And when a song makes money plagarism is rampant.
Just youtube Led Zepplin plagarism.
Read Dylan's biography. He talks about it at some length, although he never calls it plagiarism. But it is a fact, that tracks like, "House of the Rising Sun" have been cut, edited, pasted, and re-pasted for decades. Some of these old lyrics aren't really recognizable in the modern versions. Robert Johnson songs are cut to ribbons by blues guys and put back together.
How many blues songs start with the throwaway line, "I woke up this morning?" Johnson's own brilliant work had him waking up to "all his shrimps" being "dead and gone", as well as getting up to "dust his broom", and "feeling around for his shoes". Before him, Louise Johnson (no relationship) rose to find "blues all around her bed." Dylan talked about doing the same with Woodie Guthrie songs at one point.
His argument was that it was a legitimate form of expression, and I guess he would know better than I would. I guess it didn't hurt his creativity too much.
While I am familiar with pretty much all of Beethoven's piano works, I often hear something and think, "Crap, that could be Beethoven, except I know it isn't". Makes you wonder.
And then there is sampling. I don't know if they still do it because I tuned it all out. But I imagine they do.
One nice thing about the music business is people can capitalize on their predecessor's work if they can add something to it. I would argue the the "Stairway to Heaven" video (Heart) from Kennedy Center was better than the original. That happens pretty regularly, too. |
