Monday, March 30, 2009

Pop Will Eat Itself


The return of Bat for Lashes has been greeted with hurrahs throughout the music and popular press, as well as on the radio- her new single Daniel has evoked Kate Bush, Kim Carnes, Stevie Nicks and a host of lesser talents.  However, no one (AFAIK) has mentioned the debt she owes to Donna Summer.  In a sure sign that we really have run out of tunes (there's only a finite number of notes, after all), the intro to Daniel (or at least the first six notes) is a direct steal from the intro to Donna's Hot Stuff. Compare and contrast above and below.

5 comments:

JamesChanceOfficial said...

That new Bat For Lashes is that Donna Summer riff via A Forest by the Cure. Thats what it sounds like to me.

Irk The Purists said...

Spot-on sir! Absolutely correct, though I hadn't twigged. The bassline is note-for-note A Forest. You win a place in the not-at-all-coveted blog friends menu on the left of my little site. Thanks for stopping by!

JamesChanceOfficial said...

Thanks for the link but my blog is Stupefaction (www.theworldsamess.blogspot.com), not Etherea. That one is just listed on my profile because I help a friend out with it.

P.S. I covet all blog links!

Anonymous said...

I can't remember what else I've heard by BFL but I remember I wrote their name down after hearing them on some college radio station. Six notes, two bars ...hardly enough to worry about. It's a whole different groove and a more mideastern sound ...

Yeah, there are only so many notes, but those notes go together in many different ways, many different scales/modes, over many different chords, which can be sequenced in many different ways, in many different rhythmic patterns, in many different types of arrangements ... you get it. Music is no more exhausted than it was in 1890 when critics no doubt were saying the same thing: "Everything's already been done."

-- LiveActiveCulture

Irk The Purists said...

@Karate Boogaloo, I've fixed your link.

@Anonymous,
I actually agree that we should be a long way from exhausting all the possible combinations of musical modes. Which begs the question, WHY, given the above, couldn't Keane, Bat For Lashes etc. put together some notes that didn't sound like something that had been done before?

Not that I dislike Daniel, BTW. Every Wesley Willis song sounds like every other Wesley Willis song, but I still dig the late Wesley Willis. (Thinks) Hmmm, a Wesley Willis post, perhaps?

LiveActiveCulture now joins the list of blog links. Both of my readers can now visit your site. Hooray!