Should the recording industry really be lavishing 4-5 Grammy Awards on a dishonest rehash?

[coti]

The hook of Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" is a blatant lift of Alan Parsons Project's "Eye in the Sky," with about one bar ("...looking at yoooo-oooo-uuu-...") taken out. The tone of the rest of the song is the same, too.

Lady Antebellum's entire success, based on this one song- several grammies, now, not to mention commercial success (with "Need You Now" being the 19th most downloaded song of all time, accordng to Wikipedia)- seems to be based on the work Alan Parsons did creating "Eye in the Sky."

I do not believe that the similarities between the songs were necessarily purposeful. More likely it was a subconscious thing- Antebellum was playing around with melodies, and suddenly they hit on this one. "Wow, that really sounds good!" Well, yeah, because it's been played on the radio for over 25 years. It's probably more musical and intellectual laziness than a deliberate attempt to plagiarize.

However, I'm not sure that matters, though, especially in how it reflects on the U.S. recording industry. People DID catch this, a long time ago, as can be seen in internet postings, yet the song was allowed to become so successful. No real credit has been given to Alan Parsons. Lady Antebellum could have at least acknowledged him when accepting their awards.

There's a dishonesty to what happened with this song that distinguishes it from "U Can't Touch This" and "Ice, Ice Baby," for example. Those songs took their "inspired" tracks so blatantly from the original works that it's not like they could hide it.

But Lady Antebellum are trying to take full credit for the catchiness of a hook that the Alan Parsons Project wrote. And are having Grammies rained down on them. That bothers me.


There are a number of mashups between the two songs on Youtube , but the shortest and simplest is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS1z2inwJ2o

[KG]

1. pop music sucks.

[AngryOldDem]

2. That has been a definite pet peeve of mine for years.

There was a rap hit a few years back that was a direct ripoff of "Every Breath You Take" by The Police. It infuriated me so much every time I heard it that I had to change the channel or otherwise turn it off.

I always ask myself what was the difference between this and the flap over George Harrison and "My Sweet Lord"? What is the difference between "sampling" and plagiarism?

[coti]

3. Yeah, that was Puff Daddy's ("P Diddy" now) tribute to Notorious B.I.G.

"I'll Be Missing You". To his credit, he played it with Sting live at least once, I believe.


Your "My Sweet Lord" reference I believe is right on. Same thing happened with this case- inadvertant but clear, pretty direct inspiration.

[superduperfarleft]

5. Sampling is very different from what Puff Daddy did.

Good sampling is like building a collage from the parts of numerous different songs. What Puff Daddy did is simply called "karaoke."

[Phentex]

4. I never put them together...

and the only thing I felt about the Lady Antebellum song was WHY THE HELL DO THEY PLAY IT SO MUCH?

I don't get the appeal. :shrug:

[superduperfarleft]

6. You honestly can't pay that much attention to the grammys if you consider yourself a music fan.

And by music fan, I mean actual music appreciation, not "My favorite kind of music is whatever's playing on the radio at a reasonable volume!"

Any organization that gives Best New Artist to people like Lady Gaga, New Kids on the Block, N Sync, etc. (Seriously? Best new artist that year? There's no one else in the entire rest of the world that made better music than N Sync that year? Really...) just cannot be taken seriously.

No, I am not old, I am not crotchety, and if I had a lawn, I wouldn't necessarily kick kids off of it.