Bands that steal from old songs w/o crediting.

Cafe Society
21

It was their method of using that hypnotic keyboard riff that makes the Animal’s take on “House” very distinct.

Ray Parker slipped badly when “I just Can’t Get Over Loving you” used lyrics right from “Every Breath You Take” by the Police.

Sampling is using a snippet of a song, enough to make the listener remind herself of the song. Then the artist uses that familiarity to that song partly as a base of a wholly new song. “Stan”, by Eminem, is a prime example of proper sampling, in which Dr. Dre uses the first verse of Dido’s “Thank You” as the wisful thoughts of the fan writing to Eminem. “Ice Ice Baby” is notorious for its bad sampling because Vanilla Ice had no notion of the spirit of the original song “Under Pressure”, no sign of desparation or anything; he and his band just uses the beat.

22

A mentioned earlier, Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr., claiming “Ghostbusters” was copied from “I Want a New Drug.”

Ironically, they should BOTH have been sued by M, because BOTH songs were total rip-offs of M’s “Pop Muzik.”

23

One other thing: sometimes, there’s a fine line between a theft and a “tribute.”

Examples? The opening bass line of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” was almost the same as that from the SUpremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love.”

And the opening of the Cars’ Just What I Needed" was swiped in toto from the Ohio Express’ “Yummy Yummy Yummy (I’ve Got Love in My Tummy).”

But nobody sued, in part because the “thefts” were perceived as obvious tributes to the earlier songs, rather than as plagiarism.

24

Metallica lifts a riff from Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ in their song ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’.

25

I know both songs pretty well, and playing them in my head right now I can’t imagine what you’re talking about. Will have to listen to them later tonight…

26

This one doesn’t involve a band, but an individual—no less than the most highly regarded pop composer/arranger/conductor in India: Naushad. I mention it because it is the most flagrant musical ripoff I ever heard.

The 1965 Hindi movie Gumnaam had Naushad’s hit song of the same title, sung by the world’s biggest-selling singer, Lata Mangeshkar. The melody was, note for note, precisely the same as the melody of Henry Mancini’s 1963 hit song “Charade.” It was a complete, wholesale ripoff. The only difference was changing the time signature from 3/4 to 4/4. I wonder if Mancini ever found out about it. If India wasn’t a signatory to any international copyright conventions, I guess he must have been SOL. Naushad got away with grand larceny.

I don’t believe George Harrison was consciously guilty of ripping off “He’s So Fine.” There’s only a finite number of ways you can arrange the same 2 dumb chords! The tunes in question were so simple that accidental resemblance was probably inevitable. Poor George! National Lampoon lampooned him as putting out an album Lifting Material from the World filled with titles like “My Sweet Beethoven’s Fifth,” “My Sweet Heartbreak Hotel,” etc.

However, Yoko Ono’s 1980 song “I’m Your Angel” from Double Fantasy had, almost note for note, the same melody as Gus Kahn & Walter Donaldson’s 1928 song “Makin’ Whoopee.” Here, the original time signature wasn’t even changed. The copyright holders sent their lawyers after Yoko Ono and IIRC she settled for a large undisclosed sum.

27

The first time I heard The Time’s “Jungle Love,” I placed that maddeningly repetitive riff as directly stolen from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

28

There’s a fun one of the opening of the Velvet Underground song There She Goes Again, which is a direct rip off (almost actually sounding like a sample) of Marvin Gaye’s Hitch Hike. The nice connection between the lyrics of the two songs makes it pretty cool.

Also, at the time, Rolling Stone magazine thought they would be cool and accuse the Velvets of ripping off the riff, but they didn’t seem to realise that it was taken from Marvin, and referred to the Rolling Stones version.

Lou Reed has also ripped off his own Sweet Jane riff for about half a dozen songs.

29

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned the classic example: the Doors ripping off the Kinks’ “All The Day and All of the Night” for “Hello, I Love You.” Ray Davies thought about suing, but declined.

