Headlines were made (and eyebrows raised) when, in October 2022, four songs used a sample from the 1997 release of ‘Beat Goes On’ by The All Seeing I, which was itself a cover of Sonny & Cher’s 1967 song of the same name. This is not the only example of a widely repeated sample – the song ‘Street Player’ by Chicago has been repeated to death. Sampling has been intrinsic to the electronic dance scene since its foundation, but with TikTok increasingly dominating our viewing habits and artists seeking new inspiration, we must ask if it is really the way forward.
Sampling is simply taking excerpts of a song, and putting your own spin on it – Miley Cyrus using the same riff as Stevie Nicks’ ‘Edge of Seventeen’ in ‘Midnight Sky’ is one example of the remix potential. There’s nothing wrong with sampling in its own right: Daft Punk, for example, has music that shows how creative and legitimate sampling can be.
I recently watched an Instagram video of how Daft Punk combined over 10 samples to make the song ‘Face to Face’ and it is pure genius. I was spellbound to see how they put together these pieces, from small sections of Electric Light Orchestra’s ‘Evil Woman’ and ‘Can’t Get It Out of My Head’ to a short vocal chop from The Alan Parsons Project. How they heard those small snippets and saw that they would work together I don’t know, but the end result feels more than the sum of its parts. To those who argue sampling is uncreative, I would put this song forward as a direct challenge – this is just as creative as writing something original, taking parts that were never meant to be together and reinventing them, in comparison to a song like ‘Rapper’s Delight’, which is just a different vocal over the bassline of ‘Good Times’ (I as a DJ do this all the time, and it can take literally seconds to come up with these ideas). In short, I’m not a sampling sceptic, and when done right it can create musical beauty.
This is not to say sampling doesn’t have its problems; Daft Punk sampled ‘More Spell On You’, a not very well-known song by Eddie Johns to make their smash hit ‘One More Time’. Even though his sample defined the song, Eddie Johns himself has been homeless for more than a decade and did not earn a single penny from the song’s success. This shows the brutality of the music industry and the lack of fair attribution standards. For sampling to be ethical, the original creator deserves credit and financial renumeration, especially when it is already so hard for musicians to make a living.
While it is true “there’s only 12 notes that are available”, as Ed Sheeran said after winning his ‘Shape of You’ lawsuit, that doesn’t mean individuals do not deserve fair attribution. At the same time, it is important to note how tricky it is to work out who truly invented a sound. A good example of this is David Guetta’s recent ‘Future Rave’ sound, which he has developed in collaboration with MORTEN. It is a sound most electronic artists seem to have been inspired by (including those who have worked in other sub-genres like Hardwell). The features and similar sounds can be identified in songs by Armin van Buuren, but it wouldn’t be right in my opinion for them to have to pay royalties to David Guetta despite their similarities. So the dividing line between inspiration and sample is a hard one to draw – one the courts are grappling with themselves.
I’m not the only one who discovers new songs or musical artists through their use of social media and it does inspire me – Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’ was popularised on Instagram, and I have spent the last few months trying to brainstorm how to integrate it into my sets, whilst David Guetta also remixed the song in response to it trending. And I discovered Dorian Marko’s ‘Cornfield Chase’ for instance, a remix of the original from Hans Zimmer, through Instagram Reels, which I’m reflecting on how to potentially sample into a larger song. In a report from July 2021, TikTok said that 75% of its US users discovered new artists via the platform, showing the power of social media in showcasing emerging artists as well as shaping our habits. So social media can do great good by introducing us to artists we would never have found otherwise, and in my case has led me to discover songs that have inspired me. And in the case of the four songs that made headlines using the ‘Beat Goes On’, it has been speculated that the sample was discovered through its social media popularity.
Does it matter if four songs all use the same sample? I’ll open by saying I don’t particularly like any of the versions of the ‘Beat Goes On’, partly because despite different artists working on the edits at least two versions sound practically identical. Inspiration potentially from online sources therefore doesn’t mean we get better or more creative music. David Guetta chose to release his version of ‘I’m Blue’ because it trended on TikTok, great for his fans who clearly wanted him to release the track, but part of a litany of examples where the world-famous producer is driven by social media trends over other sources of creative inspiration (though his musical output does seem more fresh and energised of recent). Social media gives more choice but can also narrow our interests by constantly wanting to target algorithms to reach users. And we don’t want to use the same samples to death because that is the antithesis of creativity.
Few see sampling as a lack of creativity, though the ‘Beat Goes On’ did feel a low point for this technique. It also raises problems in terms of how to fairly attribute artists, where to draw the line between inspiration and direct borrowing, and in a world of social media if social media algorithms are diversifying or homogenising the music artists choose to produce. This article is only one in a much wider discourse on the future of the music industry, and most importantly how artists can fairly earn a living in an evermore complex legal world.