Songs You Didn’t Know Were Sampled | Share Your Favorites!

Hi everyone,

To cut a (very) long story short, music sampling goes way back, but since the birth of Hip-Hop, sampling has become a much more prominent feature of the musical landscape.

If you were a music fan in the 1980s, you’ll probably remember the legal case of “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice vs. “Under Pressure” by Queen & David Bowie, or maybe you recall when The Verve lost out to the Rolling Stones in 1997 after a battle over their hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony".

Even in 2020, controversies over samples flare up all the time. Justin Bieber was accused of stealing a melody earlier this year by another artist, but it turned out that it actually came from a royalty-free sample—Switched On Pop podcast has a very interesting episode titled “What Happens When Justin Bieber Samples Your Music” in which they interview the producer who created the original sample.

The world of sampling is far too complex to go into on today’s blog post, so let’s instead share some songs which include some interesting samples :thinking:

Did you know that “Panini” by Lil Nas X sampled ‘In Bloom’ by Nirvana?

How about “Whatcha Say” by Jason Derulo sampling “Hide And Seek” by Imogen Heap?

Santana’s 1999 song “Maria Maria” was sampled by Rihanna & DJ Khaled on “Wild Thoughts”:

Or do you remember that “California Love” by 2Pac Feat. Dr. Dre sampled “Woman To Woman” by Joe Cocker which came out back in 1972?

Recently, while listening to Sour Candy from Lady Gaga’s new album I had a feeling that I’d heard it before. After a quick search, I discovered that it uses a sample from a track released back in 2010 by Maya Jane Coles, which in turn has been sampled multiple times by artists including Tinie Tempah and Zara Larsson on the song Girls Like in 2016, and on Swish Swish by Katy Perry in 2017.

So, what do you think of songs that use samples? Or multiple songs using the same sample? Share your thoughts, plus your favorite examples in the comments below :arrow_down: :arrow_down: :arrow_down:

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One of my favorites uses of a sample so far this year:

Sampling “Get Ur Freak On” by Missy Elliot:

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I found this. I

I think there is a point to which it goes from sampling to stealing a musical. I think overall you can get some good music either which way.

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Anyone who knows classical music, will know that John Williams is notorious for sampling classical composers.

For instance, the Star Wars soundtrack has many motifs that came from other composers over the years.

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I know originals only.
Never got any interests in those who have no talent to create their own music!

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It’s not necessarily not having talent Franz :wink:. I know a composer who has written some quite popular pieces recently, and if you look closely at some to their pieces, you will notice certain motifs in the harmony’s match those of some classical pieces. The thing is, this wasn’t done intentionally. There are so many classical pieces written, that it is very easy to write the same thing without ever knowing.

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I give you an example Andrew.
If you know Ludwig van Beethoven and know his works and like these,
take a look and listen to the works of his adlatus Ferdinand Ries.
Often he is called the “little Beethoven” because the influence of his famous
teacher can not be denied.
But regarding his works I would never call him an “imitator”.
They are all beautiful!, it sounds only a “little bit” like LvB. :grin:
but its Ries.
the more you listen to the more you find it out,

But let show me others
Ferruccio Busoni -> Sebastian Bach
or
Franz Liszt who “liked to” transcribe works from other composers (eg. Franz Schubert)
He was an excellent pianist, BUT not a true composer for me.
Others may think different about him.

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Wow didn’t realize there were so many

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I did a simple google search to know if any Bollywood songs had samples from older songs and instead found that a lot of hip-hop music from well known artists in America took samples from Bollywood songs. Not something I expected :joy:

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Want to lose a few hours of your day - check out https://www.whosampled.com/ and you can find out which artists sampled other artists and what the original track was.

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That’s really interesting!

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it’s interesting to see how different people utilize a sample in different ways

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Yea and a couple of those samples are from iconic Bollywood songs so an interesting find lol

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That is why I like the comedy singers like Weird Al n others as they are the ultimate sampler and have made a good career out of making new songs from others.

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Haha, I never thought of it that way, but he is the Ultimate Sampler!

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I think everyone always knew this was sampled, but it’s awesome anyway:

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I agree, If its done ‘Properly’ sampling is so effective and its a skill itself, to take a song thats perhaps already a hit, then craft a whole new track out of it and then create another potential hit song, but also remind people of the original is amazing.

Weird Al is a genius with rewriting lyrics and building a career out of parody songs :rofl:

This is a great use of sampling:

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Haha, I totally forgot about this one :rofl:

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And it is a good thing that it happens , especially in classical music - pieces of music are built up from common building blocks to start with, if you couldn’t borrow from what came before there wouldn’t be much new to create.

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