[Transcript of Episode 6: ‘It’s Time for Music Plagiarism’ from 05/03/17]
INTRO
Welcome, I’m the Conspiracy Man. In this series we’ll be
blowing the lid off many of the world’s biggest conspiracies that the man
doesn’t want you to know about. I’m recording here in my secret underground
shelter where no-one can find me.
The music industry is
famous for conspiracies, especially musicians who are dead but actually aren’t
(e.g. Elvis, Tupac) and musicians who aren’t dead but actually are (e.g. Paul
McCartney). But this episode we’ll be looking at the music itself, more
specifically music plagiarism.
HISTORY OF PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism has been a
problem in many different fields throughout history. Gottfried Leibnitz and
Isaac Newton accused each other of copying their work on modern calculus. The
Clint Eastwood spaghetti western A
Fistful of Dollars, was sued for plagiarising Yojimbo, an Akira Kurosawa-directed Japanese samurai film. And
Barrack Obama was accused by Republicans of plagiarising his healthcare policy
from the Soviet Union.
Music has had many
famous plagiarism scandals throughout the years. Beatle, George Harrison, who
actually is dead, was sued for his song ‘My Sweet Lord’ plagiarising the 60’s
hit ‘He’s So Fine’. Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr for the Ghostbusters song
being too much like his song ‘I want a new drug’. In 2010 The Men at Work 80’s
hit ‘Down Under’ was sued for appropriating the flute part from a 1930’s Aussie
folk song ‘Kookaburra’. And in recent
years we had the writers of the song ‘Blurred Lines’ being accused of
plagiarism and the people involved with the Sam Smith Grammy-winning song ‘Stay
With Me’ coming to an out-of-court settlement to give a share of both royalties
and songwriting credit to the writers of the Tom Petty song ‘I won’t back
down’.
HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Even if something is
copying something else it might not always be intentional – sometimes the
person might have heard the song years before and not remembered it, but the
tune was stuck in their head – cryptonmesia, as what happened in the George
Harrison case.
There’s one thing
that’s always bugged me about some of the more obvious incidents of music
plagiarism. It’s one thing when the song being plagiarised is some obscure or
old or foreign song, but it’s hard to comprehend when it’s a more well-known
song.
Sometimes it’s
understandable for the songwriters themselves not to have known this song –
especially since they are younger and the song is maybe from before their time,
like in the ‘Stay With Me’ case where those 3 writers were toddlers when the
Tom Petty song was released. But no-one else realised it sounded like another
song? People who work in music such as producers, agents, DJs and record
executives you would think would have a great interest in music and would have
heard a lot of music in their lifetime and have an ability to recognise
familiar tunes and melodies.
TWO POSSIBILITES
After extensive
research regarding this dilemma I could only come up with 2 solutions for these
acts of plagiarism happening in the music industry. One is that the act of
plagiarism is done (either deliberately or accidentally), and the record
company realises this and just hopes no-one figures it out.
The other, and much
more logical solution, is time travel. Yes, time travel. You go to the future
and listen to some new songs and then go back to your own time and then pretend
you wrote those songs yourself. And then when the song is actually written in
the future you can sue them for plagiarism. It’s essentially reverse plagiarism
– the one who’s accusing plagiarism is actually the plagiarist. This doesn’t
even just apply to individual songs and riffs – even whole styles of music. Some
music really is before it’s time!
But what type of time
travel is it? It might be the stereotypical time travel where you yourself
travel to the future in a contraption. It could be being able to see into the
future with a crystal ball like a clairvoyant. It could possibly be like in the
Philip K. Dick story, Paycheck, where
they have the ability to reach into the future and grab stuff with a robot arm.
It was made into a movie, coincidentally called Paycheck, that had Ben Affleck in it and sucked.
CODED MESSAGES
Now as a conspiracy
buff I’m pretty at coded messages. Just show me a one-dollar bill and we’ll be
here for hours. The music industry can’t help but leave little clues and
in-jokes about how the whole thing is built on. You only have to look at the
thousands of songs and albums that reference time, songs like Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time, and ELO’s
1981 release, Time, a concept album
about a man who time travels into the future. Oh yes and who fronted ELO - Jeff
Lynne, who also later co-wrote I Won’t
Back Down with Tom Petty. All the pieces are starting to fit together now,
aren’t they? Mind blown!
Although there aren’t
that many cases of music plagiarism, this ‘time stealing’ of music could be far
more prevalent than this otherwise suggests. A lot of musicians have come up
with tunes and riffs and then realised that it’s just from a song that already
exists and given up on the song – but that’s because they are actually
inventing it themselves at that time.
It’s like in that
movie, Terminator: Genisys, where John Connor when going back sees a glimpse of
himself as a kid talking about Skynet. It was a terrible film, but they sure
done their research – they read both of those books by that wheelchair guy.
I’ve had this
experience myself – in a dream I came up with the song, In The Navy, but when I woke up I later realised the song had been
recorded decades earlier – damn you Village People for stealing my song! I have
contacted my lawyer and legal action is pending.
NEXT TIME
Provided my parents
aren’t murdered before I’m born I shall return ... in the future! What shocking conspiracy will
I be busting because it makes me feel good? Well, let me just say – would you
like English sausage for Brexit? Scared – you should be?
Starring: John
Written by: Paul
Edited by: George
Music by: ‘And Ringo’
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