If it sounds like you’ve heard Lady Antebellum’s Country Music Award-winning “Need You Now” a million times, maybe it’s because it’s been on the radio since 1982, when the Alan Parsons Project released the same song with different words as “Eye in the Sky.”
A Nashville Scene post spotlights the controversy raging in the pop-country music realm, with accusations swirling that Lady Antebellum copied off APP’s paper on the final.
Granted, “borrowing” goes on all the time in the music industry. Is this shades of Vanilla Ice sticking oh-so close to the beat of Queen’s “Under Pressure” with “Ice Ice Baby?”
Check out the embedded link of a YouTube mash-up of the two songs and determine for yourself whether or not it’s coincidence that the songs sound alike.
Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’–A Ripoff? [Nashville Scene via Yahoo]
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Tough to tell. This isn’t as clear a case of borrowing as this: http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=0vGtM1Vh7LI&start1=3&video2=VgAXZHMi_ws&start2=0&authorName=Ann+O'Nymous (Sorry if it double-posts, the first time doesn’t look like it posted)
I was not expecting that, but it was awesome.
You sir, win the thread.
Congratulations, that got a laugh.
Haha…great way to start the day!
There are tears streaming out of my eyes, that’s so seriously funny. Thanks!
Pretty blatant…
Eh. There are similarities, but it’s not a straight rip off. The first half of all the phrases are a near match. but the end parts are different, and the last sample comparison didn’t sound terribly alike. It sounds like some of the melody (or whatrever you’d call it) is borrowed though, but not everything.
I agree. If you listen to the actual song and not the mashup, even the beginning starts with the same style and same notes (except with 3 instead of 6 notes). It sounds like someone said, “I’m gonna use this but I want to make it sound different enough that casual listeners won’t notice.”
I have not bought a CD, or online music, in over 10years. Most music either sounds the same or is worse then what has been made.
I am not sure exactly how that is relevant? Need to rant much?
I’m not sure, but if I were you I’d get off his lawn.
I would, but it’s hard to walk uphill through the snow.
Both ways?
And in the blazing hot sun, too.
But our snow was tougher then.
It had wolves in it.
I thought the Moon had 3 wolves, not the sun…
Did I mention that we were also barefoot?
You had feet? Lucky bastard!
That was some funny shit. That truly made me laugh out loud.
All snow looks the same now. Back in my day, we had pink snow and yellow snow and blue snow. That’s why I moved to the south. I was tired of the same old same old snow, so I stopped being around it.
Since you clearly don’t listen to music, how, exactly, do you know this to be the case?
Not buying CDs or online music doesn’t mean that one isn’t listening to the radio, for instance.
Well of COURSE the stuff on the radio is crap. I can not listen to the radio anymore than I can watch cable television, or whatever the heck it is these days.
That does not mean there is not GREAT music being made that isn’t mainstream pop crap.
I have hundreds of CDs. I am 35 years old. I just don’t buy anythign new. Anything new that I kinda like wears off real fast from the radio, internet, etc…
“I am 35 years old.” There’s your problem, right there.
Not necessarily. I’m old enough to be Marlin’s father and I’m buying music all the time. Some new, some old {just dropped $80 on a Springsteen box set} but I promise you, age has nothing to do with it.
Oh, and I’m also young enough to laugh myself silly at that Usher/goat mashup.
I don’t know if it’s an obvious ripoff or not, but they sure do mash up nicely together.
+1 – I love “Eye in the Sky” and the Lady Antebellum song mashes well with it, but I’m pretty sure this is innocent coincidence.
~I
Wow!. The similarities are stunning. Of course the Lady Antebellum song is slowed down here.
That said, I think it is easy to inadvertently “rip off” another song. I’ve listened to countless thousands off songs in my life, and they become a part of you. I’ve written songs where when I’m done I could swear I heard it somewhere before.
Simpsons did it!
Of course they did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OExykL5QnXY&feature=related
Nah, I’m not convinced. I was the biggest Alan Parsons fan back in the day and being a schooled musician and singer, I can hear similarities but all songs have something taken from history. That’s a fact of life. This goes back to the days of Bach, Beethoven, Verdi, etc. The Beatles took ideas from Elvis and Buddy Holly, Elvis and Buddy Holly took ideas from Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson and so on.
How dare you, sir. Buddy Holly never stole anything from anybody. He was the last original artist.
I think someone is making a huge deal over a similar tune, considering the 25 year gap I doubt she intentionally copied Alan Parsons. If you want to see tunes that are really identical this is fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dPA2dCRNY
LOL wow that’s hilarious. Girly-pop is all pretty much the same though.
There is also one with a Miley Cyrus song mixed in, although they had to speed up the Miley song up byu 5 bpm to show it was the same song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uvAcWWlrkk
Yeah that’s true. I mean if she were the same age as the guys in Alan Parson’s there may be some truth to the story but I doubt she’s loading up the CD “Eye In The Sky” with her Starbucks driving to the studio.
It’s funny how no one bitches when someone takes a blues guitar rift and creates a new song. ZZ Top wrote “Tush” and that guitar riff is taken from John Lee Hooker (I think), but when blues guitarist do it is a kind of memorial sentiment that honor’s the old greats. When a band does it like Lady Antebellum or George Harrison are accused of doing it people are up in arms.
And another one, Lady Gaga and Ace of Base:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWZZRKV-_qU&feature=related
Both songs are horrible
Where are all of the “how is this a consumer issue?” posts?
Fifteen posts below yours :3
THAT’S what song the Antebellum song sounds like! It’s been bothering me but not enough to go try to weasel out which one they copied.
