Unintentional Plagiarism #1

In the first in an occasional series (that might not turn into a series, because it's highly probable that I'll forget about it, but that doesn't matter right now), I'm going to attempt to identify some examples of songs that sound like other songs.  Of course, loads of songs sound like other songs in one respect or other - after all, there's only so many ways of putting chords/notes/sounds/rhythms together - but some songs are so extraordinarily similar to others that it's not possible to think that they must be linked in some way.

I already wrote about the Fox version of "Captain Of Your Ship" and how it contains a section that is remarkably similar to 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready For This" here.  Actually, that should really have been the first in this occasional series.  Ah well, never mind.

Recently there was the whole "Blurred Lines" farrago, which went to court and ended up succeeding in Marvin Gaye being added to the existing writing credits (and the payment of back royalties to the Gaye estate).  Basically - as I understand it - the Marvin Gaye estate alleged that Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" plagiarised Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" and the courts agreed).  That one, I think, was justified:

Essentially, it seemed to boil down to whether the "sound" and "feel" of "Blurred Lines" had been copied from "Got To Give It Up":

And I think it is pretty undeniable, listening to the two songs side-by-side, that "Blurred Lines" does bear a remarkable similarity to "Got To Give It Up", especially when you listen to the way bass is used in the two songs.  Personally I think the right decision was made (i.e. the addition of the co-writer credit; previous cases, I'm sure, have led to a complete overturning of songwriting credits), Anyway, there's a lot more interesting stuff on that case to be found here.

The one I'm blathering on about today isn't new.  In fact it's fifteen years old and I can't believe I've never noticed it before now.  Here is "New Slang", a track from The Shins's debut album, "Oh, Inverted World" (released in 2001):

It's a lovely song and - if I remember correctly (although bear in mind my memory's a bit hit-and-miss at the best of times) also a single, one which helped them break through into the public consciousness at the time.  Listen especially for the vocal melody at 0:05, 0:13, 0:20, etc., that essentially forms the song's intro, then recurs at 3:27 to form the song's outro.

Now here's Paul Mauriat's classic easy listening version of "Love Is Blue" (released in the UK in 1968, although the original French version - "L'amour est bleu" - came the year before; it was in fact the Luxembourg (thanks to Martin Bishop for the correction!) entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1967, coming fourth):

The main melody at 0:14 (and repeated throughout - it's the main melody of the track after all) is surely exactly the same as that vocal melody from "New Slang"?

I don't think any conscious skullduggery went on here, in that I doubt very much that the Shins deliberately copied from "Love Is Blue".  And I certainly don't think it's the basis for any kind of legal action, even in today's hyper-litigious world.  But the two melodies are so very, very similar.  So very, very, very similar that it makes you wonder how it came about.

My theory (for what it's worth; not much, generally) that it's one of those melodies that has been used so often that it has probably insinuated its way into everyone's brain by now.

The thing that I don't understand is why have I only just noticed it?  I've known the Paul Mauriat track seemingly forever and I've had that Shins album for well over ten years now.

All very odd.

Odd Songs #001: Captain Of Your Ship

[Edit @ 22/09/2016:  This wasn't meant to be a series to begin with, but it's turned into one, so I've slightly altered the title to reflect that.  And by "Odd Songs" I don't really mean that they are odd - although many of them are - it's just a catch-all title for any fabulous songs that I want to write about]


For well over thirty years, I've sort of been obsessed with this song.  I blame those fucking Mullerice adverts from the late 80s (but that's another story).

The first time I was properly aware of it (and its long history) was from Betty Boo's Doin' the Do:

At first listen it seems that the divine Alison Clarkson (Betty Boo was, unsurprisingly, a stage name) just took the "you're going to lose a good thing" bit and interpolated into her song, but the more you hear it, you can pick out other bits of melody from "Captain Of Your Ship"; they don't seem sampled from a particular source, but are definitely in there.

Anyway, Betty was just one of a long line of pop stars directly covering the song, or taking elements from it.  It's a song that - whilst hardly being in "Yesterday" territory - has a lot of cover versions, all the way from 1968 to the present day.  But the interesting thing is that these cover versions vary enormously in how they approach the song.

OK, back to the original, written by Kenny Jones and Ben Yardley, recorded in 1968 by Reparata and the Delrons:

It's an amazing thing, all made up of seemingly unrelated bits of other songs stuck together (this seems to be something of a Kenny Jones trademark, but more on that later) with weird sound effects (foghorns, radar blips, etc.), rapid changes in tempo, almost anything, and yet it all seems to hold together as a song.  Certainly it's a product of its time.  The Reparata version was a top 20 hit in the UK but didn't do much business elsewhere.

However, since then it seems to have taken on a life of its own.  The number of cover versions is bewildering.  Some are relatively straight covers (e.g. the version by Bette Bright & The Illuminations), some totally rework the arrangement (e.g. the Ratpack version) and the rest fall somewhere in between.  If you listened to all the cover versions of this song, the songs based on it and the songs that sample it, it would...er, take quite a long time.  I know of about fifty but I'd be willing to put my life on there being at least that many again.

Maybe one day I'll try to make sense of the whole thing, particularly regarding the role of Kenny Young, who has been involved in so much pop stuff from the last fifty years (and remains active), but that'll have to be another time, because at the moment...

..the version that interests me is this one, by the 1970s band Fox, although assembled at some point in the 1980s (1986 is the best guess that I can find):

The reason I'm interested in this version is because Kenny Jones (the co-writer of the original song) was in the band Fox and I say "assembled" because I'm convinced most of the vocals and instrumentation were recorded when Fox were active (probably sometime in the mid-1970s).  But the Fox version of the song, as released, has such an obvious 1980s influence with all its synth stabs and stuff that it can only have been put together in that decade.

The latest possible point at which this version could have been released is 1986, as it featured on a Fox "greatest hits" album released that year.

Now I can't possibly be the only person that noticed that at 1:12 (and repeatedly elsewhere - the example at 2:31 is probably the most obvious) there's a stabby synth riff that was never in the original song, but still fits.  Thing is, it's the identical riff that forms the entire basis of 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready For This", released in 1991:

It's slowed down a little bit and has a slightly different cadence, but essentially it's the exact same riff.

And it set me to wondering, in today's climate of high-profile music plagiarism lawsuits (think Marvin Gaye vs. Robin Thicke/Pharrell etc.) I wonder if Kenny Jones (and any associates involved in the Fox version) could make anything of this?

FUN FACT:  Noosha Fox is Ben Goldacre's mother.