August 28th, 2007Thin line between style and formula
There’s a thin line between style and formula. There’s an even thinner line between homage and plagiarism.
Once somebody makes money with something, the easiest way for that somebody (or for some other somebody) to make more money is to repeat it—to do the same thing again, only different. Do it creatively (like the Beatles, for example) and you’ve got style. Do it poorly, or do it only for craven commercial reasons (which are probably the same thing), and you’ve got formula. Merely do it well, and you’ve got plagiarism.
There have been famous cases of plagiarism—George Harrison being sued for stealing “He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons on “My Sweet Lord”; John Fogerty being sued for stealing “Run Through the Jungle” on “The Old Man Down the Road.” The twist in the latter case, of course, is that Fogerty wrote both songs but didn’t own the copyright on “Run Through the Jungle,” so he was being sued for plagiarizing himself. But hundred of other cases could could have been filed. Ray Parker Jr. settled with Huey Lewis over plagiarizing “I Want a New Drug” on “Ghostbusters.” (I had this backward originally. Thanks to reader TD for setting me straight. Research fever—I ought to catch it.) There are dozens of other examples of songs that sound like other songs, many of which are compiled here.
(A lot of the songs on the list linked above involve samples, which add a wrinkle to the homage-vs.-plagiarism debate. Since the original writers now get credit on the new recording when they’re sampled, records containing samples are in a kind of netherworld as far as I’m concerned, so they’re outside the parameters of this discussion.)
Fogerty may have been the only artist to get sued for borrowing from himself, but he’s not the only one to have done it. The Motown assembly line that produced Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” followed it with “That’s the Way Love Is,” which is such a close copy that you can sing the lyrics of one to the music of the other. Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” sounds a lot like “Tangerine” and “The Rain Song.”
One of my favorite examples of self-borrowing involves one of the great radio records of the 1970s. In September 1974, Bachman-Turner Overdrive released “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Few other records sound so insanely great on the radio, that stuttering vocal is one of the most massive hooks of the 1970s, and the thing went to Number One. Long before that, however, critics had popped up to gripe that the stutter was a ripoff of “My Generation.” (It wasn’t. Full story here.) Five years later, Bachman had left BTO and formed a new group, Ironhorse. Hoping to launch the band with a splash, the lead single from Ironhorse’s debut album bore more than a passing resemblance to Bachman’s most famous song. “Sweet Lui-Louise” sneaked into the Top 40, but only to Number 36 in the spring of 1979.
That’s not a surprise. Musical sequels often fail to match the success of the original. Ask Marvin Gaye. After “Grapevine” became one of the most enduring hits of all time, “That’s the Way Love Is” got only to Number 7. (”You Ain’t See Nothin’ Yet” did better than “My Generation,” though.)
Now it may have been that Ironhorse’s recycled BTO sound no longer fit the times, which were drowning in disco, thus the record was a relative stiff. But the more likely explanation is that lightning does not generally consent to be bottled more than once.
