This hot off the press gem was just brought to my attention by Iselin
I can’t resist imagining this conversation going on in my head:
Dr. Luke: You know that “Tik Tok” song I produced for that Kesha girl that sounded a lot like Kylie Minogue’s “Love at First Site”? Let’s write one of those types of songs.
Max Martin: Yes! Oh, and let’s make sure there is some sort of “oh oh oh” thing at the end of the choruses. The kids LOVE that sort of thing.
DL: About this “California Girls” song title. Isn’t that a Beach Boys song? We don’t want to confuse the world AGAIN with a catchy original song title [“I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry (2008) and “I Kissed a Girl” by Jill Sobule (1995)] so let’s change the spelling of “Girls” to something fun and goofy like “Gurls”. Let’s also claim the name change was in tribute to the band Big Star.
MM: Your’re a genius! So when I Google it or search for it in iTunes it’ll come up on top! But what about building some cred in the hip hop community? Our numbers are down.
DL: Oh oh oh oh! This will be a great time to pull out clips from that session we did last year with Snoop Dogg.
MM: You mean the one where we had him record random hip hop phrases and things like “California” and “West Coast” that we thought we would need to use later on if we needed to add additional hip hop cred to a new song?
DL: You got it Max. I think there’s a rap about California on there too. Oh, and we might as well also pretend the album is leaked so we hit the blog community. That’ll make them think they’re posts are HOT and FRESH.
MM: Done! Let’s not alienate those east coasters either. Make sure we tell everyone in the behind the scenes Rolling Stone shoot that the song’s inspiration came from Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind“.
DL: Genius.
I also think that old song “tarzan boy” by baltimora sounds like these songs, especially for the “oh”s at the beginning of tarzan boy, and those off tik tok. But it may be just me.
I don’t get what the big deal is. The same writers wrote and produced both tracks within the same period of time. It is perfectly reasonable that they might sound similar to each other. This is nothing new in any genre of music.
You don’t think that Haydn doesn’t have a bunch of string quartets that sounds the same? Or Rogers and Hammerstein didn’t write musicals where songs are completely interchangeable? Or Led Zepplin didn’t make the same riff-based blues jams (many ripped off from earlier blues aritsts) over and over again? What about the Motown hit-making machine that produced tons of songs and artists that we consider “classic” today?
You guys rip on Luke and Max alot on this site, and you miss the fact that these are probably the only guys in the biz right now who continually put out songs that are high-quality and are liked by a mass audience. And because they do write so many hits, and the songs are so out in the public’s eye, of course some similarities will be found. It doesn’t take away from how talented, hard-working, and professional these guys really are.
You’re absolutely right, it’s more the rule than the exception that music written by the same people will sound similar. Whether it be Motown or other major companies recycling their material, such as Stax recycling Green Onions; or John Fogerty with The Old Man Down the Road, which he stated had a Run Through the Jungle groove (his old record company pounced but they lost the case against him and he sued for attorney fees) to Bon Jovi, Green Day etc. When a band is still in its early days and their songwriting is still limited, their songs can all sound the same. A fan of anyone can probably attest to this.
Some songwriters have written hundreds of songs and classical composers would even write over a thousand of one kind of composition and hundreds of another, which makes it easy to lose track of what you’ve written and not realise you’ve written something similar before. Also, songs that are less melodic can sound much the same and a riff can easily enough sound like another riff. I’m sorry about this, I suppose I am preaching the converted just a little.
And their was also Robert Johnson using the same riffs (though probably not in one performance), Chuck Berry recycling riffs and melodies, plus Prince and their was a video on Youtube titled New Metallica Inspired by Old Metallica?.
And Michael Jackson, like Body by The Jacksons (1984) sounds kind of like Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ (1982) and in the instrumentals of Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough, you can hear the beginnings of Thriller.
Every era has it’s “trend” in the arts. In design, we saw every other logo having an incarnation of the Nike “Shoosh” applied to it. ( Think Capital One ).
Originality cannot keep up with the insatiable appetites and demands of the consumer. In order to feed the beast “variations” are thrown out until something different can be devoured.
Add the chorus to Stan Walker’s Music Won’t Break Your Heart to the list of similarities.
LIsten to “Who Dat GIrl” by Flo Rida. Also the same beat.