It happened. We ran out of riffs. They predicted this back in 1985 when a music philosopher named Harvard Yeats did the math and said by the year 2009 the 5,668,775 songs in existence will have used all 9,347,844 riffs that are possible to make. Of course, he didn’t know about beats and Pro Tools, which accelerated this process ten, fold. Now we have a hit like TI’s “Rubberband Man” come out in 2004 and barely a year later Young Jeezy has to recycle the beat for “My Hood.” As Aerosmith would say, “It’s the same old song-.”
This occurs with the Pixies all the time and we’re not just talking about the part in “$20” where M.I.A. has to re-use the lyrics from “Where is my Mind.” “Homeboy” by Adorable is the exact same song as “Wave of Mutilation.” When the UK shoegazers say “I’m tripping into the back of my mind” they might as well ad, “Drive my car into the ocean” because that’s exactly where the song is headed. It used to be you could sue for copyright infringement in these cases but what’s a musician to do? We’re out of beats.
UPDATE: At the behest of Loomis we present
MC Solaar’s “Bouge de La”
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Ruthless Rap Assassins’ “And it Wasn’t a Dream”
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Ruthless Rap Assassins “And it Wasn’t a Dream” is the exact same song as MC Solaar’s “Bouge de la” but I can’t find the fomer on YouTube.
08.04.08 at 12:24 pm
have you heard that green yer totally right about the riffs thing. i don’t know the name of either of the songs but there’s a green day song and a chicago song that are literally identical riff-wise. i think the green day song has something to do with not being able to sleep.
08.04.08 at 1:13 pm
how about shiny toy guns Le Disko and the Stooges I wannna be your dog
08.04.08 at 1:41 pm
Skrewdriver have a song that steals the riff from “Boys Don’t Cry.” Sheer Terror must have noticed this because they cover “Boys Don’t Cry” and say they hate it.
08.04.08 at 1:59 pm
Sonic Youth – “Unwind” and Modest Mouse – “Blame It On The Tetons” are as close to identical as two songs can come riff wise.
Cut Copy – “Bright Neon Payphone” has always seemed like a large melodic ripoff of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Dani California” and Tom Pettys “Last Dance With Mary Jane” are essentially the same melody and chord progression – clearly TP should have sued those bags.
Every Oasis song sounds like a ripoff of a Beatles song.
08.04.08 at 2:08 pm
yeah TP was amazingly laid back about it. and he makes this article’s point kind of – from rolling stone (i know i know but is the money quote)
RS: Have you heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers song “Dani California” yet, because obviously it sounds a lot like “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
Petty: Yes, I have. Everyone everywhere is stopping me. The truth is, I seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there. And a lot of rock & roll songs sound alike. Ask Chuck Berry. The Strokes took “American Girl” [for their song “Last Nite”], and I saw an interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me laugh out loud. I was like, “OK, good for you.” It doesn’t bother me.
08.04.08 at 2:18 pm
“Every Oasis song sounds like a ripoff of a Beatles song.”
why does everyone always say that when there are such obvious rip-offs in oasis songs that have fuck all to do with the beatles. biggest influence of the beatles on oasis = haircuts.
08.04.08 at 2:19 pm
“Every Oasis song sounds like a ripoff of a Beatles song.”
That really is the biggest heap of oft-repeated nonsense you’re likely to hear. How the fuck do songs like “Live Forever” and “Slide Away” sound anything remotely like the Beatles?
Twat.
08.04.08 at 2:21 pm
whaddaya know, two different fizzlebottoms coming to the same conclusion!
08.04.08 at 2:22 pm
and what of “tyler” by the toadies? i’m not even sure how they got away with that one.
08.04.08 at 2:29 pm
I’m sure it’s well-known, but Green Day also ripped off the Kinks– “Warning” is nearly a cover of “Picture Book,” and a shitty one at that.
08.04.08 at 2:29 pm
rolling like a CAAAAAAAnnonball.
08.04.08 at 2:41 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0-dhOFZAxE
08.04.08 at 3:57 pm
Well thanks a lot Ruben for making me listen to that intolerable fuckwit Kate Nash. How does she get away with continually releasing such contemptible tripe? Who the fuck is buying this wank?
08.04.08 at 4:04 pm
I’m with the Fizzlebottoms: the Oasis/Beatles binary is MAD overstated.
08.04.08 at 5:34 pm
Ahhh > I’m buying that wank so I can literally have a wank! The only thing intolerable about Kate Nash is the overwhelming masturbatory urge I get when I listen to her music and/or look at pictures of her online.
Thanks for the link, Ruben!