Not to mention Morrison ripping off the Ajax laundry detergent jingle (either in “Touch Me” or “Hello, I Love You” – I forget which) :slight_smile:

30

I want to know why “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” starts out “Gunter gleeben glauten globen.” The song, while pretty funny, has absolutely nothing to do with “Rock of Ages.” All that sample does is get all us Def Leppard fans worked up (“Oh my freakin’ GOSH! They’re actually going to play LEP on the RADIO!”) only to be let down.

(That “Rock of Ages” [1983] hasn’t been on Top 40 radio since 1992 when Def Leppard made their “comeback” with “Adrenalize” matters not one whit to the DL fan.)

31

Was Jim Croce’s I Got A Name ripped off by the Stone Temple Pilots in Interstate Love Song?

I’ve always thought that the riff in ILS that follows the line “All of these things you said to me” sounds exactly like the riff in IGAN that follows the line “Moving ahead so life won’t pass me by”.

You know, the riff that goes:

Dum Dum Dum Dum Da-Da-Dum Dum

32

You know, Ferggie, Heart had a song (I forget the name now, dammit) butt every time it would start it sounded just like Judas Priest’s You’ve Got Another Thing Comming." Anybody remember what that was? Bueller? Bueller…

33

<<<<Quote by HenrySpencer: Lou Reed has also ripped off his own Sweet Jane riff for about half a dozen songs.>>>>

It seems normal for a lot of song writers to reuse their own works. There are lots of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs that are reworkings of each other. Of course there is also Bob Seeger with Old Time Rock & Roll and Katmandu.

Has anyone else noticed a similarity between Led Zeppelin’s The Battle of Evermore and The Youngblood’s Darkness, Darkness? They’re not the same song, but they seem to have similarities. I’ll have to dig out the ol’ LPs to compare.

34

Ah, if we’re talking about people ripping themselves off:

You can sing “Promises” (Euphoria, 1999) to the tune of “Photograph” (Pyromania, 1983)

“When Love and Hate Collide” (Vault, 1995) to the tune of “Miss You in a Heartbeat” (RetroActive, 1993)

and “21st Century Sha La La La Girl” (Euphoria, and yes that really is the name of the song) to the tune of “Pour Some Sugar On Me” (Hysteria, 1987)

All Def Leppard, naturally.

35

The band KISS has been caught doing this a few times. In 1998 they were sued by Alice Cooper because their song “Dreamin’” sounded too much like “Eighteen”. I think it was settled out of court. Back in 1975 they released a song called “She”, which featured a guitar solo lifted note for note from The Doors “Five To One”.

36

Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” totally rips-off the song “Good Times” by Chic.

But aside from complete rip-offs, there is nothing wrong with a band letting it’s influences show. The whole art world - from literature to painting to filmmaking etc. - is full of rip-offs / tributes / homage / influence / plagiarism. I guess the artisty comes in understanding the fine line between rip-off and creating something new.

37

I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable source for recognizing where new R&B songs were sampled from, but I simply cannot remember where Janet Jackson got that little ding-ding riff on “Want Somebody to Call My Lover.” It drives me crazy every time I hear it - anybody know?

38

Speaking of Bob Seger’s “Katmandu,” where do you think he ripped off the guitar riff from? None other than Chuck Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.”

BTW, whenever someone asks me what they should name their cat, I answer “Mandu.”

39

One of the VH1 Behind the Music shows was on the career of Weird Al Yankovic. One of the stories about him was that he asked for permission from Coolio to parody the song “Gangsta Paradise” for “Amish Paradise”. Weird Al thought he received permission and recorded the parody, but Coolio said that he didn’t get permission and he was totally upset about Weird Al making fun of the true message of the song.

The stupid thing about this argument was that Coolio treated that song as his own song, even though it had the exact tune to one of Stevie Wonder’s song (something “Paradise”, I forgot the complete name of the original song)

40

It’s right between the BotR lyrics:

“All I Need Is A Pint A Day
If I Ever Get Out Of Here.” …and… “Well, The Rain Exploded With A Mighty Crash As We Fell Into The Sun”

Nifty little riff, and when I first heard the opening to “Limelight” I *knew I recognised it, but couldn’t place it for a long time.