Did Olivia Rodrigo steal from Paramore? (analysis) 

Corrections/other thoughts. 1. Josh FARRO, not Josh Russo. I am an idiot, sorry Josh. 2. Mashups are a really interesting way of hearing the similarities between songs, and how important the instrumental arrangements are to the feel and "vibe" of a tune. Taylor Swift's We are Never Ever Getting Back Together fits...like, too perfectly, it's scary, but again that makes sense! Pop songs are built from the same template, and claiming ownership of any element of that template leads to some dumb places, like we've seen in recent years with copyright cases.

I can't lie, Paramore x Taylor Swift went hard

My first thoughts when hearing both songs was " the whole genre kinda sounds like this"

This entire story could be summarized as "People who listen to the same music over and over accuse music of being same"

I think I might be a sucker for this chord progression, because every song mentioned in this video is one of my favorite songs.

Paramore also didn't file the suit themselves, and they've expressed that they didn't have any problem with Olivia's song sounding like their own

"When you read the dictionary, every book is just a remix" Gandhi

Ya know, Adam makes a point around 10 minutes about what would happen if artists couldn't "steal" anymore. I have to wonder, how many great pieces of art were just left in a box somewhere in someone's garage or attic. Too fearful they may be accused of "stealing" someone else's work.

When I first heard Olivia's song, i was shocked and excited to see punk pop back on the radio. I loved Paramore and punk-pop in general when I was a high-schooler so to see current teenagers have their own iteration is awesome. I don't think Olivia stole anything, she just made her version of punk music for her generation and good on her for that!

When you remake this video in 10 years on why a new artist isn’t stealing Good 4 U’s melody, I’ll be there and here saying hi to everyone in the year 2031

god adam looks tired of having to do this whole shtick every time a bs music lawsuit comes up, but I'm really grateful for it, it needs to be pointed out. thanks adam

Costello's response to the accusations that Rodrigo ripped him off was the most based response I've ever seen an artist give to this sort of thing. Things like this are part of why I love that guy.

My daughter was listening to Olivia and the first thing I said "This sounds like Paramore!" I didn't realize how deep this rabbit hole would take me. Haha

Reading comments with vocoder was so hilarious. Every Q+A questions should be read this way.

My head cannon is “Good for You” is the other girls Perspective from “Misery Business” 😂 the one that lost their S/O

7:00 minute mark is the most important part. Chord progressions lead to similar melodies. Add in punk format and you have an even smaller canvas to paint on, so naturally brush strokes overlap. End of all the cases.

Can we not just appreciate that Olivia Rodrigo managed to nail a sequel to Misery Business written from the perspective of the ex girlfriend? Genius.

My old piano teacher/songwriting collaborator told me years ago -- when I was routinely concerned that I'd accidentally ripped off someone else's song -- that "every song has already been written. It's just about how you decide to put the parts together differently to make it your own."

The way corporate lawyers treat music is devastating. Imagine fiction being treated this way. No Harry Potter, no Wheel of Time. Games? Say goodbye to basically every RPG post-AD&D. It's difficult to tell the difference between similar, influenced, and copied, but the courts lean heavily in favour of declaring legal ownership of basic human concepts.

ugh. thank you for this. i'm a HUGE paramore fan but had trouble even seeing the similarities for so long. even though it's there a bit that's not the same as stealing. people just wanted them to compete bc society loves pitting women against each other. the band themselves don't have a problem, the fact that people are STILL claiming she stole from them is ridiculous

Back when I was writing, I discovered that the book I was writing was basically a copy of a book that impacted me as a teenager, without me even realising. It was a real exitential crisis for me as an aspiring writer. What got me over it was and advice from a William S. Burroughs interview, where he explained how everything is a copy of something else, and the only way to make something seem original is to copy something intentionally. That way you have control enough to be able to hide where you copy something from. While if you try to write something original you just risk copying something without realising it, and thus you won't seem original at all. It makes me think that when we hear these claims of some artist robbing off other artists, that's probably the cases where the artist were trying to be the most original. While the times artists intentionally stole things from other songs, they made sure to make it their own way and we just have no clue of the influence.

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and Misery Business getting mashed together is a certified bop.

I think getting an original music is next to impossible. Art imitates art, artists inspire other artists. So as long as due credit is given, I think there is not problem.

