The Cultured Class
If you look at the writing credits on Radiohead's 1992 song Creep, you will notice that two non-members are listed alongside the band - Mike Hazelwood and Albert Hammond. The duo wrote a song in 1972 called The Air That I Breathe on Hammond's self-titled debut album It Never Rains in Southern California. In 1974 it was a hit for The Hollies. The co-writing credit on Creep was part of an out-of-court settlement. Radiohead admitted to knowingly copying the melody and chord progression. Rondor Music, the publisher of The Air That I Breathe accepted a small percentage of the royalties.
In 2018, following the release of Lana Del Rey's song Get Free, Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit alleging that she had copied the melody to Creep (and thus the melody to The Air That I Breathe). Del Rey claimed that despite offering them 40% of the royalties, they would only accept 100% - a claim the publishing company denied. Instead, they insisted that they sought songwriting credits for all the songwriters.
Del Rey claimed the song was not inspired in any way by Creep. The lawsuit was settled less than two months later. Radiohead/Hazelwood/Hammond did not receive writing credit.
The chord progression shared between these songs is rare in pop music. According to HookTheory, an online database, it makes up only four of the 17,000 hits of the last several decades. The timing and melody are also remarkedly similar. Yet, much of the song is unrelated to the other works.
The above mess is a familiar tale: Artists recognize something they have poured work into being used, sometimes unfairly, for another's profit. It is also the story of a bunch of corporations trying to protect their assets and generate profits. Radiohead alone contains more than 20 companies under its umbrella. Warner Chappelle are the song cops that demanded payment for years whenever someone sang Happy Birthday to You (the copyright was invalidated in 2018). Elizabeth Grant is Lana Del Rey but also Lana Del Rey Incorporated. The publishing company Wright and Round now controls the publishing rights for The Air That I Breathe.
Note: The second song on It Never Rains in Southern California, If You Gotta Break Another Heart (1972), has more than one similarity to Wild World (1970) by Yusuf/Cat Stevens. Shhhhh... don't tell the business interests! Stevens famously sued the Flaming Lips for similarities between the songs Father and Son and Fight Test.
The Poor
Folk music is derived from the term Folklore, coined in 1846 by William Thoms. Folklore is an umbrella term used to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes." As opposed to contemporary folk music, which is corporate music role-playing as Appalachia, traditional folk music is the people's music. It is socialized soundwaves, willingly exchanged for the shared entertainment it offers everyone. Despite having known authors, hundreds of American folk songs from the 19th century had no copyright. Much of what we call "world" music is just folk music from other continents. Luckily, many of those compositions are unpalatable to Americans and have remained untouched by the all-purpose studio sheen.
Rage Against the Feeding Machine?
Many people think of Woody Guthrie when they think of folk music. He could also be regarded as the harbinger of lawsuits future and the end of folk music altogether. If it becomes popular music on a national level, it is then "pop" music. There is nothing wrong with popularity; it's just that, at that point, the executives will come out of their money caves and transform art into product. This may be why Bob Dylan stopped his Guthrie Shtick and picked up an electric guitar. The idea that he was making folk music probably became a laughable thought. The audiences would boo him for being inauthentic, a notion that couldn't be further from the truth (at least at that point in time).
In the folk tradition, This Land is Your Land is just the Carter Family's When The World's on Fire with different lyrics. In 1928 the Victor Talking Machine Company released The Carter Family's version of the traditional Single Married Girl to great success. Realizing how much money was to be made, A.P. Carter set out on a trip throughout Southwestern Virginia to collect traditional songs and other compositions by regional songwriters. He collected them and copyrighted them as his own. When you hear the opinion that modern country music is just a cash grab, remember that, in part, it always was.
In 2020, Satorii - a musical group seeking to cover This Land is Your Land- sued Ludlow Music, the song's publisher. The members of Satorii used Guthrie's songbooks to show that he didn't correctly renew his copyright. They lost. The song, which condemns private property, is, in fact, private property.
Xerox
In 1624, the Parliament of England passed the Statute of Monopolies - the first expression of patent law. In the United States, the first musical composition copyrighted under the Constitution was The Kentucky Volunteer by Raynor Taylor in 1794. The Constitution only covered maps, charts, and books then, but sheet music was considered a book. As such, printed musical notation could be privately owned for up to 28 years. Music, once a communal language, a kind of transformative magic, had become a product.
There is an argument to be made that individual ownership of music protects artists' rights, helping them obtain financial stability. While there is truth in that argument, the reality is more complex.
What's New Pussycat?
