Sometimes it’s a total style jack - Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” as a shameless Chic-alike, for instance - but not easily connected to a specific work. Sometimes you get a situation like Elastica’s knowing imitations of Wire and the Stranglers on songs like “Connection” and “Waking Up,” where recognizable homage seems like an open nod to influence that still draws lawsuits and out-of-court settlements. Sometimes artists claim mere coincidence the old “there’s only so many notes” argument applied to scenarios like the aforementioned Jean Buster Block Genie case. Whether it’s MPB great Jorge Ben going after Rod Stewart for (supposedly unwittingly) swiping 1976 África Brasil samba-disco classic “Taj Mahal” for “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” (with a side order of Bobby Womack), the parameter-shifting controversy over “Blurred Lines” not-quite-sampling Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” or the perpetually-unsettled matter of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” nicking from Spirit’s “Taurus,” there are constantly cases made over who owes who, not just artistically, but financially.īut then there’s the question of why artists do this kind of thing, even all-time greats like James Brown or New Order or Nirvana. (The only action Bowie took against Sweet, at least apocryphally, was addressing them as “you bastards” when he ran across them at a nightclub.)Īnd at its worst? People get sued. Sometimes, the most you get from soundalike controversies is an excuse to have music-dork arguments - at its best, something like the bizarre coincidence of RCA labelmates Sweet and David Bowie going 1-2 on the UK charts with the remarkably similar-sounding and near-concurrently-recorded “ Block Buster!” and “ The Jean Genie” respectively.
Plagiarism’s been a sticking point in popular music ever since money got involved, with everything from hip-hop sampling to Weird Al parody to stylistic homage coming under fire from whatever quarters generally feel concerned about these kinds of things (i.e.
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