I wish people would lean into these similarities more and just did more mashups lol

I tuned into this video expecting a comparisons between sections but was actually engrossed with all of the music theory and detail. Honestly, great content - keep it up!

Despite all his faults, Shenker was right. Three blind mice is the only song ever written.

That taylor swift paramore mashup was actually so dope

I *REALLY* want a full version of we are never getting back together with Paramores guitar that was fantastic

I think this stems from normal people not having classical musical education. And just because people are vocal doesn’t mean they are right. Song structure, chord progressions, and melodies have to follow set rules. When you narrow the field and have great artists pouring their souls into their music while at the same time paying tribute to their influences this will inevitably happen. Never forget that you were inspired by someone to pursue music in the first place. I’m sure that Haley Williams and Taylor Swift are just grateful that their art has had an impact on such a talented young person. I am super impressed by Olivia and you can tell that she knows her stuff from a songwriting perspective. I’m excited to see where she goes in the future.

"Wait it's all the same song? Always has been" Studying music is basically that meme. Which probably explains why college for music has the habit of absolutely murdering the classes music preferences.

I suspect that part of the crowd calling things "stolen" is because they like one song and hate the new one despite/because of the similarities.

They should totally do a duet together... Like at a concert... I think that's the musical version of hugging it out... If both artists took their music and combined it... I've heard a mashup and they work...

when i first heard good for you i knew i’d heard the song before even though it was my first time listening to it. i didn’t immediately recognize it as misery business which is weird because i’ve heard that song so many times i think both songs are good in their own right. pop punk was one of the genres i grew up with so i’m glad others’ nostalgia for it is seeping into pop music of today. (same goes for nu metal. actually the late 90s-2000s nostalgia wave in general since i have a lot of nostalgia for that time as a later born millennial)

If you could just... do a full song mash-up of Taylor Swift with Paramore, that would be great. That sounded amazing.

When I was a teenager in the 2010s I used to love pop punk exactly for that: because It sounded always almost the same. I just enjoyed the feeling and energy those songs gave me and I wanted It for the longest time possible.

I honestly love it when music goes so well together, I like to try to mash two great songs together cause I think it'll sound great, but I've only made one salvageable mess cause I don't know how to mix songs, but it's still fun and everyone is making a much bigger deal about this than it actually is, all the music that has ever existed or ever will exist has been written for hundreds if not thousands of years, and we've found 4 particular chords that work so well together for an incredibly catchy feel, we've built an entire music genre called Pop around them. If I ever work up the courage to write a song despite the hoards of people that will point to the song I'm statistically guaranteed to end up "copying" without ever having heard it, I would be absolutely thrilled to hear anything that people make with it. That's what rock and roll is built on, and I'm pretty sure that's what all music is built on. We shouldn't be attacking eachother over this, it's ridiculous. Even if the song actually did draw direct inspiration from the other song, that's not plagiarism, that's music. And y'all who are fighting need to chill and maybe listen to some.

I just love this channel. Its adicting to watch, especially because you manage to put words and meaning into what my brain is hearing and thinking but can’t translate to words that mean something.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams itself is considered a "rip off" of Wonderwall.

Can you imagine if we couldn’t use the same chord progression once a song it’s out? We would run out of chord progression in a day!

non musicians try to understand chord progression challenge (impossible)

I absolutely love this video / video essay It explains very well a lot of the reasons that modern copyright law and the hyper aggressive algorithms that enforce it in the social media age make me absolutely furious.

I am suing, this video is a direct copy of mine, see u in court Adam-I know this guy who does crazy awesome breakdowns of copyright stuff on RU-vid I'm gonna text him now

"Structurally, both songs are just Three Blind Mice. That's at least the Schenkerian way of looking at it." LMAO deceased

im honestly as interestded in this content as someone who would watch often but everytime its just so high quality, you do good work and just because i dont plan on watching much i really apprichiate when i do

I've been seeing all these reels and tiktoks with Good 4 U. Something in the back of my head was sparking but i could not figure out why i knew that song so well. Until now. Thanks for all the info!

I liked how you pointed out the "its not stealing, its folk" many of my favorite folk songs directly rip melodies from previous songs that were well known in their communities because then once you learn the words everybody could sing a long

I can't read a person's mind, but this feels like a subconscious lift. It's summed up quite nicely at the end with "wearing her influence on her sleeve." Sometimes you can listen to a band and think "oh, they liked Nirvana" and other times you are not surprised when a group started out by doing Nirvana covers.