The Lion Sleeps Tonight was originally written and recorded as Mbube by Solomon Linda in South Africa in 1939. Ten years later, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax brought the recording to Pete Seeger, a member of the folk group The Weavers. By 1951, they had recorded a single of the song and titled it Wimoweh (the song's chorus contains a refrain of the Zulu "You are a Lion" or "Uyimbube"). The Weavers initially thought they had recorded a traditional South African song. However, Their publisher, attorneys, and managers (among them Harold Leventhal, later a concert promoter for Bob Dylan) knew of the original recording and had been negotiating with the South African publisher. Eventually, they decided that, as South Africa was not a signatory of United States Copyright Law, they could do as they pleased with the song.
Seeger became aware of Linda's ownership by 1952 and attempted to make things right by sending him $1,000 and instructing Folkways Records to forward his share of future earnings. Linda's family acknowledged that some of Seeger's writing shares had made it to them years later, but only a small fraction of what was promised. It is unclear how much money Seeger would have made on the song. The song had climbed to number six on the charts but dropped entirely off after the group was exposed as communists by the House Un-American Affairs Committee. In 2004, Folkways admitted to not paying the royalties to the family and began sending $3,000 a year. How they decided on that number is again unclear.
Linda died in 1962, a year after the Tokens would have a number-one hit with the song with $25 in his bank account. His family was left with no income. His wife Regina illegally brewed beer to try to feed her six children - a task that often went unfulfilled. Zulu Death Rites for Linda went unperformed for years as the family was too poor to afford a Sangoma (healer and officiate of ritual ceremonies).
In 1994, the song again gained intense popularity for its use in Disney's The Lion King, earning an estimated $15 million. In May of 2000, South African journalist Rian Malan wrote an article for Rolling Stone, "In the Jungle: How American legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper." In 2006, Linda's descendants settled with Abilene Music Publishers for an undisclosed amount.
Little Richard's Half-Cent Tutti-Frutti Royalty
This exploitation is not an isolated incident. The record industry is notoriously corrupt. In its heyday, it handed out terrible deals to as many artists as possible, and none made out as poorly as Black Americans. From Malan's article:
Robert Johnson's contribution to the blues went largely unrewarded. Leadbelly lost half of his publishing to his white "patrons." DJ Alan Freed refused to play Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" until he was given a songwriter's cut. Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" was nicked off Willie Dixon. All musicians were minnows in the pop-music food chain, but blacks were most vulnerable, and Solomon Linda, an illiterate migrant from a wild and backward place, was totally defenseless against sophisticated predators.
Alan Lomax, often hailed as documenting and preserving Black musical culture, was really just curating his vision of southern music - one that would sell records. In the book Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow, Karl Hagstrom Miller states that Lomax would appear in a black community and demand that they play songs that "fit into his idea of old-time folk songs." When the musicians would try to sing a famous hymn or a Tin Pan Alley song, he wouldn't record it. Frustrated, he went to jails where musicians were less than enthusiastic about recording songs for the Lomaxes (He often traveled with his father, John, also a musicologist). They often turned to the warden for assistance. In Lomax's own words:
"Presently, the guard came out, pushing a Negro man in stripes along at the point of his gun. The poor fellow evidently afraid he was to be punished was trembling and sweating in an extremity of fear. The guard shoved him before our microphone."
He found the material in the prisons to begin his lopsided presentation of Southern Black Culture. He would pay royalty checks to the recording artists, but usually just small sums (I would love to get a look at the percentages). Lomax is one of the "patrons" mentioned above who added his name as the co-writer on Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene despite having nothing to do with its composition. His archived recordings, around 5,000 hours, are, without a doubt, cultural treasures, but Lomax is no saint.
Moby revived interest in the Lomax recordings on his 1999 album Play which contained vocal samples of Bessie Jones, Boy Blue, and Vera Hall. The song Natural Blues, which uses Vera Hall's version of Trouble So Hard, was featured in a Calvin Klein commercial. The album went triple platinum. Lomax's daughter was seeking royalties at the time of its success (both for the performers and her father).
A Star is Born
It is common in contemporary production to interpolate another artist's music. Musicians will re-record melodies, rhythms, and chord sequences that directly reference or are closely inspired by other songs. In contrast to sampling, which uses the actual recording and requires both permissions from the copyright owner of the song (usually a music publisher) and the copyright owner of the master tape (usually a record company), interpolation requires only clearance from the copyright owner. This agreement is now often worked out in advance. With more and more artist catalogs consumed by large publishing firms, it has become a new revenue stream. It is also a way to manipulate the odds of success. It is the musical equivalent of the remake. I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred went to the top of the charts worldwide in 1991. Why not insert the melody and pulsing beat into Taylor Swift's song Look What You Made Me Do? Voila!
*Right Said Fred are anti-climate activists involved with the group Not Our Future. I'm not into supporting whooperups (some 19th-century slander I just learned! inferior, noisy singers) like these two dipshits. Cool song, though.
Da Ya Think?
