Ice Ice Babyyyyyy
I watched Glee tonight. First song they featured was “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. This brought me back to a year ago when I watched a VH1 commentary that made fun of this song. The commentator mocked Vanilla Ice’s response to claims that he copied the chords to David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” when making his hit wonder “Ice Ice Baby”. Vanilla Ice’s response? Something like this: “No. I added a note in front of dum-dum-dum-da-da-dum-dum… mine goes DUH dum-dum-dum-da-da-dum-dum.”
Listen here:
Sooooooo… what does this mean? I was taught in school that copying was BAD… but why is “copying” or “sampling” in music rewarded with big bucks? Okay, at least in Vanilla Ice’s case, he had to pay 100% of the royalties received for his “Ice Ice Baby” to Bowie (see Ben Challis’s November 2009 article “The Song Remains the Same: A Review of the Legalities of Music Sampling”).
But what about all the other pop artists that used the same 4 chords? What am I talking about? My friend, Ben, published a great post a few days ago called “The Same Four Chords“.
See? The same 4 chords!
I guess the moral here is: copying is a no-no, but using the same baseline equals big $$$.
to the extreme i rock the mic like a vandal
his teenage mutant ninja turtles performance will live on forever
well, in corp world, people use the term called “leverage”… i think it also “equals big $$$”
fail.