Picture from Red Bull

I enjoyed hearing 'Creep' for the first time when it was released in 1992 as a single which of course was cleaned up for radio play, and to be honest the song didn't lose anything by having to substitute 'fucking' for 'very'. The song didn't really have an impact on me, it was just a decent song that ended up being played towards the end of the night at a club, it certainly didn't move me to buy the album Pablo Honey, and I haven't bought any of their albums since - not even the 'pay what you like' effort In Rainbows despite the fact that I predicted this kind of shift within the music industry and nobody understood what I was going on about. 

My ignorance/indifference towards Radiohead is beaten by my total lack of attention to Lana Del Ray as I have until recently never heard a single note that she has unleashed on the world. Today I heard some of the notes that she unleashed, mainly because I heard them in 1992 when Radiohead played them. It would appear that Radiohead have taken the hump with this and gone after Lana Del Ray for a slice of the action. 

You can't deny that 'Get Free' sounds a lot like 'Creep', and although it looks like an open and shut case of theft there is a part of me that wants to believe her protests about not being 'inspired' by it. Music is different to literature or script-writing in that musicians are kind of restricted by the amount of notes/chords there are at their disposal, whereas an author has millions of words to choose from, and providing they aren't placed on the page in the same order as someone else has previously done, there isn't a problem. If I wrote a book about a child wizard who went to a special school for wizards then the alarm bells would ring and JK Rowling would quite rightfully haul my arse to court for a well deserved bank account kicking. Yet if I wrote a book containing the words 'wizard', 'boy' and 'wand' there isn't really a lot she could do, as long as the words don't appear too closely together. This reverts to the age old nonsense about a room full of chimpanzees armed with typewriters, someone once reckoned that one of them would eventually type a line of Shakespeare. By that logic then would a room full of chimpanzees armed with guitars eventually come out with a recognisable riff? It would be hilarious if they pulled 'Creep' from somewhere but the reality is that they would most likely get bored and start having sex and throwing their own shit around. 

Music has always suffered from this and the simple way round the problem would be to finish writing a song and then listen to EVERY song ever written just to make sure. Obviously this would be a tad inconvenient but maybe either a bit of common sense, or just come straight out and admit it. Of course you'll have to part with some of the money but a co-writing credit is better than a kick in the teeth, which is what the Rolling Stones did to The Verve when 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' took more than the agreed amount of the Andrew Oldham Orchestra version of 'The Last Time'. When The Stones went back to The Verve with the suggestion of 50/50, little did Ashcroft and company realise that they meant 50% for Mick Jagger and 50% for Keith Richards, which is a bit of a cunt's trick from two well established old men who didn't really need the bunce, and as a result The Verve see nothing from their biggest hit. Why not shake hands and agree to work together like Lily Allen and Take That did? Nile Rogers even does the rap from 'Rapper's Delight' which ripped off the bass riff to 'Good Times', which is a bit like Freddie Mercury or David Bowie giving it a little "Ice Ice Baby" before kicking into 'Under Pressure'. 

Perhaps it is simply because there are only so many notes, because two together will sound like two together in a different song. Of course there are songs where the singer/songwriter is just taking the piss, 'Lightning Bolt' by Jake Bugg is a perfect example of being blatant in the wholesale theft of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' and to return to the Stones for a minute, they took 'Bo Diddley' and turned it into 'Not Fade Away', which in return was turned into 'Mona' by Craig McLachlan. And they had the cheek to chase The Verve. Returning to the beginning of this piece, Radiohead's 'Creep' was taken from 'The Air That I Breathe' by The Hollies, which they were sued for. Perhaps they're trying to recoup the losses for that.

I for the life of me can't understand why nobody has formed a tribute act called Lana Del Radiohead.

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