Interpolation is not always an upfront business arrangement. The Gap Band wasn't thrilled about Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk, eventually getting 17% of the publishing royalties. Tom Petty sought royalties on Sam Smith's Stay With Me for its similarities to I Won't Back Down, but not the Strokes Last Nite, which knowingly borrowed from American Girl. When James Brown released Hot (I Need to Be Loved, Loved, Loved) based around the riff for David Bowie's Fame, he was flattered. While attending the Rio Carnival in 1978, Rod "The Bod" Stewart heard the song Taj Mahal by Jorge Ben Jor. By November of that year, Stewart had released Da Ya Think I'm Sexy - a song with an identical melody and synth arrangement borrowed from Bobby Womack's (If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It.
I Just Called to Say I Hate You.
The Answer song is what it sounds like—a recorded response to another song.
Currently, the Answer Song is most commonly seen in Hip-Hop. It exists as a long-distance rap battle in which the bullet points (often literal in sampling the sound of shots fired) of a dis track are addressed, and the hate is sent back to the author of the original track. Jay-Z released Takeover in 2001, a brutal attack on Nas.
"Had a spark when you started, but now you're just garbage/ Fell from 'Top 10' to 'not mentioned at all."
Nas was quick to respond with Ether.
"When KRS already made an album called Blueprint (Dick)."
I don't particularly like listening to arguments. Picong-style Calypso and 80s rap battles are mostly playful in nature. Even the back and forth between Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley over who is more of a 'man' is done with sarcastic delivery. Conversely, this is like listening to your parents fight while using homophobic rhetoric (They didn't make the playlist).
In 1981, Kool Mo Dee challenged Busy Bee Starski to a rhyming challenge. Kool Mo Dee won, ushering in a new era of the MC as a commentator and storyteller. This was one of the first rap battles to be documented. The Bridge Wars, a dispute between Marley Marl's Juice Crew (Queensbridge) and KRS-ONE's Boogie Down Productions (South Bronx) over the birthplace of Hip-Hop, followed. Those in-person rap battles moved into the recording studio, starting with the Roxanne Wars. The hip-hop trio U.T.F.O. released the song Roxanne, Roxanne in 1984. Hearing the song, 14-year-old Lolita Shanté Gooden took on the stage name Roxanne Shanté and released Roxanne's Revenge with the help of Marley Marl. Nine response songs followed.
The Hound Dog and The Bear Cat
Answer Songs are not a new trend. They are part of the folk tradition. Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe were battling it out in the poet form in 1599 (The Passionate Shepherd To His Love) and 1600 (The Nymph's Reply to The Shepherd). The earliest recorded instance is probably (Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey, recorded by Arthur Collins in 1902. The response was recorded the same year, also by Collins; I Wonder Why Bill Bailey Don't Come Home.
The genre had reached its heyday in the recording industry by the 1950s and early 1960s. It was a quick way to capitalize on the success of another song. One of the most expanded-upon compositions is Frank Ballard and the Midnighters' Work With Me, Annie. With its 'explicit' sexual lyrics and its crossover success with young white audiences, the FCC attempted to censor it, but its overwhelming popularity prevented such efforts. The record reached number one on the R&B charts, where it stayed for seven weeks and sold over one million copies. The Answer Songs, including Annie Had A Baby, Annie's Aunt Fannie and Georgia Gibbs reworked version of Etta James' The Wallflower (Dance With Me Henry), did comparably well.
Music still provides transcendent experiences in the capitalist model. It is not directly a part of ritual or ceremony, as it still exists in other cultures. No matter how marketed and watered down it gets, though, it will still provide a visceral reaction for humans. The audience at a One Direction concert (excluding most parents) does not fake enthusiasm. They are losing their fucking minds. It still maintains an unexplainable power. People faint as if part of a Benny Hinn sermon- except this shit is real.
Me First And The Gimme Gimmes
Does anyone own musical ideas? My answer would be no. Music is a tradition of shared ideas. Music likely had little to do with ownership for tens of thousands of years. If you subscribe to Darwin's theory that music evolved as a form of sexual selection, you could argue that the song belonged to whoever performed the courtship display. If it shared similarities with a bird song, it was more like who sang the 'one' song most beautifully - cover songs abounded. There are many other theories on the origins of music, including an enhancement of communication and language, protection from predators, and a tool for organizing labor. All of these may hold some truth. I most strongly subscribe to the idea proposed by Siegfried Nadel, who suggested that it developed as a way to interact with the divine or supernatural. The theory speaks more closely to my experiences listening to and composing music.
Despite what music should be, we live in an exploitative society. I can't argue that what was done with Mbube was ok because "music belongs to everyone." That's some hippie bullshit spewed from Mount Privilege. Music can only be universal in a community with ethical values. Many of the lawsuits surrounding the songs on this playlist were carried out by large companies or very wealthy musicians operating on nothing more than greed. In some instances, musicians found it mutually beneficial to share ideas. In others, musicians were just happy that they had influenced another artist.
