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When Elvis Costello spoke up for singer Olivia Rodrigo this week, he inadvertently exposed the flaws in the debate over what constitutes pop plagiarism.
Rodrigo Sour’s album topped the top mid-year charts with its lyrics about Gen Z apathy, acrimonious breakups and “cathartic rage,” but it also came under criticism.
Courtney Love accused her of “bad form” because the artwork used to promote Rodrigo’s concert film Sour Prom looked a lot like the cover of Live through it by the Love Hole group.
Costello, meanwhile, said the similarities between Rodrigo’s song Brutal and his 1978 hit Pump It Up were “good for me.”
“This is how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a whole new toy. That’s what I did ”, Costello wrote on Twitter, referencing his own musical touchstones, Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues and Chuck Berry’s Too Much Monkey Business.
The comparisons have reignited the perennial discussion about where inspiration ends and brazen imitation begins. Crispin Hunt, former Longpigs frontman and director of awards Ivor Novello, says Rodrigo shouldn’t be scolded for drawing inspiration from his musical ancestors.
“Part of the evolution of music takes other ideas, it’s a common experience. It’s essential, so I think Elvis Costello’s position is very grown-up and very honest, whereas Courtney Love’s point here is a bit childish, ”he says.
Hunt says attitudes towards those who draw inspiration from musical history have changed recently, with Robin Thicke Blurred Lines’ legal battle with the Marvin Gaye estate acting as a turning point. This case, Hunt says, was about a groove rather than a melody or lyrics, which he says set a precedent. “Until then, it had always been a melody,” he said. “You couldn’t really copyright the riffs or the grooves. “
Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay a total of nearly $ 5 million to Gaye’s estate after a jury decided their song Blurred Lines copied Gaye’s track Got to Give It Up. Since then, Led Zeppelin and Katy Perry have fought high-profile copyright cases, which have been in their favor, but Hunt says the Blurred Lines legacy remains.
“The Marvin Gaye case opened a whole new box of worms. If you go that route, then Nile Rodgers could pursue everyone in dance music because he was the first person to create that distinct disco sound, ”says Hunt.
This week Dave Grohl, who was in Nirvana with Love’s late husband Kurt Cobain, illustrated how incongruously musical inspiration can be when he said he took inspiration from disco drummers to create the sound. of their most famous work.
“If you listen [Nirvana’s 1991 album] Never mind, I pulled so much from the Gap Band and Cameo and [Chic’s] Tony Thompson on each of these songs, ”he told Pharrell Williams in an interview.
Hunt believes that in the future, when artists and songwriters draw inspiration from past work, the issue of songwriting credits – and the royalties they incur – will become the main point of contention.
“If you look at what happened with Uptown Funk, they ended up with something like 15 writers, with all the members of the Gap Band,” Hunt says. “I think that’s going to be the norm: if you’re kind of going to borrow directly from other people, you should treat it as a collaboration and credit those people.”
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