What is your view on sampling? Do you think that sampling takes away from creativity and originality? If you are unaware of what sampling is, Wikipedia describes it as the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. In my opinion, sampling may make your song a hit, but it definitely hinders creativity and originality. I mean, in most cases the reinvented song becomes inseparable from the original, and that should be exactly what a performer doesn’t want.
For example, every time I hear the intro to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”, I immediately also think of the song “Under Pressure” by Queen. Listen to P. Diddy and Faith Evan’s hit “I’ll Be Missing You” and tell me that you don’t confuse the lyrics with those of “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. Why? Because once you’ve heard a really good and original sound in a song, you’ll never forget it. In both instances, the reinvented songs got a lot of air play, but you can’t honestly say that the songs were unique. In music, it’s extremely important to bring something new to the table. Whether it be the voice, the style, the sound, or all three. What’s the point of signing artists that just regurgitate what’s already been sung? It doesn’t make sense, and it’s a shame that some performers aren’t even creative enough to at least use the samples in a more unique way.
If you are going to use sounds from another song, at least make sure that it is hard to tell that sounds are samples. If you are using samples to ADD to your music that contains your OWN creative touches and sounds, then I think it’s fine. But don’t just put different lyrics on the same track! I mean really? How can you even call yourself an artist when you do that? Andy Warhol was so awesome because he was painting things that no one had even contemplated painting before. However, if I were to go paint a picture of a Campbell’s soup can, it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive or innovative because it’s already been done!
It’s funny because it seems like performers are trying to recreate the success of past artists, but they should be focusing on creating something completely unheard of rather than comparing themselves to others. There will never again be a band like The Beatles, or Led Zeppelin. There won’t be another Britney Spears, or another Madonna. Take Lady Gaga for example, She’s kind of like Madonna, she’s kind of like David Bowie, but she’s definitely 100% Lady Gaga and I think that’s exactly what makes her stand out from the crowd and has helped her achieve such enormous success. Notice that she recently caught a lot of heat for her song “Born This Way” being similar to Madonna’s “Express Yourself”? You can’t expect people to pay to watch the same movie twice, just like you can’t expect the people to respond favorably to music that they feel they’ve already heard.
I really like how you addressed the issue of sampling. While I was reading your post I remembered that indeed there are figures that have been copied almost verbatim not only the music but the image. You set the example of Lady Gaga and I totally agree with you that she looks like a copy of Madonna. Some songs I think are quite similar to the style of Madonna and what she wants is to make her songs look unlike Madonna’s songs. But in terms of image I think she wants to look like the singer of an 80's decade group called Missing Persons who sang a song called Words. The singer was so, bizarre and striking. It was the novelty at that time and she marked an option of how be present in the videos. Another singer who I think was an inspiration for Lady Gaga is Cyndi Lauper. She wanted to be different in her clothes, hair and grooming. What is happening nowadays perhaps happened in all generations. Maybe young people in overall do not have experience listening to music from other generations and they believe in some cases that the song they are listening to is the first version. Certainly, I have been listened more second versions lately. It would be that originality is being lost?
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