Musical Musings… “Liberal Borrowing” (BONUS: Sound-Alike Mystery Solved!)
"A Meeting of the Minds," er, I mean "A Meeting of Weaves and Nests"
Criminy. In the course of working on this post (which I thought was going to be a nice break from all the work on the Final Foursome brackets – NOT!), I started to feel like Nick Cage in 8mm. The further I started digging, the dirtier I felt… which happens when you actually dig.
And maybe I’m exaggerating my Nick Cage analogy. Perhaps it was more of a National Treasure debacle, where one clue lead me to another, until my head started spinning.
Regardless, I stuck to it (courtesy of my stick-to-it-iveness, which bears no association with nocturnal emissions). These are my findings…
ORIGIN(S)
The idea for this post was a sort of fruitful one; variations of it jumped at me from every direction.
The concept: LIBERAL BORROWING, a.k.a. STEALING, in the music business.
Ray Parker Lewis and the Electric Light News, Jr.
- The original plan was to write about one of my favorite groups of all time, Huey Lewis and the News, and how they took issue with Ray Parker, Jr.’s liberal borrowing of I Want a New Drug’s bass line for the Ghostbuster’s Theme, when the Huey crew liberally borrowed the opening of ELO’s Sweet Talkin’ Woman for their first hit, Do You Believe In Love?
Chicago Green River Day
- Then that reminded me of the similarities between Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4 and Green Day’s Brain Stew.
Then that lead me to…
- …memories of the Jump controversy. It wasn’t a scandal really, but 1984 me distinctly remembers The Pointer Sisters having to add (For My Love) to their version’s title, as not to confuse it with Van Halen’s anthem.
And then came this thought…
- Nickelback and Mariah Carey have two (almost three) songs with the same title: Hero and Someday. Her If It’s Over is answered abruptly by their It’s Over.
Then my mind wandered to this revelation…
- Only the Lonely (the 80’s ballad) and Suddenly Last Summer sound a lot alike, but that’s because they’re by the same group, The Motels. On the other hand, Berlin’s Metro and Devo’s Whip It are obviously different groups, yet elements of their back beats are similar.
THE ACTUAL MISSION
Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s new song, Telephone, has been driving me freaking crazy, and not for the expected reasons.
At the 3:33 mark in the NSFW extended video (or the 0:47 mark in the regular video according to other TripleDoubleU inquiries), her line:
Stop calling, stop calling, I don’t wanna talk anymore…
Sounds just like another song, the likes of which I could not think of. I scoured the web and scrambled my brain. I started getting Britney Spears’ 3 stuck in my head, and couldn’t get past it.
Once I found out Gaga actually wrote Telephone for Spears, the mental block worsened. I had a feeling it was one of those backup singer hooks from all the early Aughties’ R&B hits.
I searched song lists of Mya, Ashanti, Aliyah… then it occurred to me: Ciara’s Goodies (at the 1:24 mark).
Looking for the goodies, keep on lookin’ cuz they stay in the jar…
Excitedly, I returned to the website where someone else shared my pain.
What song does Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” sound like?
I hit the “Comments” button to answer…
…and somebody else already had.
(BONUS WEIRDNESS! Both Ciara and Lady Gaga have been rumored to be hermaphrodites!)
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