This was an awesome video! I am going to use this video for my The Business of Music course discussions on copyrights and creativity!

This happens a lot in genres like pop, punk, folk, and country, where relatively simple chord progressions are used. There’s only so many notes that can fit as a melody over those chords, and folks are bound to repeat them. “You Are My Sunshine” and “This Land is Your Land” start their verses very similarly. “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” and “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” are pretty similar spirituals. “Mick Maguire” and “Hot Asphalt” are two Irish folk tunes with the same exact melody and chord progression. The fact that we are all building on the same musical foundations and being influenced by similar roots means that we’re bound to purposely or accidentally borrow pieces of what we’ve heard before. In most folk music traditions, but especially in Appalachian folk music, there’s a long-standing tradition of learning songs and techniques from other people, who in turn learned them from other people, and so on. By virtue of being different players, or because we decide to change something in the style we’ve learned, different techniques appear gradually, and styles change. I don’t see the problem with songs referencing each other, or having similar melodies. That’s what music is. “7 Rings” melodically referencing “My Favorite Things” is like the exact inverse of Bob Dylan’s “Moonshiner”, which is a song that is lyrically identical to an Irish folk song of the same name, but with a different melody. That’s how music works. We’re all influencing and being influenced by each other. Music is a lot like evolution. You can pick out the common ancestors, and follow the branching paths of slight changes from past to present. Each individual change may not seem like much at all, but in the larger context of deep time, we can see that huge shifts have happened.

Olivia Rodrigo's music isn't my thing but I'm sick of the double standards. Bruno Mars' entire catalog rips directly from the likes of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, and no one bats an eye because it's "creative inspiration" and "throwback." Olivia makes one song in the style of Paramore and she's a talentless plagiarizer because there's only room for one woman in pop-punk apparently.

I made one of my personal favorite beats around the time Unforgettable by French Montana and Swae Lee came out, and would blast it so much during the time I was making my song. It wasn’t til after I finished making my beat and listened to it a handful of times that I realized I had applied so many things from Unforgettable to help structure my own song and then some (I always listen to a bunch of songs and/or throw multiple different vocal stems over my stuff to help me structure my work and see how different melodies work with my stuff etc, but I never focus on just one song for the entire song I’m making to avoid things like this happening). They both still sound different enough to be their own pieces, and I’m actually glad it happened cause I love the way my beat came out and it wouldn’t have happened without me listening to Unforgettable so much. I’m way more mindful of that stuff now tho when I start a new song, but just thought it was interesting how I didn’t realize it was happening while I was making my song especially with how much I was listening to Unforgettable. I love music production but now I always get stressed that I could make something and someone can claim I ripped them off or something (no one buys my beats tho so this most likely won’t happen to me irl ha)

I love your videos soo soo much and the style of editing and how you explain things as well.

There are billions of songs that have been written in history how do you expect one to be absolutely unique and different from all the others

Wow, my jaw dropped at the greenday overlay, on their own I couldn’t tell they were similar at all!

I heard this "Misery Business" song on the radio on the bus a month or so ago, and I realised it sounded JUST like "Good 4 u," so I immediately shazammed it to figure out which song it was.

So many pop songs influence each other it’s such a bummer she got such grief for this.

"I'm sure I've ripped off other people too." Adam Levine. "Yeah you did." Pachelbel.

I REALLY need that Taylor x Paramore mashup and the Green Day x Olivia Rodrigo, HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDED GREAT

I'm really familiar with misery business as a song, I listened to it loads as a teenager, but not once have I ever been reminded of it when hearing Good for you

i would one day love to see all of them collab or do a remix or live or something.. that would be amazing because i love all of them

I have a feeling that music credits in the future are going to look like the authors page on a scientific paper based on result from CERN. Longer than the structure of the work itself.

literally since i was a kid i've had this fear that i would write a song that accidentally sounds like another song and i would be accused of plagiarism even though it wasn't intentional. so definitely what i needed to get over that was a precedent of aggressive litigation...

