Within any genre of music, plagiarism is a tender, unavoidable topic. Whether it be copying the same chord progression in Rock songs, sampling an old R&B song in Hip-Hop, or using the same synths in electronic music, plagiarism is a vast area of exploration. Most genres of music are heavily saturated considering people don’t need studios to make incredible sounding music anymore. This has led to a need for artists to be more creative within their genre, or even blending genres to create something new. While it is one thing to sample another track to create something new, its another to copy a track completely.There have been recent allegations of just that, someone copying and pasting someone else’s work almost kick for kick.
Hannah Wants was accused of plagiarizing a well known track, Boddika and Joy Orbison’s “Mercy (VIP).” Wants track, “Found The Ground,” was found to have a very similar overall sound and feel as “Mercy (VIP).” Take a listen to Boddika and Joy Orbison’s track below:
The allegations started with DJ Patrick Nazemi, an Ibiza resident DJ, playing the tracks over one another on a Facebook video, and finding that they sound eerily similar. Since then, all “Found The Ground” copies have been pulled from the internet, as far as I can tell. The move to pull all records of the track by Wants is an interesting one considering her plea of innocence of plagiarism. Wants took to her Facebook to voice her opinion on the matter:
She does bring up some rather convincing defenses, most of which I highlighted at the beginning of this article. Namely, there have been many songs throughout music’s history that have sounded similar.
Boddika also took to his Twitter to comment on the matter, saying;
I write,mix,engineer & produce every track I’ve ever been involved with as Boddika & Instra:mental.
— Boddika (@Boddika) September 12, 2016
That’s all I have to say on this situation. Xx
— Boddika (@Boddika) September 12, 2016
In my analysis, “Found The Ground” does seem to make use of a different synth sound than “Mercy (VIP),” and a different hi hat pattern. This sounds very similar to a couple remixes that came out last weekend of Porter Robinson’s Language…However it’s tough to tell if the new Wants track is plagiarizing the “Mercy (VIP)” from the small sample thats left on the Fabriclive web page. The Fabriclive mix by Wants is set for release on the 16th, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the accusations are correct until then.
Source: FACT
