You might be familiar with these lyrics if you're a radio listener or at least a TV watcher.
"Ooooooh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah, I get a feeling that I never never never never had before, no no, I get a good feeling, yeah"
I was familiar with Avicii's song 'Levels', which I think is my favourite club tune at the moment, this samples parts of the original and is at number 5 in the chart. Today, I looked at the UK chart update to find Flo Rida's even more uninspiring version at number one.
At first, I was confused. I thought I'd been mistaken. Why were there two very similar songs in the chart? Were they the same song? No.
At least Avicii's contains a little bit of creativity with the lyrics being used to add a climatic element to his song. I think it is not unreasonable for artists to sample other people's riffs and lyrics, if they are willing to recognise the original. However Flo Rida's song is just a copy, it continually repeats the lyrics with him rapping over the top, it's not particularly artistic and it's not ground-breaking. But most chart music isn't, I suppose.
I will honestly admit though, I didn't know that Avicii had taken samples from Etta James' beautiful song, "Something's Got a Hold On Me", until I did my research. (I like to know the inspiration/source behind a musician's work.)
I will honestly admit though, I didn't know that Avicii had taken samples from Etta James' beautiful song, "Something's Got a Hold On Me", until I did my research. (I like to know the inspiration/source behind a musician's work.)
I don't know whether to be happy that a song around half a century old is inspiring artists today and thus our very fickle modern music consumers. Or sad, that in today's pop industry, the current number one is basically a copy of a sample of the original.
The original - or so I hope.
The club one.
The boring chart one.
The original - or so I hope.
The club one.
The boring chart one.
Pretty Lights released 'Finally Moving' back in 2006 using samples from "Something's Got a Hold On Me". That's the earliest one I know of, besides the original of course.
ReplyDeleteAwesome, I'll look it up! And thanks for taking the time to read this as well.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9XYQMRiLY
ReplyDelete(Pretty Lights, Finally Moving)