitar riff on James bond, you would be right. John Barry also scored the first James Bond film Dr. No two years later in 1962, even though it is credited to Monty Norman for legal reasons.
So as you can understand, Idon’t really like to dig too much into Norman Cook’s back catalogue, cause it just becomes a very long who’s who in sampling history. All the samples put together and you get The Rockafeller Skank:
