Listening to the two songs Oops Upside Your Head and Uptown Funk, it is easy to tell there are many similarities found between them. Oops Upside Your Head is a funk anthem written in 1979 by the The Gap Band, while Uptown Funk is a pop song recorded by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. Before we go on you may not be familiar with the songs, so listen to them below.
For the two songs we must look at this differences between copying, transforming and recombining. In the video of Everything is a Remix, copying is the way that we learn. We observe how others do things and use that to influence our own ideas. Transforming is the way we take others ideas but recreate them into our own. Finally, recombining is putting different ideas together to create something new.
Now analyzing the comparison of Oops Upside Your Head and Uptown Funk. Like many cases, these two songs have very similar baselines and beats. Listening to the audios of these two songs it is very difficult to even tell which one is which. Uptown Funk is a more recent song, being released in 2014, while Oops Upside Your Head was released in 1979. Uptown Funk uses many unique hooks throughout the song, proving that it is copied from Oops Upside Your Head.
When Uptown Funk was released in 2014 no credit was given to The Gap Band. The spokes person of The Gap Band, Kali Bower claims that the hook of the two songs is too similar to be a coincidence.
In April 2015 action was finally taken by The Gap Band for their credit when a settlement was made with the band and producer for them to receive a combine seventeen percent state, as well as credited as the writers of the track.
Although The Gap Band did receive credit towards the song a year later after it being released, if Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars had given them credit from the beginning, they would have saved a lot of money and hassle.
Times, James. “‘Uptown Funk’: Bruno Mars And Mark Ronson Accused Of Plagiarism.” Culture, Tech Times, 26 Feb. 2016, http://www.techtimes.com/articles/136244/20160226/uptown-funk-bruno-mars-and-mark-ronson-accused-of-plagiarism-compare-the-songs-here.htm.
Hannah's Blog 