There’s been a couple of those in the past few years. I hate the pop genre but sometimes I will listen to the top 40 station with friends cars or what not. Sometimes it just annoys me to hell why I can’t ID a song even though its supposedly “new”
She could read his mind
I thought the Alan Parsons Project was an world conquering plot by Dr Evil???
They need some way of bankrolling the purchase of materials and labour for turning the moon into a ‘Death-Star’.
No, that’s the Alan Greenspan Project.
If I’m not mistaken, its some sort of hovercraft…
My vote is no, though the new version is terribly derivative of much more than just that song.
The headline made absolutely no sense to me. I’m not familiar with Lad Antebellum or Alan Parsons Project, so I was scratching my head about what the verb was… “rob”, “project”, “blind”… could “antebellum” be used as a verb? Maybe antebellum robbing is some kind of fancy southern form of theft. That would be pretty awesome. Actually, I’m going to antebellum rob someone right now.
I can use Photoshop to blend Palin with Hulk Hogan but that doesn’t make them similar.
I see what you did there…
Wait. What did you do there?
One appeared on a reality show.
One is a politician
One is an attention whore
One has a daughter who is an attention whore
One comes from a place where “doncha know” can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb or interjection.
One says outlandish things and gets ridiculed for it.
Which one am I talking about?
You know what they say – if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.
Thief!
Well, I know one thing: “Eye in the Sky” is a HELL of a lot better.
People forget (or never knew) that Alan Parsons engineered Dark Side of the Moon for Pink Floyd. The Alan Parsons Project shaped my musical tastes since it belongs to some of my earliest music memories. I was spoiled.
The Alan Parsons “I ROBOT” CD is a magnificent piece of art. Still great after all these years.
Agreed, I can’t even listen to the Lady Anteblahum song, they just sound so fricking whiny/needy/clingy.
That’s a pretty bad mash-up, if I do say so myself …
Nah, s’ok… Lady Antebellum found the sheet-music in the back of an old copy of Cook’s Source, with a footnote saying it was Open Domain. ;D
Hahahahahaha. +1
Incoming note from Lady Antebellum telling APP that they did them a favor and edited thier crappy song and made it way better! They should be paying them cause nobody was talking about APP till this!
By the way, this is the REAL Alan Parsons project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Duj2oZIC8U
It’s certainly not as obvious as Ray Parker Jr/Theme to Ghostbusters ripping off Huey Lewis.
Nope, not the same. Where’s the poll? Oh, yeah, it’s lazy Phil. nevermind…
Nah… this is nothing like the coldplay ripping off Satriani.
Whatever became of that? I stopped hearing it about shortly after news of the suit broke.
The mashup is stupid, that is just Lady Antebellum on the APP track. Anyone could make a mashup to make it sound however they want it to. You have to listen to them separately, not mixed together.
Even though they sound alike, they aren’t. Lady Antebellum beat is faster.
Anyway so what. Look at almost all the mainstream music today. Almost all of them sound alike with the fucking stupid ass autotunes.
And almost all reggaeton songs have the same beat.
And what does this have to do with consumers?
So… if you speed a song up it’s a different song?
They slowed it down to show the similarity.
Lady Andebellum? eh! Never heard of them/her.
I have never heard a Lady Antebellum song, and it is my ambition to keep it that way.
Well, even if it’s unintentional it still may be a problem. George Harrison was sued over his “Hare Krishna” song because the chord progression sounded like the song “He’s So Fine.” That was about 15 or so years after the song was written. Harrison had to fork over $2 million.
“My Sweet Lord” *
IANAL, but in order to actually be considered plagarism, the chords and melody must both match. LA jumps right to the end of their phrase where APP drags it out a bit. It’s similar, but not close enough to litigate.
You can’t copyright a chord change, and you can’t copyright part of a musical phrase (otherwise, we could only write so many songs). LA are safe.
I can tell you this: Lady Antebellum’s song has no long intro like “Sirius” that would have been appropriate for, say, the pre-game introductions of YOUR WORLD CHAMPION CHICAGO BULLS. Alan Parsons is forever linked in my mind to Jordan, Pippen, B.J. Armstrong, Horace Grant and Bill Cartwright.
Gotta give Bowie credit too!
she probably didnt even write the music.
Wow… really. That’s 61 seconds of my life I’ll never get back.
I never like when songs are so similar like this and the newer song doesn’t acknowledge that they were influenced by the older one. It’s pure b.s. in this day and age to have two different songs that are decades apart with an essentially identical chorus and claim that the newer one just popped into the artists’ heads like that. Just come clean, be upfront about it, and put a little liner note in your CD. Save yourself the embarrassment of people finding out later on and flooding the internet with exposes of theft and plagiarism. For me, if there’s any doubt, my opinion of the alleged thieving artist is lowered forever. I’d rather hear the original/inspiration and not waste my time with the rip-off.
I’m hearing two bars that are similar, and then they diverge. Weird.
Question is….who did the Alan Parsons Project rip off first?
To be honest the first time Need You Now started playing I thought it was Eye in the Sky. Then I thought someone sampled EitS. Then I heard the whole song and dismissed the similarity of the opening intro. Maybe someone heard that tune as a kid and some similarity cropped up but I don’t think it’s a direct copy.
GODDDDD I hate this song. My coworkers all listen to the modern country station and for a while this song played once an hour. I have a low tolerance for modern country-pop anyway, but christ this song is irritating.
I know both songs and I never noticed the similarity before now. I’d give it a pass.
I’m a songwriter. Songwriters tend to listen to lots of music. Furthermore, there’s only 12 notes in a scale, and only 7 of them “fit” together well at a time. It’s just a matter of time until ideas overlap.