Radiohead Heart The Hollies?
I was catching up on DC’s excellent and not-at-all-airport-related Christmas podcasts yesterday when I found myself thinking ‘fuck me, that Abba song sounds like Creep’. After the song, DC was kind enough to explain that it wasn’t Abba at all it was The Hollies, and that there was a well-known school of thought linking the two songs.
Given how slow I am picking up on this sort of thing, probably because I don’t listen to the radio all that much, I wouldn’t be at all surprised for this post to raise a deafening chorus of ‘Well yeah, like duh, like where have you been dude, like everyone knows that’ or something else equally well-phrased and cutting. But honestly, this is the first I’d ever heard of it and the similarities are uncanny.
I never cease to be amazed by this sort of thing, but why it should surprise me is a mystery. In my own field, industrial design, it’s entirely common for someone to like the proportions or the surface transitions or the material finishes of any number of other products and then incorporate them, sometimes quite directly, into their own work. Look at the rise of the secret-to-lit screen, or the ‘one black version, one white version’ approach and things like that. Look what the iPod did to popularise really basic geometry in handheld products, something that led almost directly to the storming success of the SonyEricsson T610.
Switching these kinds of ideas back and forth isn’t copying as such, but it does exist on the same spectrum. At some point drawing inspiration does become outright copying, but I think at the moment we are inclined to draw that line too soon, in a great many fields. Human ingenuity is a cumulative process, as tiny improvements build on thousands of other tiny improvements – the Eureka! moment is largely a myth.
I’ve ranted this rant before, so I’ll shut up now and leave you to compare The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies with an acoustic version of Radiohead’s classic Creep. And never mention airports ever again.
The Hollies – The Air That I Breathe
Radiohead – Creep (Acoustic)
Well, I’ll be! If it makes you feel any better I’ve never heard about this connection either, but then again I’m a notoriously ill-informed and ignorant person (I’m American, you see). And now we’re on the subject (of copying, not my ignorance), I was hoping to start up a new blog today, called “Song, by Toade,” which will be entirely airport-related but which might contain the occasional rant about music. This will not be copying, but rather a “novel application of established principles.”
Airport.
Erm, chaps, I am actually friends with DC and would quite like this to remain the case if you don’t mind.
This really has runway with us a bit.
I hereby swear to never mention Airports or related topics ever ever again, unless something humorous happens to me and a surgical glove.
DC
& back on topic… yes, I too had never connected the two sonically until copycommaright.blogspot.com pointed it out following a youtube video comparison (I left links in the comments of your original Sonic Youth vs Supergrass bloggage a few weeks back). Iti is uncanny, isn’t it? Creep was reputedly written on piano (I believe there was a radio session available a long, long, long time ago with Yorke on an upright thumping out a particularly inspeired & impassioned version not so long after it had been released – although I never got to hear it) & was referred to as the Scott Walker song. Makes me wonder if Mr Glum Chops either mixed his 60’s maudlin mixed up (on purpose or by accident), or was taking the edge off any comparisons that may emerge… either way, both are simply bloody good tracks.
DC
I’m completely nonplussed about Radiohead, but thought I’d chime in to say how much I like your new header, Matthew. Strong work!
I’ve always had to pay extra for the rubber glove. But I still like airports…
In fact Creep is now credited jointly to The Air That I Breathe after its writers threatened legal action.
Rearrange the above words and concepts to make an English language sentence.