I write and play music and I would say it's quite difficult to not use certain chord progressions that appear in other songs. You just have to make sure it doesn't sound a lot like anything you know of.. like the whole package. I knowingly rip off my own songs you could say lol.. like 3 or 4 times... because there's a lot of ways I want to play with one melody/strum pattern/chord progression. Music should be free to create! However, when I first heard this song on the radio, I IMMEDIATELY thought of Misery Business and that's never even been close to happening with any other songs with copyright in question..

Great video and I really liked what you said at the end.

My immediate reaction to your first question about if they sound the same was "no, that's just what that genre sounds like."

i remember misery business and we are never getting back together being mashed up a lot back when that song came out lmao. and as someone who looooooooves to do mashups and has a whole list dedicated to new mashup ideas - so many songs can be put together well. it's part of the fun and it only enhances what makes each song great for me. and these copyright arguments are always kinda frustrating to me considering the long history of music being used by other artists and expanded upon or played with as part of the exchange and creation of music.

the amount of knowledge you have about all this is so impressive, instant subscription i look forward to more fantastic analysis ^^

I remember my old roommate was watching Glee when they covered Somebody to Love by Justin Bieber. I was racking my brain for a little bit until I finally figured out Cry for You by September sounded almost the same. I downloaded Audacity and popped the two in, transposed Somebody to Love maybe a whole step or so. The bpm matched up exactly, and even though I didn't make any other modifications besides offsetting the two (it was the first time I'd done anything with music editing), they mashed up pretty effectively, and it actually didn't sound half bad. I called it Somebody to Cry for You, lol (never released 😁)

This exact same phenomenon is seen even beyond music, such as in literature, where it is actually celebrated. It’s widely known and accepted that different character types, tropes, clichés, story structures, etc. are inspired by and recycled from other works. I’ve even read textbooks that encourage finding these similarities between different books to find deeper meaning within the newer works. Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and that carries over to music as well. All artists and songwriters take inspiration from motifs and tropes of their own favorite artists and make it their own, and I think that’s beautiful

I think this is just a troubling phenomenon of musical gatekeeping. I think people want to hold onto this pure creative view of music and that this attitude cannot be tainted by the popular mainstream music. I think this is incredibly troubling with (pop-)punk music where it generally is characterized by it's pure raw and emotional artistic act, so when a rising popstar like Olivia makes a song with some similar and very common characteristics sound similar to a song, people want to tear it down.

Lovely comparisons and examples. It demonstrates your point so well.

i was desperately hoping for triple-q's mashup cover to come up somewhere in this and it didn't but i think it's both absolutely bonkers and makes an interesting commentary on what originality even means. it includes good 4 u, misery business, and we are never ever getting back together, *and* boulevard of broken dreams which was mentioned here, but it also brings in a bunch of super unexpected songs that no one was accusing good 4 u of plagiarizing, but either are fairly similar, or aren't but mesh weirdly seamlessly with everything else (disaster of passion from guilty gear strive, shut me up by mindless self indulgence, immigrant song by led zeppelin, some sonic fan song, etc.) really just shows that sure sometimes plagiarism in music happens but really everything is a lot more mushy and similar than people realize (also highly recommend their version for sucker by the jonas brothers, which combines it not just with a song it was accused of copying, but also with a song THAT song was accused of copying during its time (oh and also with a japanese idol game song titled "kyun! vampire girl" that as it turns out has sucker's EXACT melody))

I have been waiting for this analysis from you for ages. Thank you!

Let's talk about how good that "Same song" harmony was though.

Amazing Report. Youre the real deal. I cant play my guitar or piano without like hitting so many chords from older songs. 🤷‍♀️💝

When good 4 u was super overplayed. I would find myself singing along to it and accidentally just drifting into misery business thinking they were the same song.

the only reason people think it's the same is that they're clearly not listening to pop-punk a lot. a lot of songs sound extremely similar, even within the same band like Paramore they have songs that are hard to differentiate at first but once you're familiar it becomes obvious how different they are. if you listen to early 2010s music that was on the radio it was all so similar and there wasn't a problem, but because there is a separation in time and the current young generation isn't familiar with this type of music they don't see the differences, only similarities. it's like listening to metal for the first time, it all sounds so similar until you're familiar with it.

When my interpolation of Sungazer's "Dream of Mahjong" becomes a massive pop hit, I hope that Adam will defend me in court.

