Potentially old fogeyish thread. Obviously it should go without sampling is fine as a concept and there’s a million inventive and skilful examples of samples being used well
But do find it a bit weird/crap when you really like a song, and then just find out the main hook or bit of songwriting craft has just been lifted wholesale from something else.
e.g
Lord Knows Best by Dirty Beaches > Francoise Hardy - Voila
Jens Lekman - Black Cab > The Lefte Bank - Something On My Mind
Was impressed by one Sleigh Bells song being miles better than anything else they’d done, made sense when I realised why
liked it when someone was disappointed in endtroducing when they realised it was all samples.
It’s annoying. Finding out that something was sampled does not necessarily alter my enjoyment of a song, but it may diminish my appreciation of the artist/writer.
Of course it’s a different matter when the sampling is done poorly, with the start of the sampled part sound disjointed and disconnected from what preceded it, and likewise at the end of the sample. In other words it becomes obvious that it’s a sample, as obvious as it would be if they inserted a sample of a spoken radio news broadcast, and that’s annoying even if I don’t know what the original source was.
I didn’t know about either of those, but it doesn’t diminish them for me. They are still well crafted songs.
RE: Jens Lekman
He’s very open about his sampling and I think he does a good job of making the songs his own as opposed to just ripping it off. I believe ‘I know what love isnt’ is more or less sample free, and Its fantastic so he’s got the chops
checking out the Sister Sledge and Edwin Birdsong (who?) albums shown in this and they’re great.
There’s definitely a slight disappointment that comes to me when a sample I’d assumed had been chopped and processed more turns out not to have been. It’s important to note that, where hip-hop is concerned for example, the inherent talent of crate-digging and simply being able to find deep and good loops has somewhat been compromised by the Internet. I feel like people’s expectation of what a good sample-based production is has changed somewhat in the wake of being able to access everything, I guess?
Fair. Where simply finding/unearthing a good hook and repurposing it would once have been legit impressive, I guess I feel like that’s not quite so much the case these days.
Still love stuff like, say, Shadow’s Organ Donor, David Holmes’ My Mate Paul, ETA’s Casual Sub, etc. But won’t deny there’s sliver of me that’s less impressed as years have passed.
Not sure if the internet is entirely to ‘blame’ (has probably accelerated and streamlined the ‘reveal’, though). A couple of decades of listening to music means you just kinda stumble across origins of stuff anyway.
@Yvash nails it with the first reply, probably. Who can complain about having two great songs instead of just one?
I mean when I first heard a maninha by the bees I thought wow this band know how to write a great tune and interesting, they must be multinational in some way.
The fact that it’s a cover of a way better version does show it up to be inferior but now I have os mutantes in my life so asci shrug
I knew it was a cover, but I was only familiar with the johnny Rivers version so I always assumed that he wrote it.
Had ‘around the rudolph’ on a Christmas CD as a kid so the daft punk one isn’t really a shock