The art of music can be described as a medium that can both physically and emotionally move people. All artists strive to be creative and stand out from the crowd; but when the majority of pop music is composed of four chords, where is the originality? G-E(minor)-C-D and A(minor)-C-D-F are the most common chord progressions and the only factors that change between the thousands of songs that use these progressions are the strumming pattern and the lyrics. However, the skills of the lyricist and composer who successfully produced these songs take a backseat to the singer. The audience robs them of their much due credit with their applause and idolizing. Although plenty of singers strive to be original, all artists “plagiarize” and reinvent the wheel; so, how are they able to achieve originality?
Jonathan Lethem analyzes the way that various artists across all mediums rip off other artists in his essay “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism”. In his essay, Lethem defines “plagiarism” to mean artists using other artist’s work through “mimicry, quotation, [or] allusion” (61). Rather than word for word copy and pasting of someone’s work, the word plagiarism will be used to describe the use of someone’s work as inspiration for other art in this essay. Lethem does not view this form of plagiarism as a heinous crime, rather, a “sine quo non of the creative act” and in fact, a badge of honor for the one getting “plagiarized” (61). In other words, it’s impossible to be creative without quoting and alluding to people and their works. Using an example of an Iranian filmmaker, Dariush Mehrjui, who used J.D. Salinger's work as a springboard for his work, Lethem asserts the filmmaker “had paid [Salinger] homage” by using it and in doing so, a...
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... been changing in movies and television to adjust for everything feeling “familiar”. Horror-spoof flicks and action, romance, comedy movies have been made because sticking to one genre would now bore people and would result in them walking out or changing the channel. The only question left is what will happen once people are bored with genre mixing. In other words, when the “strange” becomes “familiar” what will satisfy people’s appetite for entertainment? Maybe the emergence of the perfect genre will take over the market by stealing the best parts of all music and combining it to please everyone. The Internet Age is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to music. A person is able to create masterpieces by using other people’s music and blending various genres but one must not forget the Internet is what has caused people to crave creativity in the first place.
A number of other genres, throughout the decade, maintained a significant following. One genre that was slow to start was Hip-Hop, while it emerged in the 1970’s it didn’t become significant until the late 1980’s. Although Classical music began to lose impetus, it gave way to a new generation of composers through invention and theoretical development. The decade was also distinguished for its assistance to electronic music, which rose in reco...
Popular music places a premium on accessibility, represents various meanings to boost both instant appeal and memorability - distinctive tunes, novel instrumental flourishes, danceable rhythms, repeated riffs - but its signal feature is melodic emphasis and great vocal gatherings.
Over the last few decades, the practice of radically appropriating works of other artists has become common. The central tenet in appropriation art is to incorporate ideas and images from mass media, popular culture, advertising, and from other artists into a new work. Indeed, appropriating art is not new since borrowing from other artists is an age-old practice. For instance, painters have regularly repainted the paintings of other artists with an aim of exploring the application of their artistic style in a familiar art. However, photographing another artist’s work and claiming the authorship of the work without acknowledging the original artists poses a serious challenge to the idea of authorship. Incorporating other artists’ work into a new work is the central element of modern appropriation art.
This is what some artist dread the most because they could have heard or saw something in their past and then not have thought anything of it. Then when it comes to them writing or painting or making music they come up with this grand idea that they have when really they are just sub-concisely remembering something they have already heard or saw and putting their name on it. In the article he takes about the show, The Simpsons, and goes into details about one of their episodes. “An argument over the ownership of the animated characters Itchy and Scratchy rapidly escalates into an existential debate on the very nature of cartoons. “Animation is built on plagiarism!” declares the show’s hot-tempered cartoon-producer-within-a-cartoon, Roger Meyers Jr.” Without the making of some shows they would not have sparked interests into other creative minds do take that idea and turn in it into their
The genre of pop rock has taken the music industry by storm, giving record companies enormous amounts of power and endless financial success along with a way to reproduce it. Owing its popularity to the “light” nature and simplistic, yet catchy melodies, pop music is one of the broadest genres. There’s no way of clearly defining parameters as to what distinguishes a pop music song from other genres. This is largely due to the genre's’ reliance on popularity. Pop music has taken many forms over the decades, keeping characteristics through each generation it passes through.
Music has a great influent on people in our daily life, just like technology’s effect on the music. In the last 100 years, pop music has been a major part of American culture. There’s always discussion on how great can a pop music affect one’s daily life. Both technology and music can affect one’s life in either good or bad way such that they are also related to each other. Technology had always had a dominant role in human history like music since the 1900s. Since then, the advancement of technology had create ‘miracle’ with music such that people won’t be able to imagine the effect back in 19th century. The effect of the technology on pop music can be observed through the instruments, composition and mainly the recording and transmission technique.
