Sampling is a creative touch in music. It is an obstacle to take something that is already great and try to make it greater. The good thing about positive is that the original artist can feel good that a newer artist chose your music to re-do. It is interesting to see what another artist can do with a song that has already made it in the music industry. Sometimes the newer version sounds better at the time. As time goes on, Music changes directions are artists are forced to keep up with the new musical trends. Sometimes taking an older song and making it new is what can make great music. On the other hand, some will disagree with sampling.
Others may feel that it is stealing and not original. The argument would be that they did not do much work and just changed up the way a song sounded. A lot of people enjoy seeing what the musician will come up with on their own. However, I think that sampling is creative. It is not easy to take something that has already been great and try to make it yours and new. Some artists like a challenge and that is ok. It still shows their creative side and pushes what they can do to new boundaries. As long as the artist does make their own original music, sampling does not take away originality.
An artist who has done this is Kanye West who sang heartless, a song that was originally written by The Fray. He made the song a hip hop song by increasing the tempo and changing the music in the background. The song became famous again however I liked the original more because you can really get into the song because it is slower and more touching. Another time I heard this song was when Kris Allen sang it on American Idol. He sang the song slower and with his guitar. He sang this song better than the Fray I thought and better than Kanye West.
I understand how some will feel that singers are not being original with singing someone else’s song. However one must look past that because there is not one artist who only does sampling. Every artist has their own music that was written by them. Sampling is just like an obstacle for other artists to take what someone else has done and make it theirs while keeping it popular and not completely ruining the song. There is nothing wrong with an artist doing this as long as the other artist is aware and ok with this.
Sampling expands the experience of an artist in music. It is not steeling. It is just taking something old and trying something new with it. It’s like buying a wedding dress and altering it to make it yours. There is nothing wrong with that. As I mentioned earlier, as long as the artist has some music of their own, it’s not bad to experiment with something that someone else has originally created.
I really liked your blog. I did mine on the same topic. It's funny because we almost always pick the same prompt. Weird, huh? But yea, my view on it was the complete opposite of yours. But I like that you included more than one view into your blog. I guess you’ve learned a lot from the They Say I Say book. I feel that it is less original of you to 'buy a wedding dress and alter it to make it yours' than to design a new wedding dress altogether. Why do something that has already been done? I agree with you though, that in some cases an artist can do a good job of reinventing a song. Like with “Heartless”, I had no idea that The Fray sung the original. But that's also addressed in my blog. Not every artist that uses another artist's work is a fraud. But take "Ice Ice Baby", for example, the only thing distinguishable in the song is the intro, which is EXACTLY the same as the intro to "Under Pressure" by Queen, and to no one's surprise, Vanilla Ice was just a one hit wonder.
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