'No Shelf Life Now': The Big Business of Interpolating Old Songs for New Hits

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Olivia Rodrigo, Ava Max, and Doja Cat have all interpolated older hits for their smash pop tracks. How far can the trend go?

Songwriting camps aren’t uncommon, but this was Graham’s first time setting up a camp directly asking for songs to be written with interpolations.Primary Wave, which has been on a buying spree collecting publishing rights from theand Bob Marley, sent all the songwriters a playlist of a few dozen old hits they owned a stake in — offering these easily clearable copyrights as a way to kickstart the writing process.

t one point during the sessions, three different writers’ rooms were simultaneously making their own versions of the track. The guitar riff and hooky verses, Graham says, work well with the guitar-driven hip-hop beats artists like Post Malone have popularized in recent years. It’s difficult to quantify how often interpolations are happening now, because there’s no comprehensive database for the practice. But just a cursory glance at the pop charts of recent years — which fold together data from radio play, retail sales, and streaming — tells an obvious story.

“Solar Power” doesn’t officially interpolate either track , Lorde herself acknowledged the Primal Scream inspiration, telling Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in June that she wrote the track initially not realizing the similarities. She reached to Gillespie before releasing “Solar Power,” and he gave Lorde his approval.

Justin Shukat, Primary Wave’s president, says he pushed Doja Cat’s team to officially release fan favorite and viral TikTok sound “Freak,” which heavily samples and interpolates Primary Wave talent’s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Primary Wave took a stake in Anka’s catalog in 2019. Doja Cat, he says, didn’t have plans to release the song, even as it went viral last year, but Shukat persuaded her team otherwise.

“The wonderful thing about where we are is that you make a record, there’s no shelf life now,” he says. “If you make a great quality record, it might not ignite that fire immediately, but I believe that if the hit’s there, it will find its audience at some point.” The service has already seen some early successes, with Drake and Logic releasing songs “Deep Pockets” and “Dark Place” after using Beat Broker to get samples. Georgeff says he wants to add a playlist around James Brown’s music soon.

“The ‘Blurred Lines’ case showed that if the Gaye family can successfully sue over a song where the notes aren’t the same, you could get sued on anything. But if ‘Blurred Lines’ opened Pandora’s box, I think ‘Stairway to Heaven’ closed it back. People are still filing lawsuits, but I’ve seen more success in talking them down from it by showing this isn’t ‘Blurred Lines’ anymore.

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Comments acting like this is normal. It’s NORMAL TO GIVE CREDIT AT THE TIME OF RELEASE! If you’re gonna sample, give the credit to the OG artist. But if it takes 10 weeks and a court case before you slap their names on there.. then that’s a fucking issue.

Wait, if it’s 7 Korean men BTS_twt , it’s called plagiarism, but if it’s some Disney child star turned pop star, it’s called interpolation? Even if she only recently added credits to some original writers and pay them after weeks on being in top 100 charts? 🤷🏻‍♀️ hmmmm…

THAT'S what they are calling it these days. INTERPOLATING.

Since Olivia Rodrigo only gave writing credits to Paramore two weeks ago, it seems to me more like she got busted. If not, why not give the credit at the beginning? Why wait till now?

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