So I've been doing a fair amount of songwriting lately. Most of the results have not yet made it to the recording phase (though as soon as they do, you can be sure you'll see them here, not to mention here and here.) Self-promotion aside, the reason I bring it up is that I've been struggling a bit with the concept of originality. Every song, at a certain level, seems to have been written before. No chord progression is quite unfamiliar, and every rhyme seems to have been around the block once or twice at least. There are, of course, notable exceptions (a recent favorite of mine, from the Magnetic Fields: "I want you crawling back to me / down on your knees yeah / like an appendectomy / sans anesthesia"). But on the whole, this sort of tricky wordplay only serves to illustrate the tremendous difficulty of coming up with something new.
That said, there is also an art to ripping something off. You can't just copy wholesale, but many a great song takes a few liberties with its influences. A borrowed lyric here, a scrap of an old favorite melody there, throw in the bridge from a jazz standard with a ii chord in the place of a IV, and you've got a brand new song. Of course there's not necessarily anything wrong with this. Dylan did it. Shakespeare did it. As Jonathan Lethem writes, "Art is sourced. Apprentices graze in the field of culture." (for much more on this topic, take a look at The Ecstasy of Influence). Nonetheless, a certain anxiety rises in me every time I borrow a lyric, and inspires the urge to write this long disclaimer.
So here's one of my songs, along with a list of the various influences I cribbed from. Consider it a piece of a cultural map, or a bibliography, perhaps. I was going to post mp3s of the whole batch, but ironically enough it seems that copyright violation could be grounds for the whole blog to get deleted. So for now - find them on your own - and then write an angry letter to Blogger about the importance of the cultural commons. But don't tell them I suggested it...
Day Laborers and Petty Intellectuals - Sixpence
Sing a Song of Sixpence, Pocketful of Rye (nursery rhyme)
Ella Fitzgerald (among many versions) - It's Only a Paper Moon
Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
Daniel Johnston - Devil Town
The Hold Steady - Massive Nights
The National - Fake Empires
Johnny Cash - I Walk the Line
and many more...
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Enjoy the song, and also glad to read the thoughts. Have to admit I was nervous reading about the Great Google Blogocide of 2010 a mere couple of months after starting my own music blog through their service. Of course, 10 days later I got my first DMCA takedown notice (about a song released as part of a free promotional mixtape, ironically). One DMCA complaint that went to my Box.Net file storage account came from the IFPI and I was able to respond directly to the IFPI, clarify the legitimate origins of the file, and have the file restored through communication. Google? No such luck - when they received a DMCA takdown notice for my post, the only option they give me to "safely" re-post my files was to send them a physical letter with my real name, address, more info and a sworn statement that I have rights to use the file in question, and that I will accept being served legal notice and being sued in my regional court of law if I am incorrect in my assertion. No middle ground, no option to contact the notifying agency and have them remove the takedown notice as I did with the same file on Box.net, just file a counter-claim and prepare to be sued if I've overlooked something. To add fuel to my fire, Google can't even specify which of the 10 songs in the post was the flagged file - I am only assuming it is the same file that was also flagged on Box.Net. They have returned none of my correspondence over the past three weeks. I can see why some bloggers chose to re-post flagged material and hope no one noticed, since Google has no reasonable option in place to allow for any sort of mediation or clarification.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I enjoyed your concept of the cultural map - I wrote a number of my essays at Oberlin on the "intertextuality" of various works of Latin American fiction and cinema, exploring their source material, references, contemporaries, collectives, collaboriations and imitators (I use this word in the best possible sense). Fascinating stuff, to be sure, and paying homage to those who have innovated is an essential part of understanding where you may be able to blaze your own trail along the cultural map.