What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
This biblically-distilled bit of lay-wisdom is never more apparently true than in pop music. Some artists (*cough* Coldplay *cough*) even openly admit that their music apes that of another, while others simply steal riffs.
What motivated this observation was a nagging feeling I had in the car today. Ray Guns Are Not The Future is the second album by indie electro-duo The Bird and the Bee, and it's in heavy rotation on my stereo right now. What I was having trouble with was why the sixth song, Love Letter To Japan sounded so dang familiar. Then it hit me.
1) The tune is insanely catchy.
2) It's vaguely concerned with Japan.
3) The music video featured Dance Dance Revolution, the spry grandfather of Guitar Hero.
Call me crazy, but it sounds very similar to Butterfly by Swedish pop group Smile.dk which was featured on the first Dance Dance Revolution soundtrack. I'm sorry this has turned into another link-heavy post, but check it out and see if I'm trippin'. My family always accused me of finding too much synchronicity in everything, however minute the similarity might be.
I'm also having trouble deciding which music video I like better. dk's is clunky, corny and sort of cute (who doesn't love mini-braided Swedes yodeling atop computer-generated mountaintops?), while B&B's is polished but doesn't display the same sort of unbridled enthusiasm. I'm inviting my discerning readers to weigh in. Please note that I'm not asking you to compare the two styles of music, just the videos and the song's similarities. You have the ability to choose more than one answer, since I'm really asking two questions.
5 responses:
OK, I'm terribly biased; I love the Bird and the Bee's new album to infinity. But seriously. No. Neither song is a rip off of the other. I feel like it's saying 'All music from the US sounds alike because they use guitars.' There are a few, very spare, similarities, but having listened to the B&B Japan song about 50 times, the song you linked (BTW I love links) would have never recalled the other if you had not suggested it. It still doesn't, even now that you've suggested it.
Don't you ever, ever apologize for a link heavy post, in my book those, along with lists and or photographs/images, are some of my favorite things in posts these days.
I'll get back to you on my opinion (p.s. I think polls are going to round out my list up there from now on)
Ok. when it reaches the chorus of the love song (the second bit when he races back to dance, dance) they do sound extremely similar, which led me to vote for #2 in your poll, even though I really wanted to vote for #6, but only the first part of number 6 not the last part, cause I totally think you should do more polls. In fact I'm going to start now just in case you don't.
you are seriously one of my favorite people.
I totally disagree with Sarah execpt for the fact that I also adore B&B. I totally think the songs are very similar, but Meg's right-it's at the chorus. Bird and the Bee goes up with it, while the Swedes go down. That's the dif. The polls are fun, by the way.
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