BOOK: ‘Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll’ by Tim English
As the old adage goes, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” The history of modern music is practically built on artists imitating and copying one another, tweaking the details here and there to create something new. It’s a topic we’ve covered on REBEAT before. In Tim English’s recently updated book, Sounds like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll, 2016 Edition, the history of imitation and plagiarism in music is not only analyzed, but categorized in a reader-friendly format.
The concept is certainly intriguing and indeed entertaining. I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between artists and their influences, and how admiration for certain songs and artists often leads other artists to lovingly (and sometimes not-so-lovingly) steal from their predecessors and contemporaries. The types of plagiarism mentioned in the book vary; sometimes the similarities are lyrical, periodically it’s in a stolen riff or bass line, and still other times it was the cadence or general production of a song that suggested a “rip off.”
Sounds Like Teen Spirit is the perfect complement to the internet age, as going through the book drives the reader to look up music to which they may have otherwise not been compelled to listen. The internet makes it easier than ever to search for both popular and underground or obscure music, making the book quite interactive as English points out is his partial intent. There were a number of songs mentioned in the book that I had never personally heard before, but I had heard the songs that purportedly stole from them and the book made me curious enough in several cases to do my own online investigating. Whether I always agreed with the claims of copycatting is another story. For instance, I personally don’t hear anything of the Beatles’ “Sexy Sadie” in Radiohead’s “Karma Police,” as English suggests, but maybe that’s just me. All the same, it was fun to explore music in ways I previously hadn’t, as well as expanding my music trivia knowledge and my own music library at the same time.
Largely divided into subsections by major artists, such as the Beatles, Elvis, the Rolling Stones, etc. who both are major influences and have major influences, the book is easy to navigate and friendly to both the casual music fan and the aficionado. One particular benefit of English’s style is that he doesn’t try to be too technical, making the book a easy read for the person who likes to digest a book cover to cover. That being said, the efficient categories also makes it a great reference book, just something to keep on the shelf to grab on those occasions where you think you’ve heard something before and you want to check if it’s already been acknowledged as a case of plagiarism or to ease your mind that you’re not the only one to have noticed a similarity. If anything, this book is truly a great resource for trivia lovers who just love to gather generally useless, but still fun-to-know, tidbits about music.
One criticism I have of English’s book is that the subject matter varies between absolute, concrete cases of plagiarism that have been admitted by artists over time through interviews, lawsuits, and so on, and mere conjecture and opinion on the part of the author. What English hears in certain songs may not come through to every reader (such as my own instance above), and many of his comparisons do not constitute a definite influence, rip off, or any other kind of copying, despite English apparently being a “recognized authority on the topic of musical plagiarism.” As much as music continues to evolve, in the end, there will always be some amount of similarity in almost any song, even in the most subtle ways. It’s practically unavoidable.
Overall, I do recommend Sounds Like Teen Spirit to anyone who’s ever sat listening to records while mentally noting that they’ve “heard that somewhere before.” It is a book that does make you think about the complicated web of musical influence and how styles, production techniques, and songwriting methods have trickled down through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Find Sounds like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll, 2016 Edition on Amazon.com.
