What's This Music For?

“Borrowing” Music
“Borrowing” Music II
“Borrowing” Music III
“Borrowing” Music IV

In this installment, Coolio samples and borrows the melody from Stevie Wonder’s “Past Time Paradise” to create “Gangsta’s Paradise”.  And just for fun, “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parody, “Amish Paradise”.  In both cases credit was given to Stevie.

“Borrowing” Music
“Borrowing” Music II
“Borrowing” Music III

In the 80’s and beyond we have the phenomenon of not only borrowing melodies and chord progressions, but actual recordings.  Rick James sued MC Hammer (later, just “Hammer”) for sampling “Super Freak” (1981)  to construct “U Can’t Touch This” (1990) without giving the proper credit (and share of the songwriting royalties).

“Borrowing” Music
“Borrowing” Music II

Compare the Chiffons doing “He’s So Fine” (1962) with George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” (1970).  This one went to court and George lost.

“Borrowing” Music

For the second installment of this series, compare Jake Holmes’ version of his song “Dazed and Confused”  (1967) and Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” (1969), which is credited to Jimmy Page, with no mention of Jake Holmes.  The song remains the same, indeed.

I thought it might be interesting to explore some “borrowing” in music.  In the first installment, Bob Dylan transforms the earlier “The Patriot Game” into “With God On Our Side”.