On Music Being Derivative

Jul 02, 2010 02:30

I heard an NPR story this week about Lady GaGa's song "Alejandro." The claim was that the song bears a striking resemblance to many other pop songs.

Link to NPR story

It immediately made me think of this:
Pachebel Rant

It's not just pop music and there's nothing new under the sun.

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Comments 3

dvarin July 2 2010, 09:28:39 UTC
He's not the only one who finds the cello part boring...

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jcgbigler July 2 2010, 12:55:23 UTC
Part of what's funny about this is that Pachelbel's Canon in D was an obscure, unknown piece for about 300 years. Only one manuscript of it is known. It wasn't published until 1919, and wasn't recorded until 1940.

It was still mostly unknown in the early 1970s, when it was issued on one of the featured albums by the Musical Heritage Society. (From the 1950s until the end of the vinyl record era, the Musical Heritage Society was *the* premier publisher of classical music recordings. MHS was a record club--they would send you a record once a month on approval. When the record arrived, you had the option of sending a check or sending the record back.)

The MHS recording created a bit of a buzz, but only in the classical music world. However, in the late 1970s, there was a brief period when pop music versions of classical pieces were popular--probably the best known being A Fifth of Beethoven. During this period, when classical music was somewhat on the popular culture's radar, the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra released ( ... )

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stuntviolist July 5 2010, 04:15:32 UTC
Wow. I had no idea about all that. And I thought I knew a thing or two about this type of music. Thanks!

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