Musicians Who Admit Some Sort Of Plagiarism/Borrowing?

So you're saying everything good that has been created was nicked? C'mon.

 

Yeah. On a related note, I don't think neither Neil nor Carole King have ever commented publicly on the fact that he stole the music for Pocahontas from her song He's A Bad Boy.

 

I'm surprised he (or anyone else) would dedicate time to a video, going one by one basically naming who they nicked it from. Cool video.

"I knew Mozart" - did ya know, Richie?

 

Houston Astros.

 

....and he’s borrowing a riff from Spirit

 

Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller - they have both written good songs without 'borrowing,' but there is no question both of them have done it.
The Yardbirds - 'I Ain't Done Wrong' is an Elmore James song with a different title ('I Done Somebody Wrong' - something like that). There are other examples in their catalog too, but you get my drift.

 

Well, I didn't like Ice Ice Baby when it was released. But I've mellowed out as I got older. I can listen to it, not feeling anything negative about it. And about the sampling of Queen's bassline: the parts without that sample outweigh the parts with it, considerably. It's only heard during the choruses and not during the verses.

 

Paul Stanley has said that “I Stole Your Love” was inspired by Deep Purple’s “Burn” and while it’s not a note for note lift he certainly captured the feel of the song. “I stole your riff!”

 

Stephen Malkmus laughs as he says he basically stole from The Clean for early Pavement stuff. Not sure if it's in this part but it's a great documentary on Flying Nun

 

The Burn riff was apparently a rigorously sped-up version of a George Gershwin song. Hence 'Owed to G' on Come Taste The Band.

 

"It's different" - what an idiot.

 

Bob Dylan Unleashed

 

I read a Neil Young interview where he admits the similarity between "Ambulance Blues" and Bert Jansch's "Needle of Death," although Neil claims that he didn't steal the tune consciously.

 

I don't mind other guys ripping off my song/
I'd be lying if I said I never did no wrong.

"All This Music Must Fade" - The Who

 

Nancy Wilson from Heart has admitted that the riff from “Barracuda” is lifted almost directly from a Nazareth song “The Flight Tonight”. Most assume it was copped from “Achilles Last Stand”.

 

Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? - Wikipedia

"It has been noted that Stewart created parts of the song through musical plagiarism. A copyright infringement lawsuit by Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor claimed the chorus of the song had been derived from his song "Taj Mahal". The case was "settled amicably" according to Jorge Ben Jor, in Ben Jor's favor.[8] Stewart admitted in his 2012 autobiography to "unconscious plagiarism" of the Ben Jor song, which he had heard while attending the Rio Carnival in 1978.[2] He also admitted that he had consciously lifted the song's signature synthesizer riff from the string arrangement on Bobby Womack's "(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down On It". Stewart contends that it is legal to lift a line from any song's arrangement as long as the core melody line is not copied.[2]"

 

He effectively does with the album title..

 

Eric Carmen admitted that he got "Tonight" from two Small Faces songs.

 

I have heard their Greatest Hits compilation, all their hits just sound like someone banging on a trash can

 

This thread got me thinking about that controversial Joni Mitchell interview where she calls Bob a plagiarist, and I never understood why some people got their panties in a bunch about it. But then I thought about Joni... she has so many great melodies, but not a single one reminds me of another song. Might she be a true original? Could that be due to the unique tunings she uses? Help me out here, forum... has Joni ever been accused up ripping off another songwriter?

 

She has interesting views about what constitutes "plagiarism". I disagree but think she is a great original artist. I found this quotation from her:

"But, unfortunately, in the Camus, I found he [Cohen] lifted lines. “Walk me to the corner, our steps will always …” That’s literally a Camus line. So I thought that’s like Bob Dylan … When I realized that Bob and Leonard were lifting lines, I was very disappointed. And then I thought that there’s this kind of a self-righteous quality about — you’re a plagiarist and I’m not. So I plagiarized from Camus in “Come In from the Cold” intentionally. I forget which verse it is, but when I put the single out, I edited that verse out. I just took it out. Leonard got mad at me actually, because I put a line of his, a line that he said, in one of my songs. To me, that’s not plagiarism. You either steal from life or you steal from books. Life is fair game, but books are not. That’s my personal opinion. Don’t steal from somebody else’s art, that’s cheating. Steal from life — it’s up for grabs, right? So I put something that he said in one of my songs and he got real irritable, [saying], “I’m glad I wrote that.”

 

Billy Corgan admits he ripped off 'By-Tor And The Snow Dog'

This is hilarious

 

She seems to be making a distinction between something said in conversation versus "art"... not necessarily something written down. I don't know... that's a slippery one. So if a comedian tells a joke onstage, and a different comedian tells the same joke elsewhere, to Joni that would be plagiarism. But if the comedian tells the joke offstage, (but not a street joke--he/she wrote it), and the other comedian uses it onstage, it's no longer plagiarism? What if the first comedian was planning to tell the joke onstage? And what if Leonard Cohen was planning to use what he said in a song?

 

This is wild.