Sounds Like Teen Spirit (2016 Edition)

The author does a fantastic job of conveying some of the stupidest legal battles I've ever read about. There is nothing new under the sun...I just told my friend, who writes children's bestsellers, that the other day. He was a bit offended...but it's the same thing as the topic of this book. Art is art - it may not always be original, but if you take someone's premise and expound upon it, and make it better, that doesn't make it any less artistic. In cases of blatant plagarism, obviously there should be some repercussion; but just because a riff sounds the same, or the words "hey you" are used in both songs, does not mean it was plagarized. There are only so many computations, so many ways that things can be put together. And the people that hold the rights to the 'original' songs, probably were not the first to develop them either. That said, to loop back around, the author does a great job of making this book interesting, and pointed me in the direction of a few "new" promising artists...

If you listen to a lot of music, you do find yourself regularly thinking 'that sounds like …' This book looks at those songs and artists who have been *cough* 'inspired' by other songs. Great Fun for music geeks everywhere.

Review will be posted Feb 26 Sounds Like Teen Spirit is a book made up of Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs and the Secret History of Rock and Roll. This is the updated version for 2016. There is new music, old music and even entire sections devoted to Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart! This book examines songs that sound like songs that came before them. While Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines was a hot topic more recently, this type of thing has been going on pretty much since the dawn of music. The author notes that this book is meant to be an interactive experience and suggests that you listen to the tracks presented to see the similarities for yourself. This was how I had intended to go through the book as a lot of times I don't hear the similarities in songs until they are pointed out to me. (Stay With Me / I Won't Back Down I never heard initially which my brother found to be ridiculous because he picked up on it right away.)

The first part of the book, new music, has a case of "Katie isn't paying enough attention at all" in mentioning that Rixton's "Me and My Broken Heart" sounds like Rob Thomas's "Lonely No More", to the point that they gave Rob songwriting credits on the track.

Most of the tracks throughout the book I either am familiar with one or the other mentioned, but rarely both. Thankfully, most of these were available on YouTube for me to give a listen to see what I thought. It was fun how some of the songs within a couple seconds I could hear the similarities and others it took listening to the entire song sometimes more than once before I caught the similar melodies.

I think my favorite section was towards the end - they stole from themselves. When Paul McCartney songs sounds like Beatles tunes and songs from The Knack sound like... songs from The Knack? Can you really steal from yourself?

Definitely one of the more interesting music related books that I have read as of late! Worth checking out!

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.