The Music Industry's Idea of a Sequel

I find it funny when people want to pass judgement on you b/c of the music you like to listen to.  I always love it when you get "dissed" for not listening to stuff that is considered "deep" or "meaningful."  Whatever -- I'm a top 40 kinda guy and I like it!  I'll take Gaga, Beyonce', Justin, or Mariah over some unknown flannel punk band that crawled out from a rock to sing a song about injustice to squirrels any day of the week.

Yeah -- I like my music a little bubblegum, and to have a groove.  which brings me to the music industry's idea of a sequel -- it's called the sample.  A sample (for those that don't know) is when one song takes part (or all) of the melody of another song and they loop it into the beat or melody of the new single. 

I love the fact that people get really mad that this goes on -- b/c it's really a safe bet.  You take a cute tune from way back when and jazz it up with your song, and seriously, it's a sequel to the first song.  That old song get's new life.  And in an industry that is littered with one hit wonders, you'd be surprised how many of those song writers are still reaping a royalty check off that one hit they had.

I did some quick research on some of my favorite songs and here are the samples they use:

• Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" samples a huge Dutch club hit called "Dominator" by Human Resource
• Mariah's "Fantasy" (both versions) samples the melody from Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love"
• Ke$ha's new single "Take It Off" actually samples a REALLY old song titled "Streets of Cairo" -- it's over 100 years old!!
• Christina Aguilera's "Candyman" borrows most of it's melody from The Andrews Sisters WWII smash "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" -- she even pays tribute to them in the video when there's three of her singing
• My favorite Janet song "Someone to Call my Lover" borrows the guitar opening from America's "Ventura Highway"
• Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music" takes the melody and some lyrics from Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"  (most of her songs have samples, btw)
• Rap borrows VERY heavily, and Nelly's first smash hit "Country Grammar" ironically borrows it's melody from a popular kids song "Roller Coaster"
• "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child steals the guitar riff from Stevie Nicks' "Seventeen" -- she loved it so much she plays the guitar in the video in the beginning for them
• Finally, and interestingly enough, Timbaland's "The Way I Are" actually samples another rap song, Salt-n-Pepa's smash "Push It"

Like I said, I did very little research and came up with these examples, and most songs today do contain samples.  However, one popular myth is that it's the artist's who borrows the sample.  In reality -- it's the PRODUCER of the track that borrows -- so unless the artist is involved in all aspects of the track production, they might not have had any say so at all.

The only controversial (and you can say unintentional, but I don't believe so) sampling to occur was on Beyonce's "Halo" and Kelly Clarkson's "Already Gone".  Both songs were written by One Republic's frontman Ryan Tedder.  Yeah -- that did get a bit ugly . . .

So -- in case you were curious -- I'm a fan of Top 40, sampling, and bubblegum pop.  Oh yeah baby . . .