Michael Shames | News Editor
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Recently, two of the more popular members in the music industry have been accused of plagiarism. “All About that Bass” is a song written by Meghan Trainor that brought her into the national (and global) spotlight. In terms of records sold, the song has become one of the most popular of all time. However, someone, deep in the bowels of the internet, pointed out its eerie similarities to a Korean-pop song called “Happy Mode”, written by Koyote in 2006. If you don’t feel like watching the video, the two songs have nearly identical melodies, rhythms, and beats. (It’s okay Meghan, I didn’t like your song anyway.)
Last week, pop-singer Sam Smith decided to pay rockstar Tom Petty royalties for the song “Stay With Me,” after Petty threatened to sue the song for copyright. He claimed that the chorus of Smith’s hit single was strongly influenced by the opening lines of Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” You can be the judge.
Here’s the thing. Both Trainor and Smith have accrued quite a lot of popularity (and wealth) for these two songs, so the plagiarism accusations are serious.
But this is no new trend. One of the more famous example falls in the infamous hands of Vanilla Ice, whose beat in the rap “Ice Ice Baby,” (1990) sounded suspiciously familiar to a certain David Bowie song. Bowie claimed Ice had stolen the beat from the popular rock song “Under Pressure,” (1981) co-written by Bowie and the band Queen. The beats are so similar that, when played over each other, you can’t even tell them apart.
By now, you are probably asking me, what’s your point? A fair question. Well my point is this: At Menlo, we are constantly being told by teachers of the perils of plagiarism. Here and in many other schools, students have gotten expelled for copying the work of others, whether it be other students or professionals. Students get annoyed because of how meticulous they have to be during the research process to ensure they do not accidentally use the work of others. I hear it all the time: What’s the big deal? The big deal is that this is not just some school problem; this is a real world problem that professional people come across all the time, and some have to face its serious consequences.
I get it. Ensuring that the words you use are your own is hard. Many times, you may read something, store a quote from the piece in the back of your mind, and then subconsciously regurgitate it onto your own paper for a history assignment. But Menlo isn’t just pulling this “plagiarism” idea out of the sky. Believe it or not, but in the real world, where the assignment you are writing is to earn money, this is a crime. Smith denied any intent in using Petty’s melody, calling it a “complete coincidence.” But he still could have and would have been sued, if he and Petty did not come to the royalties agreement.
I know it’s fun to ignore or laugh about the concept of plagiarism, as in the case with this scene from HBO show Flight of the Conchords, where the band manager gets sued for plagiarism involving his song “Doggy Bounce.” But we really do have to acknowledge plagiarism as an issue that people in all sorts of jobs run into trouble with all of the time. The reality is that we live in a world where if you create something, a book, song, article, etc. for profit, someone halfway across the world can accuse you of copying something someone else wrote, and then when you deny it, they can proceed to link it on the internet. You can’t get away with anything, whether intentional or “coincidental” as our friend Sam Smith would say. So the bottom line is: be careful with what you say, write, or sing, as if you don’t, you can get in a lot of “real world” legal trouble with big-time personal, social and financial consequences.