Really intriguing fight developing between Sony ATV (publishing) and YG Entertainment (wikipedia entry here), who are one of two major Korean pop music conglomerates, over what Sony is calling copyright infringement. First, the tunes in question, then my completely unbiased opinions.
This is G-Dragon’s “Heartbreaker,” which as far as I know is still the No. 1 song in the country. It’s not bad, in the way the song that it’s charged with copying isn’t bad. And I can deal with G-Dragon’s current look, which reminds me of early 70s David Bowie and is at least a little on the odd side (for Korean pop music).
He’s also supposedly doing Soo-hee from the Wondergirls, which bothers me for reasons I don’t need to get into. Anyway, here’s “Heartbreaker”…at least watch until 0:50 when the chorus kicks in. That’s the core of the “offending” sections.
Now, before we hear Flo-rida’s “Right Round,” which I’m sure the majority of you living the states have already heard a billion times, I should express that this song is/was probably the most popular foreign song in South Korea over the last year. I base this not on sales or airplay or any of that jazz that record companies take the time to make up to justify their existence, but purely on the number of times I heard it in bars and stores here in South Korea.
Actually, people are creating YouTube clips comparing G-Dragon’s stuff to the other Sony ATV artists. So here are the two in short clips, side by side.
I like this because it really forces people to explore what copyrights are and what they mean in modern music. Flo-rida’s song “samples” Dead or Alive, and a lot of people would take issue with that. However, I’m sure Flo-rida had to pay royalties to use it.
Here’s the second offender, G-Dragon’s “Butterfly,” paired with Oasis’s “She’s Electric.”
There’s actually a much worse rip off of “She’s Electric” in Korea, but I’ve only heard it around town and don’t actually know who sings it. Say what you will about Oasis, but “She’s Electric” is a terrific song…in my opinion its best ever…so I don’t mind hearing recreations of it in Korea. Here’s another thing on YouTube that actually layers the songs on top of one another and adds a third song, by Katharine McPhee, which I won’t get into.
Here’s another, 2NE1’s hit “I Don’t Care,” a song so terrible that it’s caused me to go back on my original reversal of hating 2NE1 but then thinking they were ok. This song sucks and reminds me of what little girls do when they sing a madeup song but then run out of lyrics. But I digress, it’s charged with ripping off the Lionel Ritchie, who as PopSeoul (where I’m getting a lot of this news) notes, is the father of Nicole Richie, song “Just Go.”
Here’s the layer YouTube of that:
After a few days YG Entertainment responded to the accusations in a statement (in Korean). The statement amounts to a big “fuck you Sony,” and charges that Mariah Carey’s song “Standing O” actually sounds similar to 2NE1’s “In The Club.” I took the trouble to listen to half of “Standing O,” so I could compare the two, so you ought to do me right and do the same. Don’t you think you owe me that much?
And 2NE1’s song. It should be noted this song is not a single and was not a hit. So at least, um, we can determine that Mariah Carey’s producers were looking to “alternative” hits when finding a 2NE1 song to rip off.
Not as similar in my opinion. YG Entertainment went as far to claim that it had never heard the Sony ATV originals that the company is charged with copying. I should also mention that “She’s Electric” is also disproportionately popular in Korea. I know that because I was always happy to see its inclusion on Norebang set lists, which I sometimes performed it as a follow-up to “Wonderwall,” which I also do a very nice version of.
I’m a little torn here, because while I’d like to see a Korean music company embarrassed publicly, especially in light of its belated and heavy retort, which I find to be a little classless. At the same time, I’ve got no love for Sony and big American record companies, whose fall from grace due to illegal online file sharing as been one of the more pleasant developments over the last half decade of my life. I actually think G-Dragon’s song is better than Flo-rida’s, and I’m sure G-Dragon is, at heart, a better person and has better taste in hoes.
But at the end of the day I’d like to see YG get nailed here. The songs are unmistakably rip offs and they should pay royalties if they’re going to continue to profit from them. I think they will pay something eventually, but it won’t happen until these songs are long gone from the Korean charts. It’s not very cool and it shows no respect for the artists YG clearly enjoys.
Actually, I think some of the negative reactions of other Korean talent has been a good sign on this. Comic Park Myung-soo called G-Dragon a “national humiliation” on a recent radio interview. I think that’s a bit strong as G-Dragon is only the front. There’s no way he writes a note of his music or even chooses his wardrobe. YG Entertainment is the national humiliation, and as other entertainers on the same radio show Park appeared on said, “It makes foreigners ask, ‘Are you a country with no originality?’. This situation is a wake-up call to other Korean musicians that they should create their own music.” ”
5 responses so far ↓
1 Shannon // Sep 25, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Have to say…these are a lot worse when you hear them side by side. I’m familiar with the Florida and GDragon versions and noticed a similarity…but that’s over the top.
