since you brought it up...
Since Kelly mentioned the Vanilla Ice copyright scandal from way back in the day, I’ve dug up the videos for you. The similarity of the intros should be pretty immediately obvious once you start playing them.
The immortal “Ice Ice Baby”:
“Born Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie:
(This is such a flashback to my 9th grade year!)
Comments
I think that the whole Vanilla Ice's song situation is very interesting. It comes back to trying to answer the question of whether it is right to change someone else's work slightly and then call it your own. I personally think that in such a case, people need to make a disclaimer that says "this song was inspired by..." to give appropriate credit to the original creator. I think that Vanilla Ice was wrong in claiming that the song was totally different from Queen's song because it really had pretty much the same beat with just a slight alteration.
Posted by: Natalya Goncharova | April 8, 2007 03:50 PM
Thanks Krista for finding that. It was very interesting about how much they are alike, but I remember watching a documentary on VH1 about the scandel, and seeing Vanilla Ice's side. If you listen carefully, the same beat/ rhythm that is playing over and over again sound the exact same, but Vanilla Ice has one more beat at the end of the "phrase" in which he argued that it was his own beat. It was very interesting to hear about that at such a young age, but be able to remember it as well.
Posted by: Kelly | April 8, 2007 08:41 PM
That's a great example of borrowing someone's idea and making a mother-load of cash off of it.
I remember when this story first broke. I saw Vanilla's response and though "Man, who are you kidding?" He said the rhythm line was his own because of one tiny variation from the Queen/Bowie song. Shame, shame!
Posted by: Blender | April 8, 2007 11:24 PM