Cultural embarrassment

[matrixmann]

The next episode in the category "youth is as fucked up and has as much bad taste as the previous generation":

When the eldest school kids, about 14 to 16 years old, of a nearby 10-classes-school meet in their niche before the building, start to entertain the whole surrounding area with their music and among it you recognize some kind of newer, 2015-updated-like version of Eiffel 65's "Blue".

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

It's ironic that their generation doesn't even have it's own music because music is now free content. Americans teens listen to a lot of rap and hip hop, but it's because rap and hip hop artists are desperate for money and or recognition. So, they'll spend all that time trying to make it as musicians. I saw a black male hip hop artist that writes songs go on the Bill Maher show to beg people to stop downloading free music. He said that guy that wrote "Happy", which was as huge a hit as you can possibly imagine, made only $20,000 from that. Oh the writer of Happy was Pharrell Williams.

Also, because no one can make money being a musician anymore, these musicians trying to make it have to be muggging for the camera on dumb American tv shows constantly which to me makes them huge sell outs.

[matrixmann]

Of course, for me in that situation it would be an interesting info if they know that they deal with a song that recycles another one which is already more than 15 years old. And especially, if they know what kind of Italodance Eurotrash thing that piece was already then, even though it became a huge hit. (Looked it up at discogs, the last mixes credited to the name of the original artist were from 2009. Maybe someone under a different alias recently released something.)
That also is a reason for me to sometimes open my chest of knowledge, depending on what legal open sources to listen to music offer, just to make public, the 90s wasn't just only Hyper Hyper (Scooter), DJ Bobo or stuff like the mentioned above.
Sometimes it also makes me swallow that the stuff I'm dealing with is already 15 to 20 years old and further and that possibly there are much more uglier remake versions made by the original artist or others going round in the cloud.
Can say, it is a way of spreading "education" to whoever comes around.
I also only learn if something of the songs that I know is already a remake or re-uses parts of elder songs if someone tells me. (Like, the weirdest I got to know was "You're not alone" by ATB also only is a cover version. The way I got to know it was by a TV series made during that time episode where the original already existed, but ATB's version didn't, but I knew the song through his version. During the last 5 years there appeared another version of the song performed by - looked it up - Mads Langer.)

For sure "Happy" was a somewhat a popular song, but I don't get an idea in this moment which song it is, what it sounded like. Maybe this is the case because I don't care too much about recent stuff and I don't get into situations where being forced to listen to the radio.
Fortune or bad luck? Well, you can tell me which of both.

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Lyrics for Happy by Pharrell Williams


[Verse 1:]
It might seem crazy what I'm about to say
Sunshine she's here, you can take a break
I'm a hot air balloon that could go to space
With the air, like I don't care baby by the way

{Uh}

[Chorus:]
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do

[Verse 2:]
Here come bad news talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don't hold it back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I'll be just fine, yeah,
No offense to you, don't waste your time
Here's why

[Chorus]

{Hey
Go
Uh}

[Bridge:]
(Happy)
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down
My level's too high
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down
I said (let me tell you now)
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down
My level's too high
Bring me down
Can't nothing
Bring me down
I said

[Chorus x2]

{Hey
Go
Uh}

(Happy) [repeats]
Bring me down... can't nothing...
Bring me down... my level's too high...
Bring me down... can't nothing...
Bring me down, I said (let me tell you now)

[Chorus x2]

{Hey
C'mon}

[matrixmann]

No, doesn't ring a bell in me.
But, I think that's the song by him which was talked about "did he do plagiarism?", can it be?

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Sure. I don't know much about that issue or what he was accused of plagiarizing, but I'd believe someone in the music industry would do it.

It's a tough issue though because all works like music and fiction are based on another piece of music or work of fiction that the creator once heard or read. I'd rather just let people create and not sue them unless it is incredibly blatant.

[matrixmann]

Hm, then that was the song where you - when you first listened to one of them and then to the other, where you found pretty much of a bunch of similarities in the sound.
I don't have it in my ear right now, I can't remember, but I think I remember that's what came out of it as this issue was in current discussion.

In my view, the whole copyright system needs a total rework. As you have it with patents as well as cultural goods - if someone is interested making money with it by distributing it, as a maker you always sell your copyright to that company. You don't have any say in that then anymore what is done with it and you are - at most in cultural products - the one who least makes profit of it.
The most of it the media corporations make, even though they often enough didn't contribute anything that the work exists at all.
That's the same principle by which a pimp earns with his whores.

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

You know like the Tolkien estate could have tried to sue every fantasy writer after him and probably could have won a number of the cases. The beginning of the Sword of Shannara is a lot like the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, but it would also make less people want to read books of fantasy if the whole field was a bunch of writers suing each other. I bet Science Fiction novels are a lot alike too.

[matrixmann]

With Tolkien you had it that he's dead long enough. If someone's over the limit that law sets for it, and as long as no-one has an acting copyright to it (seems like a copyright no-one acquirted through later purchasing), then it's something they can't do anything about.
In my country it's 70 years after an author's death it becomes like outlawed. The last one which had the copyright, it expires.
And I think you can only keep having grip of it, if you do a sequel. But in a lot of cases this surely is unprobable, either no-one is interested or it's downright unrealistic to find someone to be able to write one.

I'm not that familar with the details of the copyright, but sure you could hear a bit about it since this year Free State of Bavaria's copyright on Hitler's "Mein Kampf" expires and for that it becomes reprintable legally for the first time in Germany. Since that is a controversial book, there is talking "what to do about it to maybe keep preventing this?"