Which Song Made More Money Under Pressure or Ice Ice Baby

Haven't I Heard This Song Before?

The hook in Vanilla Ice'due south song "Water ice Ice Infant" was based on a passage from "Nether Pressure" past David Bowie and Queen, but the rapper denied the similarity at first. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images hide caption

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Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The hook in Vanilla Ice's song "Ice Water ice Baby" was based on a passage from "Nether Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen, but the rapper denied the similarity at commencement.

Fourth dimension & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Over the last couple of weeks, the sounds of pop'south biggest hits have been distractingly familiar. Well-nigh as before long every bit information technology hit the Internet, "Roar," the brand new nail past Katy Perry, was accused of sounding an awful lot like the recent song "Brave," by Sara Bareilles. A legal dispute now surrounds the No. i vocal in the land, Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," over its similarity to "Got to Requite Information technology Up," the 1977 hit by Marvin Gaye.

Today on All Things Considered, NPR's Neda Ulaby talks with NPR Music popular critic Ann Powers about the history of pop sound-alikes. "Songwriters have borrowed from each other, played off each other. People take claimed the right to songs in the public domain," Ann says. "This is office of the art of pop."

But not all borrowing is equal. This got us thinking near the different means musicians act as mimics.

Sometimes intellectual belongings laws are involved. If a musician takes a song she loves and incorporates all or part of the actual recording into a new song, that's sampling. Releasing the new song requires the permission of whoever owns the original recording and, often, a fiscal agreement. (You tin trace our current understanding of the copyright laws around sampling to a 1991 suit past Gilbert O'Sullivan against Biz Markie for the use of O'Sullivan'south "Alone Once more (Naturally)" in Biz's song "Alone Again.")

If a bargain can't be reached, or the sound of the original recording isn't quite correct, the musician can re-record an element of the vocal she loves, say a lilliputian snippet of melody or a detail pulsate blueprint. This is called interpolation. The re-created chemical element can be a nearly verbal replica or just vaguely similar. Sometimes, an interpolation can be so shut that information technology's hard to tell if it's any different at all — think of Vanilla Ice'due south famous deprival that "Water ice Ice Baby" was sampled straight from Queen and David Bowie'due south "Under Force per unit area." If information technology's really a new performance, permission is not needed, but the author of the original song gets credit and, if there are royalties, a share of the money. (Retrieve of cover songs as extended interpolations.)

Then there'due south the shady, mysterious state that occupies the area between what nosotros'll call "inspiration" and "coincidence." Here'due south where things go contentious. Pop music history is full of tributes, riffs and echoes that make us turn to the radio and become: "Haven't I heard this song earlier?" Sometimes, it turns out, we have.

• "Simple Gifts" (Shaker Hymn)

  As written in 1848 past Shaker Elderberry Joseph Brackett Jr., "Uncomplicated Gifts" has but a unmarried verse, only its unassuming melody has made it endlessly adaptable.

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• "Appalachian Leap"

  In his "Appalachian Spring" suite, which premiered equally an accompaniment for a ballet choreographed by Martha Graham in 1944, Aaron Copeland uses the melody from "Elementary Gifts" every bit an extended theme with multiple variations. This is a archetype interpolation. It'south also not the concluding fourth dimension the melody from "Simple Gifts" was used. English songwriter Sydney Carter based his song "Lord of the Trip the light fantastic" on information technology, as did Weezer'due south Rivers Cuomo when he wrote "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived."

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• "You Tin can't Hurry God (He's Correct On Fourth dimension)"

  Written by gospel singer Dorothy Beloved Coates, who influenced a number of soul and R&B singers of the 1960s. "You lot Tin't Hurry God" begins with the line, "You tin't hurry God / Oh, you've just got to await / You've got to trust him and give him fourth dimension / no matter how long it takes." A classic of the "holiness is a mystery, patience is a virtue" school.

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• "You Tin't Hurry Beloved"

  The 1966 hitting by The Supremes, written by the Motown team of Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie The netherlands, doesn't sound much similar Coates' song. In fact, though the influence of the opening lines of "You Tin can't Hurry God" are clear, there'due south niggling else nigh the Supremes version (or Phil Collins' 1983 embrace) that lines up. Is information technology interpolation or merely inspiration? Either way, the gospel vocalist didn't receive an official credit.

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• "Got To Give It Up"

  An unambiguous Motown original, the shuffling, falsetto-laden groove of "Got to Give It Up" was written by Marvin Gaye and Art Stewart. It was a Billboard Hot 100 No. one hit for Gaye in June of 1977.

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• "Blurred Lines"

  Robin Thicke told GQ earlier this yr that "Got to Requite It Up" was a direct inspiration for his chart-dominating song, which striking No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 almost exactly 36 years after Gaye's hit. Where does inspiration end and interpolation brainstorm? This song is becoming a test example: Gaye's estate accused Thicke and his co-writer, Pharrell Williams, of stealing. Information technology'due south been reported that Thicke offered a six-effigy sum to pre-empt a copyright suit. When that was rejected, he asked a Los Angeles court to rule that the shuffling groove in "Blurred Lines" is singled-out from "Got to Give Information technology Up."

  See too: Before this summer, Canadian R&B act The Weeknd released a song chosen "Belong to The Earth." The drums in "Belong" bore such a striking resemblance to the earlier song "Car Gun" past Portishead that nearly anybody who wrote most it, including Portishead's Geoff Barrow, assumed they were a sample. Non so, said The Weeknd'southward Abel Tesfaye. Just inspiration.

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• "Brave"

  Which song does this 2013 hit rip off? Wait, no ... "Brave," Sara Bareilles' self-empowerment canticle, congenital on a bed of compressed drums and 8th notes pounded out on a pianoforte, is the latest victim of an indistinct musical crime that exists somewhere in the region of the pop landscape that tin be triangulated between outright theft, utter coincidence and what nosotros might phone call "the rules of the game."

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• "Roar"

  Katy Perry's own empowerment anthem has a similar eighth annotation piano blueprint and came out just iv months later on Bareilles' "Brave," but does she owe the other singer anything? Probably non. Pop songs oft sound alike, says Ann Powers, because audiences want "familiarity with just a impact of novelty." And even though Perry is probable to have the bigger hit, the attention has lifted sales of Bareilles' song through the roof.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2013/08/23/214870015/havent-i-heard-this-song-before#:~:text=Pictures%2FGetty%20Images-,The%20hook%20in%20Vanilla%20Ice's%20song%20%22Ice%20Ice%20Baby%22%20was,denied%20the%20similarity%20at%20first.

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