Sean Bostrom
April 9, 2014
Period F
Plagiarism in Song
Plagiarism
is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as
your own.
Plagiarism has been happening in
songs for many years. An example of a piece of plagiarized music is The Beatles
song “Come Together” and Chuck Berry’s song “You Can’t Catch Me”. Come together
shares the some of the same lines as You Can’t Catch Me such as in the Beatles
song they say “Here come old flat top, he was groovin’ up slowly” while in
Chuck Berry’s song the line reads “Here come old flat top, he was groovin’ up
with me”, the Beatles just reworded the phrase by replacing one word. Many have
argued that the melodies are similar as well. The Beatles idolized Chuck Berry,
in fact they listened to him nonstop and he was one of many who inspired them
to play music. After hearing “Come Together” a man by the name of Morris Levy,
who owned rights to many of Chuck Berry’s songs, took Lennon to court over this
matter. Long story short after all the trials and counter suing was done Lennon
was due 84,912.96 dollars. Who would have thought that just one phrase could
cause so much chaos.
However there are many songs who
were accused of plagiarism when in fact they just have coincidental features.
Song such as Dave Matthews Band’s “Drunken Soldier” and Pink Floyd’s “Breathe”
for example. Many have said that at the six minute point in “Drunken Soldier”,
the guitar sounds a lot like the guitar that is played in “Breathe” just
because of the similar notes that were used. But others argue that Pink Floyds
song sounds more similar to the song another one of their songs “Great Gig”. It
wasn’t brought to court which to me shows that “Drunken Soldier” only got
accused due to its similar melody and not lyrics wise.
Sites Where I Found My
Information
No comments:
Post a Comment