If you have happened to stumble upon this blog I will be very happy and humbled for you to read it and comment!
My name's Betty Bearfoot. I'm sure you've heard of me.
If not - then read on.
Pssh! Whatever! Do what you like, the internet's a free place. Just watch out for those Elders Of The Internet, the cheeky bastards.

Friday, 6 January 2012

Sometimes I get a good feeling, other times I'm not too sure.

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" 

At present, I think this song appears in at least two adverts on the television and the lyrics feature in two songs in the current UK chart. This is surprising as the original is 50 years old.

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 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.

3 comments:

  1. 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.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome, I'll look it up! And thanks for taking the time to read this as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9XYQMRiLY
    (Pretty Lights, Finally Moving)

    ReplyDelete