Unintentional Plagiarism
Sometimes songwriters intentionally and unintentionally plagiarize other writers. The great songwriter, Jimmy Webb, has said that songwriters steal material on a regular basis. My take on it is a bit different than his. I don’t agree that the writers steal with regularity. I would agree that arrangers steal ideas but songwriters are held much more accountable. I certainly disagree with statement “In the pop music field begging, borrowing and stealing is so prevalent as not to even cause the proverbial eyebrow to be raised.” Every once in awhile you hear something like John leaning on Chuck Berry in “Come Together” and nothing comes of it but you just as often hear of George Harrison losing a lawsuit over “My Sweet Lord” due to its similarity to “He’s So Fine”. I would encourage all of you to avoid ‘borrowing’ from other songwriters. It’s ok to be influenced. It’s not ok to steal.
Check out the Chiffons singing “He’s So Fine”
Now check out George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”
Did George inadvertently rip off the melody? You be the Judge!
Speaking of plagiarism, inadvertent plagiarism is a real problem. It happens to many songwriters and it’s what happened to George Harrison in the lawsuit mentioned previously. I remember years ago completing a song convinced that I had just written a hit. I played it for a friend of mine who quickly pointed out that I had simply recorded the melody line to ‘Help’! Dang! There’s no real way to avoid it other than to play your music for other people and see if anyone points a similarity out.
In the great book “Songwriters on Songwriting”, edited by Paul Zollo, Paul asks the following question of Carole King, “So when you’re at the piano, and it’s not flowing, you don’t force it; you just get up and come back to it at a different time?”
Addressing writer’s block and accidental plagiarism, Carol’s response was, “Right. Another thing that I do is I might play someone else’s material that I really like that sometimes unblocks a channel. The danger in that is that you’re going to write that person’s song for your next song. It’s just sit down and, again, if your lyric writer, read something that you really like, enjoy something that you really like. Or sometimes I’ll play something of my own that I really like, something that is already existing that is fun.”
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Jim Bruno's Songwriting Class 