Honestly with the amount of songs being written these days, it is physically impossible to not copy a part of another song

A whole lot of wonderful songs use that IV I V w/ optional vi V turnaround, like Passenger's "Let Her Go" (chorus), Dresden Dolls' "Delilah" (whole song), Lake Street Dive's "I Can Change" (whole song except prechorus), Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" (whole song). It's a great progression, neither starting nor ending on the one, so the momentum continues indefinitely. To my ear, it subverts the V's pull to the one, making V almost feel like "home", but with an added lingering, wistful emotional quality.

when i heard this on the radio i thought "wow this sounds like misery business. is this sound coming back into style? fuck yeah let's gooooooo" lmao. it's a great song! the lyrics are awesome. i love that teenagers are recognizing emotional abuse for what it is an not putting up with it anymore. it's def important to give credit where credit's due, but we shouldn't slam artists to the point that they're worried abt putting ANYTHING out for fear of getting cancelled. then we just won't get any more cool shit

I love the U2 line from The Fly, "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief. They all kill their inspiration and sing about their grief."

I got back home a few hours ago and the Glastonbury highlights were on TV. I've actually never heard of Olivia Rodrigo but she was on and I thought she was doing a cover of misery business

Me, not knowing much about music theory (I’m still learning tho) but watching the video anyways: Great video, my guy. Love your videos a lot!

Ugh finally, thank you for the first sober, non-hyperbolic analysis of these songs! Yes, they're kinda similar. Yes, they're both great. Yes, every great artist has done this. End of story.

If you like the songs and the artists don't care, then, surely, everyone wins. I have always loved the sharing of ideas between artists. When artistic minds bounce ideas and themes off each other something amazing can happen. It's only when something is completely plagiarized that I start to squirm; especially if the victim of said plagiarism cries out, 'No Fair!' and nobody listens or seems to care.

when you overlayed the both, it sounded like a collab. It was so cool!

This reminds me about when I listened to one song by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness called "Canyon Moon" and compared the same notes to another song by a Canadian singer Bryan Adams called "Open Road". If you listen to these songs, you get the idea.

It's always so frustrating to see people without any music education or understanding think that music can just be owned, or should be owned. Absolutely nobody is original, if you've ever heard music before, if you create more it's going to be based on something you've already heard. Entire genres might as well just be a set of Themes and Variations.

My first thought is “how is interpolating the hook of a song legal, when the Marvin Gaye estate can sue anybody and their mother for ‘groove and feel?’”

I just wanted to add that thanks for these videos! I never thought about a lot of what you are telling us but, when you explain it, it makes so much sense. You are way too intelligent! Lol!😁 It's goes without that I've subscribed to your channel.😉

I would love for the analysis of mathematics of music, such as mathematically formula of "pleasing note combinations" in contrast to "unpleasant note combinations". Like the second formula shows up on how many horror movie themes or background music without using the mathmatic formula. Or if programming a computer to randomly make songs with pleasing formula note combinations how many songs will eventually sound like the same as other songs generated?

"never tell the lawyers about 12 bar blues" lmao

I find it really astounding that during an era when virtually the entire history of recorded music is available at our fingertips, people hear one song that sounds like another (which has literally the four most common chords in the known universe) and act like this has never happened before. Also, are we just going to ignore the fact that a rock song went to #1 in 2021?

There’s this really cool mashup called “Good 4 U is a totally original song” or something like that that basically mashed up a lot of these songs- there’s a section tho with some of Inscryption music in the “maybe I’m to emotional” part which is *so good*

Ha. My daughter just played this song and instantly thought it was Paramore. My first thought. Wonder if Adams done something. Thanks Adam!

Music has gotten so petty. Imagine if the Ramones chased every band that copied them. Would've been a bloodbath.

I'd also argue, as a musician (if you can apply that moniker to a drummer), that on a subconscious level even songs we "create" were likely influenced by something we've listened to previously. Besides, as noted, we can only do so much with 12 notes.

when i find a song or a musical element i like, i want to find more songs that sound like it, or have that element one of the original things that drew me to Paramore was a moment about 1:12 into That's What You Get when the band drops out to leave the guitar doing a strummy 10ths riff that reminded me of the moment 1:13 into Reptilia by The Strokes when the band drops out to leave the guitar alone doing a strummy 10ths riff

As someone who missed out on the mid-2000s punk scene, its kinda nice to experience something old but new. I know that if I was trying to write something in this style it'd end up using the same tropes, just like J-pop and anime themes have common musical tropes.