have pop artists always blatantly ripped off lesser known artists?

You may not have heard, but they used to have rock bands in England. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were two of the better-known ones.

There was also a group called Led Zeppelin, not really my cup of tea but I understand they were very popular.

Which one was stolen? and what part? Seems to me there is a computer to blame.
Also, if somebody stole either of those, they are likely to have a pocketful of cat turds, because they'll steal any kind of pure crap.

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All bands and all songwriters lift inspiration from other music. There are only 12 notes in a chromatic scale. Most pop songs are only 3 or 4 chords. There’s only so many chord progressions. If you look hard enough, you can find something super similar to every song. Even the Beatles lifted entire chord progressions from songs they used to cover back in their Hamburg days. It’s often not intentional (either came up with something that already existed or a lick got stuck in their head without remembering where it came from), and even when intentional, 9/10 it’s not malicious.

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Yeah, this is the truth. All popular music is based on simple progressions that have been done thousands of times.
Something that happens quite a bit, one of the guys that I'm picking with will be playing something, and I start singing and he will say " wait a minute, I was playing so and so, song". I say, "well it's all the same", sometimes they get kind of pissed off, but it's true.
The other day, my friend started doing House Of The Rising Sun, on my telecaster, and I started singing Little Red Riding Hood. He didn't even realize that he knew that song but he made the adjustments right on time. He loved it, that's why he's my friend.
The lyrics are a different matter. Don't steal those.

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There's a lot of good use of "lifted" lyrics in making an homage. For example, Nirvana's song "Come As You Are" has the line "Take your time, hurry up, the choice is yours, don't be late". Blink 182's "Adam Song" has a line that says "I took my time, hurried up, the choice was mine, I didn't think enough."

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There's a difference between a couple of tribute lines, and basically stealing an idea. I will often work in phrases about something like " Killing Floor", or just using words like " crossroads", "redemption", etc..
On the basic progressions though, I like to borrow from The Beatles quite a bit, transpose it and country it out. Nobody notices that my fun cowboy tune, is really just Yellow Submarine in a different key and slightly adjusted timing with different lyrics. I'll be the first one to tell you though. I give credit where it's due.

Levitating is a shameless rip-off of Artikal Sound System and its not even debatable

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In what way?

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In every single way

Are you deaf?

Ever heard of Elvis Presley?

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All bands and all songwriters lift inspiration from other music. There are only 12 notes in a chromatic scale. Most pop songs are only 3 or 4 chords. There’s only so many chord progressions. If you look hard enough, you can find something super similar to every song. Even the Beatles lifted entire chord progressions from songs they used to cover back in their Hamburg days. It’s often not intentional (either came up with something that already existed or a lick got stuck in their head without remembering where it came from), and even when intentional, 9/10 it’s not malicious.

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The amount of songs that use a basic variation of G, C & D is almost endless

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You didn't listen to it, have a tin ear, or both

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I didn't care for it. I like real music.

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Check out Rick Beato's breakdown of this shameless lift...same key, same melody, same chords, same vibe, same everything.

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I don't care about Rick Beto, whoever that is. It's computer club type music, who cares? It's not like something that somebody toiled over for years, but hey, if that's your thing...