On Plagiarism

Long ago when I devoured science fiction and fantasy by the library cart load, I read a short story by Orson Scott Card titled “Unaccompanied Sonata.” The story is about a man--a musical prodigy--who is raised without ever being allowed to hear any other music because the Powers That Be don’t want his musical vision polluted by outside influence. And then he hears some Bach… things do not go well for him after that. 

Whatever one thinks of Card, “Unaccompanied Sonata” (one of two Card short stories that continues to haunt me) absolutely nails the authoritarian moralism around “originality” that has come to dominate popular discourse. 

I was reminded yet again of the story recently while thinking over the casual accusations of plagiarism that get thrown around by just about every (Kpop) fandom these days. What does it mean to be accused of plagiarism? Why do fandoms continue to do it? The word has taken on almost magical properties far removed from the realities of working in the arts; the word has become nothing more than a weapon to use against your enemies to rob them of their power. 

The technical definition of plagiarism is to present somebody else’s work--their intellectual property--as your own. Copyright, which is how ownership of intellectual property is codified in law, is how plagiarism is dealt with in the legal arena. 

Sometimes this is clear cut and easy to understand. Copying the entire text of a novel by Stephen King and selling it under your own name is both plagiarism and a copyright violation.

Taking an existing recording and selling it as your own work? That’s clearly plagiarism and a copyright violation but it’s not always that clear, especially when music is involved. 

I’ve got a massive soap box rant filed under Librarian Things--Copyright--Cordoning Off Of The Intellectual Commons that I’m happy to share with over drinks but for this post I want to talk about what I like to call the “My Sweet Lord” conundrum.

Long story (very) short, ex-Beatle George Harrison was accused of plagiarising the song “He’s So Fine” and after a lengthy trial, the judge ruled that he had done so albeit unintentionally. You can read a nice summary of the case in Lapham’s Quarterly. 

And it’s true that if you listen to “My Sweet Lord” and “He’s So Fine” that they share many similar elements but are they the same song?

What is a song? At the risk of veering into my soap box territory let me ask you: 
Can one person own a chord progression? The Axis of Awesome’s hilarious song medley “4 Chords” makes a strong case to the contrary. 

What about a melody? Copying an entire vocal line start to finish seems clear cut but if a phrase strongly echoes an old song here and there? There’s only so many notes and only so many ways to put them together.

What about arrangements? Production techniques? Use of specific sounds? Use of samples? 

If one person uses autotune a specific way, can no other person use it? Ever? 

What about using a bass riff to build a new song around? Or a sample of an existing recording? 

Is the cheeky riff from the Brandenburg Concerto inserted into the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” plagiarism? What about Lady Gaga using a riff from the Well Tempered Clavier in “Bad Romance”? 

The truth is that pop music is built on stealing, cribbing, remixing, and slightly moving the pieces around in order to create hit songs. Neil Sedaka talks about it explicitly in the Brill Building episode of Netflix’s pop series. He wanted a hit song, so he studied all the hit songs, ripped off the pieces that worked and stuck them together into a new song… which did become a hit. Is that plagiarism or just pop songwriting 101? 

When the Turtles (one of if not the great 60s rock group) were told by their record label to write another “Happy Together,” the contrary tunesmiths sat down and wrote a song that did literally the opposite. Where “Happy” when up, this song would go down; where “Happy” was loud, this song would be soft. Ironically that song (“Eleanor”) was also a hit but the underlying point is that the record label asked for another “Happy Together” because that’s what pop music is built from: hits that sound kind of like other hits.

Did “My Sweet Lord” plagiarize “He’s So Fine” or were both songs inspired by the same gospel traditions? The recording is different, the arrangement is different, the tempo is different, the lyrics are different… the whole vibe is different. Even if the melodies share some similarities, is that plagiarism? 

Leaving aside the questions of copyright, the financialization of song catalogs (does the songwriter even own her own songs anymore), and other soap box issues, when it comes to Kpop accusations of plagiarism I find that they usually fall into a few different categories. 

1) Stans with no musical understanding interpret similarities in production or song structure as plagiarism. I call this one the “Stop Copying Me” attack and it’s generally meant to discredit a rival group in order to boost the stans’ faves. Sometimes it’s just unoriginality at work or the Kpop Trend Generator sweeping through (as an example, my last episode featured a run of coffee-themed songs that all shared a very similar vibe) but it’s not plagiarism and there’s nothing actually wrong with this. If the song is good who cares if another group has a similar sounding one?

2) Songs that incorporate riffs or snatches of melody or some other notable elements from existing and popular songs. This is something I’ve discussed in my history episodes and I think it’s kind of a grey area. We have to understand that the attitude towards this kind of borrowing wasn’t always so rigid and “Unaccompanied Sonata”-esque, especially in older Kpop. Is it kind of weird now to hear a Kpop song that contains the riff from “I’ll Be Missing You”? Yes, but that song itself is built around a borrowed riff and it doesn’t make it less meaningful. Unoriginal? Perhaps. It depends on how the borrowed elements are used. Is it Lady Gaga or the Beatles using Bach to create a mood or just lazy songwriting?

3) Actual plagiarism. This one is pretty rare but it does happen, whether it’s an idol presenting other people’s lyrics as his own or an idol group ripping off entire songs top to bottom in a fit of lazy songwriting. 

Other categories I frequently see called out as “plagiarism” are things like behind-the-scenes creatives recycling their own work, e.g. a choreographer giving two groups extremely similar dances or a songwriter recycling his own riffs. There’s also just standard trend-following, like if one group does something and it was a hit then another group will almost certainly use the same imagery (like the giant angel statue from “Bae Bae” and so on). 

In pop music, as in life, there are very few genuine trendsetters and nobody, not even the trendsetters, creates in a vacuum. The world of “Unaccompanied Sonata” can never exist and calling plagiarism over every imagined similarity leads to songwriters too afraid to touch a guitar or piano for fear of lawsuits (which is what happened to George Harrison.) 

Think before you accuse--is this really plagiarism or is it just the Kpop Trend Generator at work? Is it really plagiarism or are you simply looking for a weapon to attack rival groups (or to deflect from oppa’s own sins of unoriginality)? And when accusations of plagiarism hit the press or, worse, the courtroom, who really benefits? I’d advise all Kpop stans to think hard about it. 

Presenting somebody else’s work as your own is bad. Do not copy-paste somebody else's words as your own. (Especially in school or at work!!)

But is that always what’s happening when Kpop stans lob accusations of plagiarism around? The truth can be complicated. Try not to jump to conclusions.