With the decline of music industry profits and the rise in internet visibility, more artists are publishing and promoting their music. Perhaps as more individuals own their publishing and compositional rights, they can realize that sans middleman, it is beneficial to share in creative and monetary wealth. Again, our moral compasses need to be aligned to the same magnet. I want to live in an innovative era where an album composed of hundreds of samples, like It Takes a Million of Nations To Hold Us Back, can again exist. That can only happen if we operate within the context of fair exchange.
Work With Me Annie - Hank Ballard & The Moonlighters
The Air That I Breathe - Albert Hammond
Creep - Radiohead
Get Free - Lana Del Rey
Wild World - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
If You Gotta Break Another Heart - Albert Hammond
Father and Son - Yusuf/Cat Stevens
Fight Test - The Flaming Lips
Fame - David Bowie
Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved)- James Brown
Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken? - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken - Camera Obscura
Bring On The Night- The Police
Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks
Taj Mahal - Jorge Ben Jor
(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It - Bobby Womack
Bull Doze Blues - Henry Thomas
Going Up The Country - Canned Heat
He's So Fine- The Chiffons
My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
Save The Last Dance For Me - The Drifters
I'll Save The Last Dance For You - Damita Jo
Annie Had A Baby - Hank Ballard and The Midnighters
Sweet Little Sixteen - Chuck Berry
Surfin' U.S.A. - The Beach Boys
Mbube - Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds
Wimoweh - Pete Seeger
The Lion Sleeps Tonight - The Tokens
I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man - Muddy Waters
I'm A Man - Bo Diddley
Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters
Love Will Keep Us Together - Neil Sedaka
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
Annie's Answer - The El Dorados
I Won't Back Down - Tom Petty
Stay With Me - Sam Smith
Roxanne, Roxanne - U.T.F.O.
Roxannes' Revenge - Roxanne Shante
Sister Marian - T Square
Super Mario Bros. Theme - Koji Kondo
Oops Up Side Your Head - The Gap Band
Uptown Funk- Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars
Annie Pulled a Hum-Bug - The Midnighters
Texas Plains - Stuart Hamblen
I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart - Patsy Montana, Prairie Ramblers
Woman in Love - Barbara Streisand
Oops!... I Did It Again - Britney Spears
Are You Lonesome Tonight? - Elvis Presley
Yes, I'm Lonesome Tonight - Dodie Stevens
Let's Not Talk About It (Live)- Don Grusin
Underground Theme - Video Game Players
American Girl - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Last Nite - The Strokes
Taurus - Spirit *This band accused Led Zeppelin of stealing the descending line in this song for Stairway to Heaven. I follow the rule of the guitar store in Wayne's World: "NO Stairway to Heaven." "No 'Stairway, Denied!" If you listen to what Wayne plays on the home video release, you will notice it doesn't sound much like the actual song. This is because the filmmakers were told they could only use two notes before they would have to pay $100,000. They played too many notes in the theatrical release and were forced to go back and edit the guitar riff even more. For a band that lifted almost their entire catalog, they certainly demand a payday for their songs.
Picture Book - The Kinks
Warning - Green Day
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor - Ludwig Van Beethoven. Kurt Masur, New York Philharmonic
Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple * Play the fifth in reverse.
Express Yourself - Madonna
Born This Way - Lady Gaga
Hot Rod Race - Arkie Shibley
Hot Rod Lincoln- Charlie Ryan
The Wallflower - Etta James
Stand By Me - Ben E. King
I'll Be There - Damita Jo
I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
Flowers - Miley Cyrus
Shape Of My Heart - Sting
Lucid Dreams - Juice WRLD
Sylvia, Ballet Suite: Procession of Bacchus - Léo Delibes, Vienna Volksoper Orchestra, Josef Leo Gruber
Knight Rider Theme - Stu Phillips
Summer Breeze - PIPER
Invincibility Theme - Arcade Player
O My Lovin' Brother - George Beverly Shea
This Land is Your Land - Woody Guthrie
You Need Love - Muddy Waters
Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
I'm Afraid to Come Home in The Dark - Billy Murray
I Used to be Afraid to Come Home in The Dark - Billy Murray
Henry's Got Flat Feet - Hank Ballard and The Midnighters
(If You're Gonna) Break Another Heart - Cass Elliot
Bear Cat - Rufus Thomas
Hound Dog - Big Mama Thornton
The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies
This debut solo album from the insanely talented drummer/composer Yussef Dayes will come out in September, but thankfully he has released two songs early. I'm pretty certain this is going to be a landmark Jazz album. The title track is the most adventurous, energetic track I've heard in any genre in a long time. The bass groove on Rust will NOT leave my head and its not an earworm thing, or if it is, I want it to eat my brain.
Listen and Pre-Order Here
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