Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Site of the Month

I'm stretching. Hell, I'm eking out the SotM post on the second to last day of the month. I'll give you a spoiler alert: I'm really eking out the Record of the Month post tomorrow. Getting both of these placeholders up and published right under the wire.

I'll go on record that I loathe Lady Gaga's "Alejandro". Not only is it repetitive beyond belief, it's not even remotely original. ....and it seemingly goes on forever. But I suppose that is true of many things one doesn't like, like say, an episode of 'Ugly Betty' or going to the dentist. It may as well be an eternity.

There is a point to my Lady Gaga slam. Even NPR did a piece on it - go figure - on how it's not that different from some Ace of Base song and how then that song wasn't too different than an ABBA song.....and so on and so on and so on.

As Denton loves to point out to me, there are only so many notes in a scale and only a limited number of ways to arrange said notes - so you're bound to get intended and unintended plagiarism.

So, I went looking and sure enough there are a few sites that try to call out these anomalies in music and they're simply called That Song Sounds Like and Sounds Just Like.

Some of the comparisons work, some don't, but it is fun to scour through some of it to see what's what.

It's all I got. Sorry about that.

4 comments:

Birdie said...

George Harrison paid a ton of money when "My Sweet Lord" was found to sound too much like another song I can't remember right now. I believe he had no intention of plagiarizing, but the tune was in his head. I think Denton is onto something.

Cubby said...

I'm surprised NPR didn't make a comparison to Madonna too. Or maybe that comparison has been done too much already.

I'm willing to give Lady Gaga plenty of slack based on her civil rights efforts. I'm so proud of her.

Ur-spo said...

Would you believe I have never heard a song by Lady G? I do not think I would recognize one.

tornwordo said...

Hate that song too. Extra hate. And I will check out that site. I remember when (not sure if this is the actual name) Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls was on the radio and I kept thinking they copied Rio from Duran Duran.