Song With the Same Beat as Ice Ice Baby

Haven't I Heard This Song Before?

The hook in Vanilla Ice'due south song "Ice Ice Baby" was based on a passage from "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen, just the rapper denied the similarity at showtime. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images hide explanation

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Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The claw in Vanilla Ice's song "Ice Ice Infant" was based on a passage from "Under Pressure" by David Bowie and Queen, simply the rapper denied the similarity at beginning.

Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Over the last couple of weeks, the sounds of pop's biggest hits have been distractingly familiar. Almost as soon every bit it hit the Internet, "Roar," the brand new blast by Katy Perry, was accused of sounding an awful lot like the recent song "Brave," past Sara Bareilles. A legal dispute now surrounds the No. one vocal in the country, Robin Thicke'southward "Blurred Lines," over its similarity to "Got to Give Information technology Upwardly," the 1977 striking by Marvin Gaye.

Today on All Things Considered, NPR's Neda Ulaby talks with NPR Music pop critic Ann Powers about the history of popular sound-alikes. "Songwriters take borrowed from each other, played off each other. People have claimed the right to songs in the public domain," Ann says. "This is part of the art of pop."

Simply not all borrowing is equal. This got united states thinking nigh the different ways musicians act as mimics.

Sometimes intellectual belongings laws are involved. If a musician takes a song she loves and incorporates all or part of the actual recording into a new song, that's sampling. Releasing the new song requires the permission of whoever owns the original recording and, often, a financial understanding. (You tin trace our current understanding of the copyright laws around sampling to a 1991 suit by Gilbert O'Sullivan against Biz Markie for the use of O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" in Biz'southward song "Alone Again.")

If a deal tin't be reached, or the sound of the original recording isn't quite correct, the musician tin re-tape an element of the song she loves, say a trivial snippet of tune or a particular pulsate blueprint. This is called interpolation. The re-created element tin can be a nearly exact replica or just vaguely like. Sometimes, an interpolation can be so close that it's hard to tell if it'south any different at all — think of Vanilla Ice'south famous deprival that "Water ice Ice Infant" was sampled direct from Queen and David Bowie'southward "Under Pressure level." If it'southward really a new performance, permission is not needed, merely the writer of the original song gets credit and, if in that location are royalties, a share of the money. (Think of cover songs as extended interpolations.)

Then there's the shady, mysterious land that occupies the area between what we'll call "inspiration" and "coincidence." Here's where things get contentious. Pop music history is full of tributes, riffs and echoes that make u.s. turn to the radio and go: "Haven't I heard this song earlier?" Sometimes, it turns out, we accept.

"Simple Gifts" (Shaker Hymn)

As written in 1848 by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett Jr., "Simple Gifts" has simply a single verse, but its unassuming melody has fabricated it endlessly adaptable.

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"Appalachian Spring"

In his "Appalachian Leap" suite, which premiered as an accompaniment for a ballet choreographed by Martha Graham in 1944, Aaron Copeland uses the melody from "Simple Gifts" as an extended theme with multiple variations. This is a classic interpolation. It'southward also not the last fourth dimension the tune from "Elementary Gifts" was used. English songwriter Sydney Carter based his vocal "Lord of the Dance" on it, as did Weezer's Rivers Cuomo when he wrote "The Greatest Man That Always Lived."

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"You Tin can't Hurry God (He's Right On Fourth dimension)"

Written by gospel singer Dorothy Love Coates, who influenced a number of soul and R&B singers of the 1960s. "You Can't Bustle God" begins with the line, "You can't bustle God / Oh, you've just got to wait / Y'all've got to trust him and give him fourth dimension / no matter how long it takes." A classic of the "holiness is a mystery, patience is a virtue" school.

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"You Can't Hurry Love"

The 1966 hit by The Supremes, written by the Motown squad of Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Eddie Kingdom of the netherlands, doesn't sound much like Coates' song. In fact, though the influence of the opening lines of "You Can't Hurry God" are clear, at that place's little else about the Supremes version (or Phil Collins' 1983 encompass) that lines upward. Is it interpolation or merely inspiration? Either mode, the gospel singer didn't receive an official credit.

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"Got To Give It Upwardly"

An unambiguous Motown original, the shuffling, falsetto-laden groove of "Got to Give It Up" was written by Marvin Gaye and Art Stewart. It was a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit for Gaye in June of 1977.

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"Blurred Lines"

Robin Thicke told GQ earlier this year that "Got to Requite It Up" was a directly inspiration for his chart-dominating song, which striking No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 nearly exactly 36 years afterwards Gaye's hit. Where does inspiration end and interpolation brainstorm? This song is condign a test example: Gaye's estate accused Thicke and his co-writer, Pharrell Williams, of stealing. It'southward been reported that Thicke offered a 6-effigy sum to pre-empt a copyright suit. When that was rejected, he asked a Los Angeles courtroom to rule that the shuffling groove in "Blurred Lines" is singled-out from "Got to Requite It Up."

See also: Earlier this summer, Canadian R&B human action The Weeknd released a song chosen "Vest to The World." The drums in "Belong" bore such a hit resemblance to the earlier song "Machine Gun" past Portishead that virtually everyone who wrote virtually it, including Portishead'southward Geoff Barrow, causeless they were a sample. Not so, said The Weeknd's Abel Tesfaye. Just inspiration.

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"Brave"

Which song does this 2013 hit rip off? Look, no ... "Dauntless," Sara Bareilles' self-empowerment anthem, built on a bed of compressed drums and eighth notes pounded out on a piano, is the latest victim of an indistinct musical crime that exists somewhere in the region of the pop mural that tin can be triangulated between outright theft, utter coincidence and what we might call "the rules of the game."

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"Roar"

Katy Perry's own empowerment anthem has a similar eighth note pianoforte pattern and came out just four months after Bareilles' "Brave," just does she owe the other vocaliser anything? Probably not. Pop songs frequently sound akin, says Ann Powers, because audiences want "familiarity with simply a touch of novelty." And even though Perry is likely to have the bigger hit, the attention has lifted sales of Bareilles' song through the roof.

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