08.04.08 at 5:39 pm
the ark’s clamour for glamour is just the flamin groovies slow death but that might be on purpose. i just want somebody to pay attention to me whaaaaaaaaa
08.04.08 at 6:53 pm
maybe now we can get past “riffs” and beats
08.04.08 at 7:29 pm
i wonder if it has anything to do with bands getting younger and no one studying music . they all just listen to a band and start stealing. think of all the bands that came after the strokes. half of them probably didnt know who velvet underground or lou reed was. im not a music nerd, its just getting impossible to find a good band anymore.
08.04.08 at 8:34 pm
“We ran out of riffs.” Heavy meta post, D.
08.04.08 at 9:06 pm
the bands who came after the strokes, and the strokes themselves, are rubbish because they know all too well who the velvet underground and lou reed are. there is more to a musical education than plagiarising from rolling stone’s favourite junkies.
08.05.08 at 2:46 am
the mc solaar song and the ruthless rap assassins song both sample a song by cymande that i don’t remember right now but can probably find it on youtube pretty fast
and it’s The Message
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3Ds0JABsM&feature=related
if you’re gonna count every rap song that sampled the same track as another rap song the list would go on forever and ever and ever
08.05.08 at 4:21 am
the velvet underground stinks and lou reed is a dick anyway..
08.05.08 at 10:24 am
Anyone can play the “hey they sound like” game, but what’s a musician to do? I’ll come up with a riff that sounds familiar and then flip through my records until I find out that Bonnie Prince Billie played it before me. So what? Am I supposed to start over just because I listen to a lot of music?
08.05.08 at 11:15 am
How about Black Sabbath vs. every single stoner metal band to come after them?
08.05.08 at 4:59 pm
Bradley Nowell was a notorious rip-off artist. Mostly reggae and motown.
08.05.08 at 5:38 pm
Black Metal is superior to any other music. You can feel the pains the world, the trying to break free of a 3 dimensional shell by which we are bound in this existence.
Black Metal music has soul.
Compare it to technical death, and you see my point.
08.05.08 at 5:48 pm
Compare DMX’s “Party Up”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9FHbP2-of8
…to Cold War Kids’ “Hang Me Up To Dry”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrrGKR8Xii4
08.05.08 at 11:00 pm
Okay, I’ve been saying this shit for years. Every genre has been done and beaten to a dead horse.
Best thing a band can do is steal riffs from a band that’s a completely different genre or demographic of whatever the crap you play. Thereby avoiding scrutiny and paying royalties if the song becomes a hit.
Here’s one people don’t notice:
Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” lifts a riff from “Transylvania” by Iron Maiden
Sex Pistols “Holidays in the Sun” is a complete rip of “In the City” by the Jam but it was in a semi altered time signature. Nobody cared to notice because everybody was too busy LOOKING at the Sex Pistols instead of listening to their stuff. And no one cared about the Jam because they were Mod and Mod’s gay.
08.06.08 at 5:54 am
Grimey knows his beats. You can hear the same sample cut up in the intro of the following jam:
Masta Ace- Known To Be the Masta
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sAoPIuc92Ds
In the late 60s, early 70s, every possible bit of funk was wrung from black America onto wax. Of course hip hop, especially the pure New York strain, concedes this, turns it up, adds a more brawlic rhythm section, modern lyrics and lets it bump. See Papoose:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bPKtzvLnfF8
Thankfully I think there is still much room for variation by using effects, new production techniques and foreign sound sensibilities. I definitely think the best rock and roll is long behind us, yet luckily crystallized and recorded for future generations.
08.06.08 at 1:21 pm
comepare everyone nose be NERD and Dom Lomp & Famous by Dutch act The Opposities
The Opposites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsTYev-jiII
Nerd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA1HB_yJii4
The NERD one came later.
08.07.08 at 6:08 am
Some mainstream acts have resorted to writing letters to other artists begging to use riffs from their songs so they can crap out another hit single. I hope Kraftwerk got some money for this:
http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/martin%20sent%20kraftwerk%20begging%20letter
08.07.08 at 12:37 pm
the real song is masta ace – “me and the biz” that used the cymande sample first,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExpVH4_TziQ
but, like grimey said, if you were gonna bring rap into this the list would go on for days…
08.07.08 at 1:40 pm
Oasis fucking sucks.
08.07.08 at 4:28 pm
[...] The “music philosopher” Harvard Yeats does not exist and there’s no such thing as …This makes your second chart redundant and we apologize for that. [...]
08.08.08 at 10:32 am
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08.11.08 at 11:17 am
[...] This goes back to what we were saying about all songs being used up. Dude probably saw our shirts and the logo went into his sub conscious and then he made his shirt without knowing where he got the idea. Like when a bassist comes up with an awesome riff and the whole band finishes their new hit only to … [...]
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Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ and The Hollies’ ‘The Air That I Breath”
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