… All you have to do is trawl through what made others great and/or popular in the last 20-odd years, find the particular thing the artist was doing well, spin it a little to avoid copywrite., and VOILA! hit albums ensue.
Wolfmother (Led Zeppelin), The Living End (Bad Religion) I’m looking right at you… and don’t get me started on the abomination of Kid Rock, who doesn’t even bother to imitate it, just samples the good bits and sings a crap chorus to get it sorted.
Anyone? There must be a plethora…
I can kind of see the Bad Religion comparison with The Living End, but don’t really think they’re rip-offs based on the album I am listening to. They just sound like melodic punk to me.
Thanks for bringing them to my attention, though. I’m quite liking them.
Really? You’re going to put most of your hatred on an artist for sampling/redoing issues for ONE song, rather than an entire style or genre?
You had so many good bands and choices to pick on for this theme- Nickleback I’m looking in your direction, reusing their own songs basically; Kanye West releasing an entire Autotune Album, or Jet and their fantastically good job of trying to cover AC/DC and Aerosmith’s Style and then flopping when they tried to act like the Beatles the 2nd time around…
But instead your abomination is for a guy who putzes around with one song? Pfft… The man had several platinum albums before that one song- so it’s not exactly like he’s the one who catapulted himself into super stardom with that one song (though it hasn’t hurt that records sales at ALL, making it his 2nd biggest last I checked album), but still.
The best example would be Run DMC using Aerosmith’s samples and just covering it to completely bring life into Rap again and also to catapult themselves into a new fan base of listeners. Though I don’t find anything wrong with that one.
My main hatred will be for Jet- who promised me so much with their first album basically doing the AC/DC & Aerosmith, but then just FLOPPING the 2nd Album by switching everything and trying to sing slower more Beatlesy songs.
…or Kid Rock with Sweet Home Alabama for that matter… Aerosmith and DMC collaborated at a time when both were popular in there respective styles., and it made sense (to the bean counters at least, and who-ever produced it) to put out a song… and just the one. This differs from an easy knock-off and sales of CD’s because whatever talent you have is largely manufactured by a guy behind a mixing desk.
I’m not to sure hatred is the word I’m using to convey an opinion either… :dubious:
And Jet are, and always were, a bunch of posers… sorry, no personal intention.
I think of The Living End as as The Stray Cats meets Green Day - I saw 'em live and loved 'em. Clearly the guitar player is a total Setzer geek. More power to 'em.
And screw it - I love Jet. The first album, Get Born, is AC/DC meets Bachman Turner Overdrive meets Exile-era Stones, but the songs themselves stand on their own, which is all that matters to me. Are You Gonna Be My Girl, Rollover DJ, Cold Hard Bitch, etc? Fun rockin’ songs.
Shine On, their 2nd CD is more Beatles-y and yeah, it wasn’t what I was expecting because of it. But upon giving it more than a cursory listen, it is actually really solid and the songs are as good as the first.
Their 3rd, Shaka Rock is new in my CD player (no, not mp3’s for this one…) and seems somewhere between the two - harder than Shine On but not as classic rock as Get Born…
And as far as I am concerned, if the artist can grab from their influences and produce songs that I like, who cares? Lenny Kravitz is as derivative as anyone, but when his stuff comes together, like in Are You Gonna Go My Way or Fly Away, who really cares?? The songs are good.