re: have pop artists always blatantly ripped off lesser known artists?

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It's funny to see people get worked up over songs that seem like they were written by teenage girls.

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who is worked up?

Can't believe you got downvotes on that. It's funny as hell.

Chord progressions have all been done. Hard not to copy. The artists get paid off the melody and lyrics. You can copy chord progressions all day long. You copy a melody or lyrics and you will get sued.
I laugh when I constantly hear people saying rock and pop bands stole all their music from the blues. No. Any progressions written were already written 500 years ago by some guy on violin or piano.

As a songwriter, myself, I find that certain types of music are made FOR nostalgia purposes. A lot of modern country is meant to trick the listener into pulling up old fond memories of when they were younger listening to better music. That's why it's full of so many references and screaming for legitimacy. It's literally trying to use your fond memories of when country music was "good" to trick you into enjoying their music that has nothing to say and even less to offer the listener.

While tracking my current album (which is in the style of pop punk), I did something similar, but in a much more subtle way. Rather than outright tell you that I'm "listening to Old Alabama, riding through Tennessee" or that we're listening to "a little Ol' Hank", I would take a classic pop punk song's vocal melody and work a snippet of it into a guitar lead at a key point.

For example, I have this one song where the lyrics say "that song we shared on those long bus rides, I think it still goes like..." and the next thing you hear is a short melodic guitar solo. That melody mirrors the vocal melody from the first verse of the song the "narrator" and his lost love were listening to in the headphones. If you were into that genre of music, then you'd hear that lead and feel that nostalgia from memories made with that song when you were young (the song being referenced also being called "Memory" was just icing on the cake, where the song I'm making is almost fulfilling the request made in the singer of the original song).


There's something similar in another one where coming out of the intro into the verse, I noticed that I was doing setting up something very similar to a Sum 41 song. The key was different and the rhythm of the guitar and drums was on the up beat instead of the down, but I noticed that I had unintentionally landed in a similar spot. Rather than run away from it, I embraced it and had the bass copy the bass line from that spot in the Sum 41 song just for those couple bars where it was exposed.

In other spots, I might try to mimic a vocal fry of the artist who's song inspired that part, or I might use a similar sounding (but not the same) drum fill. The idea is to establish with the listener a certain familiarity that's comforting while also using it as a base to tell my own stories.

In some spots, I even intentionally rip progressions from my own previous songs, usually with an inside joke hidden in the lyrics to clue the listener in. I know no one notices this stuff to me, but the Easter Eggs are worth the squeeze, so to speak.

Some much more than others

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Watch out-you might get sued.

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Every lawyer’s dream: to sue himself.

Got to be honest... I listed to that song and it sounds nothing like levitating lol.

I mean maybe if we’re talking about the first few seconds of the beat to a different much slower tune, sure. But then it just says “yahoo” for 3 minutes straight.

I’ve seen (heard) songs ripped off before and was expecting like a carbon copy but this to me is pretty bland at best,

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Every lawyer’s dream: to sue himself.

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Maybe not yourself, but be careful if you had any collaborators on the songs you ripped. Just ask John Fogerty.

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Maybe not yourself, but be careful if you had any collaborators on the songs you ripped. Just ask John Fogerty.

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Yeah, I don't really have any collaborators (I have band mates, but they're not listed as songwriters on any of these particular songs, just on the ones they wrote), and no one owns my songs but me. I think I'm pretty safe. If I'm lifting a piece of one of my own songs to use in another, it's for a thematic reason (the two songs are two parts of the same story). I can't see how anyone else could have a claim on that.

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It was an attempt at humor. I often fail.

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We all fail down some times