Five songs that The Strokes have ripped off
Inspiration is the starting point of all art, and The Strokes have done more than their fair share of adding to that stockpile of fuel than just about any other band this century, so, let it be known that we use the term ‘ripped off’ very lightly here. Hell, when they burst onto the scene and saved rock ‘n’ roll, their bright idea was to defibrillate New York’s past into a swagger zombie who grabbed the zeitgeist by the lapels and shook it a Skoda travelling over a cattlegrid.
They blessed the world with a new infusion of ideas plucked straight from New York’s cultural ether and dressed them up with juvenile fucklessness that forbade anything jejune from coming within touching distance. Most importantly, in a revival sense, they were something different and ineffably cool. That, in itself, is a skill: to take the same stilted four chords and somehow make them swagger again.
Although their sound and style undoubtedly recalled The Velvet Underground of old, and the euphonic guitars coax up a Marquee Moon soundscape, they were profoundly original in this recognition of legacy at a time when everyone else was blindly looking forward and forcing rock down a lacklustre alley. The Strokes were the perfect tonic to enliven a hungover music scene in a swaggering declaration that the hair of the dog is always the best cure, in a fizzing renaissance of all that was best about the night before. So, if that counts as ripping off what came before, then we’re all for it.
As the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch once told MovieMaker Magazine: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul,” his famous quote states, before continuing: “If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.”
It is a notion that French New Wave hero Jean-Luc Godard also celebrated when he said, “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” And Pablo Picasso joined the act when he commented: “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” a line which was actually also ironically stolen from T.S. Eliot. In short, what we’re saying is that the evidence displayed below is not necessarily a condemnation, and a very liberal view could, in fact, celebrate it as an upcycling of art into something new that serves as a glowing addition to our dismal daily lives.
The ethics of such a liberal invocation of source material are complicated and difficult, but Nick Cave is always a reliable voice to turn to in such instances, and he wrote on his Red Hand Files forum: “The great beauty of contemporary music, and what gives it its edge and vitality, is its devil-may-care attitude toward appropriation — everybody is grabbing stuff from everybody else, all the time. It’s a feeding frenzy of borrowed ideas that goes toward the advancement of rock music — the great artistic experiment of our era.”
Vitally, however, he goes on to add, “Plagiarism is an ugly word for what, in rock and roll, is a natural and necessary — even admirable — tendency, and that is to steal. Theft is the engine of progress, and should be encouraged, even celebrated, provided the stolen idea has been advanced in some way. To advance an idea is to steal something from someone and make it so cool and covetable that someone then steals it from you. In this way, modern music progresses, collecting ideas, and mutating and transforming as it goes.”
Proof of that comes from the fact that Cave’s profound words themselves even share a kinship with one of his heroes, the poet Stevie Smith, who chimed in, not only on this subject but the origins of great art on the whole, when she remarked: “A great artist … takes what he did not make and makes of it something that only he can make.” This is why all the songs below might have touchstones from elsewhere, but ultimately, the final product is undoubtedly The Strokes’.
Five songs that The Strokes have ripped off:
‘Ode to The Mets’ – The Strokes & ‘Left Outside Alone’ – Anastacia
Julian Casablancas has a love of pop music that pervades all of his so-called indie output. He’s never mentioned a love for Anastacia in the past, but I’ll be damned if the refrain “been living in a fantasy without meaning” doesn’t perfectly play out over the melody here. It might build into its own unique crescendo but that mellotron-like opening is almost identical, Casablancas’ vocal topline even follows similar contours.
This is a superb bit of thievery. If I hadn’t heard it by accident (and now you won’t be able to unhear it), then the whole thing would’ve forever been unknown to me because of how different the two tracks are in production. It just so happens that Anastacia captured a chord structure that somehow sounded like emotional exasperation and that is exactly what Casablancas was going for to close The New Abnormal, so he lifted it and provided a solemn indie gem.
‘Last Nite’ – The Strokes & ‘American Girl’ – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
“The Strokes took ‘American Girl’ [for ‘Last Nite’], there was an interview that took place with them where they actually admitted it,” Petty told Rolling Stone in 2006. “That made me laugh out loud. I was like, ‘OK, good for you’. It doesn’t bother me.” As for the confession in question, Casablancas famously said: “People would say, ‘You know that song ‘American Girl’ by Tom Petty?’ ‘Don’t you think it sounds a little like that?’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, we ripped it off. Where you been?’”
As the wise sage Petty decreed: “The truth is, I seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there, a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs sound alike… I don’t believe in lawsuits much. I think there are enough frivolous lawsuits in this country without people fighting over pop songs.” And the benefit he received from this kindness is that a lot of youngsters were then turned onto his back catalogue in the safe knowledge that he was also a stand-up fellow.
‘Someday’ – The Strokes & ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays’ – Buzzcocks
While the chords in ‘Someday’ are so extremely common that the faint resemblance to this Buzzcocks intro is almost null, the similarity gets a little more interesting when you delve into the theme of the punk classic ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays’. The song based on Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World fervently yells about the dangers of mindless contentment and medicated blessedness.
In Huxley’s novel, where culture and art have been expunged from society leaving everyone in a comatose state of contentedness propped up by the Vedic ritual drink Soma, one character even yells: “I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody’s happy nowadays.” The track not only lifts that line for the title but explores the same themes throughout, in lyrics like: “Life’s an illusion, love is a dream, but I don’t know what it is.” This is a theme that Casablancas has explored time and time again in his writing (not least in ‘Soma’), so while the compositional similarities to ‘Someday’ might be fleeting, the track in a holistic sense has had a huge impact on his work …and evidently Fab Moretti’s drumming too.
‘One Way Trigger’ – The Strokes & ‘En El Muelle De San Blás’ – Maná
Maná are a Mexican band who formed way back in 1981. Since then they’ve sold 40million records worldwide, making them one of the most successful Latin American acts in history. However, their oeuvre is far less well-known overseas. And by the time of their eighth album, released in 1997, they were taking a less commercial route with their music, meaning that ‘En El Muelle De San Blás’ exists as a lesser-known single.
However, it would seem that either Casablancas heard it and liked the tone and melody, or an act of musical ‘Convergent Evolution’ occurred. Allow me to explain further, in nature, Convergent Evolution is the term used to describe two similar animals that do not share a common ancestor, so their similarity is grounded in evolutionary responses to shared stimuli; ie, echidnas and hedgehogs have never met, but it just so happens that having a load of spikes on your back is handy as a small mammal so both evolved this independently. When it comes to music, there are laws that have to be followed to create a harmonious sound for the Western ear, therefore, Maná and The Strokes might have just followed the same natural path to come to a related musical conclusion. However, the hint that the band may have heard this Maná track comes from the tonal likeness that The Strokes have simply ’80s-ified.
’12:51′ – The Strokes & ‘Bull in the Heater’ – Sonic Youth
Once again, Casablancas made no excuse for lifting ‘Bull in the Heather’ telling Spin in 2003: “When we were recording it, I said to Gordon [Raphael, producer], ‘Do you think it sounds too much like that Sonic Youth song? Because I’m totally ripping it off.” However, he needn’t have worried because I’d argue that tonally and sentimentally the songs are wildly different.
While Casablancas’ delivery pattern and the lead riff are like-for-like, if anything the beauteous ’12:51′ shows how similar constituent parts can deliver differing results ala Spaghetti Bolognese and Chilli Con Carne. What’s more, it’s always handy to be borrowing from your friends.
