Blurred lines - piracy or pioneers, why do we get so mad when artists sample music?
Written by Bee.
Stealing someone’s work is bad and the case of Thicke and Williams blurring the lines between homage and heist of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” reminds us it’s risky to sound too much like someone else. But why can visual artists mash up bits of other people's work and call it their own and yet real anger is directed to R&B artists doing the same thing?
I was at university when Vanilla Ice released “Ice, ice baby”. Everyone I knew loathed him for stealing the bass line from “Under pressure”. The riff was too evocative and as soon as the song started we wanted to hear the voices of Freddy and Bowie - not Robert Van Winkle.
However, I have come to realise that my copying condemnation is inconsistent. Like every other X-gen I grooved away to “Man Down Under” even though I recognised the overt reference to “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree” in the instrumental break, and I’m not alone in this hypocrisy. When News.com.au posted the story in 2009 of Larrikin Music suing Men at Work comments included:
“Come on, get a life! Someone should sue all these ridiculous litigators for clogging up our courts with irrelevancies. Even if the claims are totally true.”
“What a load of rubbish! Which lawyer is hoping to take a BIG cut of any compensation claim? The similarity is trifling.”
There were another 115 similar comments.
Composition relies on a certain level of copying. Country songs are easy to parody because so many share the same chord progressions and lyrical content. I can groove away on a 12 bar blues progression, using standard licks, without fear of some lawyer pursuing me to ends of the Earth. If I sampled B.B. King wholesale as part of the same performance, I could be in real trouble.
Van Winkle and others have got into hot water because people felt they were riding on the coat-tails of musical pioneers. In contrast, when I saw Moulin Rouge I was blown away by Fat Boy Slim’s “Because we can”. That song made me buy the soundtrack and Norman Cook collages songs, layering numerous small samples to make something new. He and innovative artists don’t just rehash a motif they add their own flavour.
I don’t see this debate being resolved soon. When a musician records a track they inject themselves into their work. That’s what makes a great performance and that’s what inspires other artists to sample their work. There will always be the perception that no matter how little of the original sample is used and no matter how the sample is treated something of that original performance endures and helps connect the audience to that work.
We know when we’ve made something great and we know how we got there. Whether it’s dots or notes we need to do the right thing and acknowledge our sources.