The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts. Appropriation is a strategy that has been used by artists for millennia. It involves the intentional copying, borrowing and alteration of pre-existing and often popular works. Many artists believe they are re-contextualising or appropriating the original imagery, allowing the viewer to renegotiate the meaning of the original in a different, more relevant, or more current context and that in separating images from their original context, they allow them to take on new meanings. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Gordon Bennett use appropriation as a form of bringing new, often personal, meaning to an artwork such as Gordon Bennett’s ‘Outsider’.
The drastic socio-cultural changes that occurred following World War II in all participating and surrounding countries led to the rise in ‘pop culture’. An important aspect of pop culture is popular music of the age. Although the concept of music as a consumer product was already emerging by the 15th century, with musical eras like Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic coming and going over the centuries, it was not until after World War II that musical styles began to expand and change much more quickly than ever before. Each decade from the 1950s is widely known to the general population as having its own distinct style of popular music. Thus, the characteristics associated with members of these generations, or social groups, including the type of music preferred by members of the ingroups, could be considered a demonstration of social identity theory.
The word “original” is often used to describe paintings that have been manufactured by hand, but it is not clear whether hand-made copies of work are still considered so. When an artist copies another’s art, is his own art original now that it has been tainted by the thoughts’ of others? The poem “To A Mouse” by Robert Burns served as inspiration for John Steinbeck when writing the famed tragedy “Of Mice and Men.” Steinbeck, a Nobel prize-winning author, set many of his books during the Great Depression or the California Dustbowl, times when the future seemed bleak. In Of Mice and Men, man-child Lennie and his “father figure” George form an unsuspecting friendship, and set off into the world with their dreams of one day buying land and settling down. The characteristics of these protagonists are directly taken from the Burns’ poem, which describes similar characters. Is such a close emulation detrimental to the value of originality in the work? Steinbeck believed that “only through imitation do we develop toward originality,” a motif seen in Of Mice and Men. Inspiration is necessary for all art, but by exploiting Burns’ poem, Steinbeck bastardizes the innocence of originality.
Genres are helpful in the general public as they give spectrum to different people and their different tastes. It also accommodates for any mood one may be in if they wanted to watch a film. It characterizes the films and sorts them into place for the viewer’s pleasure, “At all levels of the filmmaking and film-viewing processes, then, genres help assure that most members of society share at least some general notions about the many films that compete for our attention.” (Bordwell & Thompson, 2004: 110)
In most contexts, composers of music tend to want their work to be thought of as products of pure talent and a little bit of hard work. McIntyre’s outlook in Rethinking the creative process: The systems model of creativity applied to popular songwriting however, seems to pose a contrary approach about music composition, especially in the context of pop music. Or rather, he seems to be trying to explain what constitute to the so-called talent. And while a component of natural acumen plays an important role, according to McIntyre, a lot of it is rather psychological in nature, both from the perspective of the artist and the listener. Good music, to McIntyre, has environmental influences ranging from early life experiences to the artist’s perception
In today’s evolving and changing society, many people do not appreciate how extraordinary music truly is. Since the birth of the vinyl record, there are less people who own and are interested in them. Even though vinyl records have recently been making a comeback, they are still not as popular as they once were. People take for granted how easily accessible music is today though in the past it was not as simple. Even though vinyl records may be costly and may not have a large quantity of songs, as time progresses and technology continues to develop, the way that people listen to music degrades their appreciation for music due to easier accessibility, weaker sound in terms of quality, and decaying genres.
Not every person is going to have the same taste in music, but why is it that people find a certain genre more appealing than others? A person’s personality and individuality clearly has a large role Research indicates that there is a definite correlation between personality and music preferences (Rentfrow & Gosling p. 1236-1237, Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham p. 180-183). Those that enthusiastically chose to involve music in their lives will be more open to whatever music findings they come across in their everyday lives. There are also individuals who can play one or more musical instrument(s) and would be considered music lovers. Most of them have started from a young age and as they grew older would spend huge amounts of...
Pop music has long been defined by “idols” and superstars that are subjects of high levels of adoration from severely devoted fans, whose love of these superstars often blurs the line between fandom and obsession. This love is mainly based off of physical looks and charm more often than actual musical talent, as majority of the songs written by these massive superstars are not written by the artists themselves, instead by people hired to write for these artists in a way that will best connect with a crowd willing to spend their money on these manufactured stars. Therefore, it has become evident that in the world of popular music, image has overtaken talent as the determining factor of success in the industry. Instead of skill and songwriting ability, good looks and the ability to draw large crowds of impressionable people have become the main factors of fame in music.
One artist in PPP said it best when he said “you just can’t avoid limitations I guess.” This statement summarizes the constant limitations that artists have faced throughout history when trying to get their work noticed in popular culture. One important way that artists have gotten their work noticed is by gathering different “fragments of culture” and recombining them to make quality art. In other words, Plagiarism is the key for artists to overcome constant limitations in the creative industry.