2 baekgom84 // Sep 25, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Finally!
Before I get stuckinto this issue, I just want to put it out there that I also prefer Heartbreaker to Right Round. As far as Top 40 stuff goes, both of them are pretty listenable. And I thought ‘I don’t care’ was better than ‘Fire’. Yes, the lyrics are silly, but we’re talking about a group of young girls who call themselves 2NE1. How much can you really expect? Anyway…
This case really bothers me. It’s not that I’m a fan of Big Bang or G-Dragon; I had quite a chuckle at old GD’s expense when I first heard about it. But after hearing the songs, even though they are very similar, I think calling it out for plagiarism is taking things too far.
Pop music isn’t exactly known for its diversity – there’s got to be a billion similar matchups like this, if people care to look for them. I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the point YG Entertainment was trying to make – pick out a random song that Mariah Carey and her producers would surely never have heard, and then accuse them of plagiarising it. Because for my money, ‘Standing O’ and ‘In The Club’ sound as alike as any of the other three examples. There’s only so many musical notes, and there’s only so many musical scales. And then you have to fit those notes and scales within very specific musical trends. Eventually, you’re going to get some overlap.
Why doesn’t this apply to movies? Why is it, when someone like Tarantino rips out an entire scene from ‘City of Fire’ and slaps it in the middle of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ he is prasied as a genius? I don’t think there was a single original idea in the ‘Kill Bill’ films, save for the original idea of taking scenes from every film he likes and mashing them together.
Anyway I’ve no love for any big record company, but I think Sony are being overly aggressive here. Still, I don’t know why I should really care about the outcome. The only people who stand to lose out of this are executive fat-cats and pretentious pretty-boy ‘artists’.
And I don’t know why, but Park Myung-soo’s comments annoyed me. Probably because I think he’s a hack like so many of the Korean ‘comics’.
3 Shinsano // Sep 25, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Interesting perspectives Baekgom. One thing I keep thinking of with this is The Verve not really sampling, but stealing, from the Rolling Stones for “Bittersweet Symphony,” which I think was better than the Stones original song it was taken from (and I love the Rolling Stones) and is legitimately called one of the best pop songs of all time. Today, after the court case, The Verve is credited with the lyrics, but Jagger and Richards are the songwriters.
This really spills over into what is sampling and what is DJing, and this has all become muddied in recent years. Tarantino, who I think I think has become an absolute hack, would probably compare what he does in movies to what a DJ producer does with hip hop music. It’s hard to pinpoint and call him an out and out fake because in his mind he’s paying homage. And even the Stones and Beatles built their careers on pilfered blues riffs.
I disagree that the GDragon songs aren’t any less similar than the 2NE1 Carey song, but I get your point. I think part of what I don’t like is that we’re talking about a matter of months between the release of the Florida and GDragon songs. That’s a bit much for me to accept. At least The Verve stole from a song that was 30 years old.
4 baekgom84 // Sep 25, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Yes, fair point. There’s obviously a little too much Right Round ‘influence’ in Heartbreaker for it to be a coincidence but then that’s really the issue, isn’t it? Where does ‘influence’ end and ‘plagiarism’ begin? People keep saying, ‘Oh, he clearly ripped off the beat from Right Round’ but IMHO the ‘beat’ is rather an abstract term to begin with. There’s certainly not much melodic similarity, like there is with Butterfly and She’s Electric.
I thought I Don’t Care was the most obviously lifted out of all these songs though. I kinda have a feeling that this pissed Sony off first, but they let it slide, but when G-Dragon’s stuff came out they’d had enough, even though I don’t think his songs were as much of a rip-off as I Don’t Care was. So now G-Dragon (’s producers) is (are) copping the flak that I suspect should really be aimed at 2NE1. (’s producers)
5 Dan // Sep 26, 2009 at 5:29 am
My quick take on it:
I think that YG likes to bite, copy, and imitate a lot of things from the American music industry. (when puffy wore shiny plastic suits….they did too, when it was cool to have guns in videos and on album covers…they did too…despite Korea not having guns)
Seo Taiji and the boys back in the day had a song called “Come Back Home”. Does it plagiarize Cypress Hill? IMO, no….but it totally bites and rips off the Cypress Hill and B-real style. But hey, if it makes you money…I guess, why not?
In G-Dragon’s “Heartbreak”, I don’t think he plagiarized from Flo-rida, but I do think he totally bit and rip offed Flo-rida’s style and delivery.
The other Oasis sounding like song…I’m gonna have to say that one is just way too similar sounding.
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