They made a soundtrack of copyright-free music 

When I hear "public domain music" I immediately think of Kevin MacLeod, although his songs are technically royalty-free rather than copyright-free

JJ: "That was probably pretty easy to recognise, right?" Me: "Yeah it's from Lemmings"

Fun fact: during the 1991 coup in Russia, when Soviet hardliners rose up against Gorbachev and Yeltsin, they also made the Soviet TV broadcast Swan Lake non-stop to deny coverage to their opponents. As a result, the Swan Lake ballet is now seen in Russia as one of the symbols of that era and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ah yes, DMA designs, the studio that brought us Lemmings and a small series called *Grand Theft Auto*

I'd add a few: The Entertainer, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again, and Amazing Grace. They are all culturally significant songs in the public domain as well

In France, Chopin's Funeral march is still used in very serious, official contexts, for instance for national funeral ceremonies, like for Jacques Chirac's funeral at the Invalides.

'JJ is so friendly, I want to be his friend. He gives off such calm wonderful energy.' My girlfriend just said this and I wanted you to know. I really appreciate your videos.

I absolutely love that we never know what random topic we will get! This was really interesting and it never really accrued to me that it was all remixed music into 16-bit! Tho I will say hearing them all really punched me in the nostalgia nerve

I will have you know that I, an American, was scratching my head when you said Americans are scratching their heads, but it was because my head was itchy.

13:34 This reminds me of a song we have here in the U.S. called "99 Bottles of Beer." I don't know the origin but the song is popular on long road trips. It's just like Ten Green Bottles, where you count down the number of bottles that so happens to sit on a wall.

The English song "How Much Is that Doggie In the Window" is actually based on "Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone" by Septimus Winner (1827-1902) which itself is based on the Austrian folksong "Zu Lauterbach Hab Ich Mein' Strumpf Verlor'n". So the Lemming arrangement which naturally doesn't have any lyrics can rely on the recognizability of the Pop/ children's song version while also staying in the public domain.

Re 'too soon': Monty Python actually have a song called "The Decomposing Composers". (Containing the unrivaled, genius line 'you can still hear Beethoven, but Beethoven cannot hear you.')

"Too soon?" It's been 230 years. Of course it's too soon.

Any time my brother tries to hum the wedding march, he ends up accidentally humming the funeral march. I'm thinking playing lemmings in his childhood is the reason now.

When you said 'British' and 'folk music' my mind immediately went to "Greensleeves" and "Scarborough Fair", lol. What a fascinating topic, wonderfully presented as always! Another award-winning video from the mind of JJ McCullough.

Fun fact by a musician here: The colloquial "Turkish March" is neither a march, neither Turkish, let alone a standalone piece! It is the third movement of the Sonata in A major for Keyboard by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and it's actually called "Rondo Alla Turca", which means "Rondo in Turkish style". A rondo is typically a musical form notated ABACADA... etc. where A is the chorus, and the other letters represent the strophes; rondo meaning in Italian "round". About the "Turkish" quality, it is actually tied with the "march" thing; since the Ottoman army used a lot of percussion as a psychological tactic against the enemy, it was intended by the composer that the movement imitates the sonorities of the military percussion, hence the "march" moniker. It must by added that it was quite fashionable in Vienna to add some oriental exoticism in art, in order to appeal to the fantasies of the general public or/and the aristocratic class. A good example would be (i forgot the name of the opera, but it is about a Serail and it is a singspiel - a German form of comic opera). Have all a nice day!

As a musician, I can say that copyright can be very annoying, but as an avid reader of classic literature, public domain law is amazing

That decomposing line had me laughing so hard

RE: popular western music public domain: Jazz! Although most popular jazz standards are not in the public domain, they are often covered and reinterpreted so much that they might as well be. For example, there are apparently over 1,000 commercial recordings of the jazz standard "Autumn Leaves" according to Wikipedia, even though it was written recently enough (1945) to still be protected from the public domain. (Also the Lemmings soundtrack has a distinct lack of Beethoven-- symphonies 5 and 9, moonlight sonata-- but I probably won't be the only one to point that out.)

Haha what a unique topic. This delights the music nerd in me.

I just found out today that there are two different Wedding Marches. I had thought Wagner's "Here comes the bride" and Mendelssohn's wedding march were the same piece :O

Greatest hits of the public domain is a pet interest of mine, and there are some surprisingly popular tunes that are technically public domain/folk/traditional songs: - "House of the Rising Sun" made famous by Eric Burdon & The Animals is an old folk tune, possibly English and from the Renaissance/Middle Ages - "Sloop John B" made famous by the Beach Boys is a Bahamian folk song known as "John B. Sails" - "La Bamba" made famous by Richie Valens is a Mexican folk song from Veracruz - "Rockin' Robin" made famous by Bobby Day is in the public domain prematurely due to oversights in copyright registration - "St. Thomas" a popular latin-jazz standard introduced to most of the world by saxophonist Sonny Rollins, is actually a Bahamian/Caribbean folk song known as "Sponger Money" or "Fire Down There"

Camptown Races is among the most famous American folk songs, although it started as a pop song by Stephen Foster.

It wouldn't have fit the tone of the game, but the love theme from Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" is definitely part of the Western Public Domain Canonᵀᴹ. You probably know already, but it's the tune that's always played in cartoons when someone falls in love.

The UK version of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and the Theme from "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" go surprisingly well together....

What a world to live in if we got the Beatles in Lemmings lmao

If you thought the last one was bizarre, try listening to "Jimmy Crack Corn," where it's supposedly a song about a former slave reminiscent the time he allegedly murdered his slave owner by blaming it on the blue tailed fly that scared the horse and the horse knocking over the slave owner, died as a result, and the slave got away with it, all while he was drinking whiskey as he remembers it.

Quite a few tracks are remixes of other DMA Design titles, Shadow of the Beast and Menace especially. But was "Diggers and Climbers" an original track? That[s one that's quite popular to cover in the remixing community.

I'm proud to live in the hometown of DMA Designs, in Dundee, Scotland. Dundee is known for being one of the best cities for game studios in the UK. Some other game studios based in Dundee are 4J studios (which is known for porting minecraft to most original consoles) and quite recently, Rockstar Dundee

"Tarantella Napletana", a song which has become the international musical cue for "we're in Italy now." "Funiculì, Funiculà", an italian song written as an ad for the new cable railway on Mt. Vesuvius in 1880. Even its own time, it was mistaken for a traditional folk song. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Grieg is also pretty iconic. Composed in 1875, it has a very strong "video game" feel because it starts out slow and becomes more and more intense, as if you're fighting the Mountain King and he enters the second phase.

"the famous Austrian composer, who began decomposing in 1791" lmaooo

I grew up playing this game on my Stepfather's Amiga. These songs are about as interchangeable with pure nostalgic emotions as rushing to buy a can of Crystal Pepsi before they were sold out each day at my elementary school's vending machine. Thank you for shedding light on something I thought no one else cared about but me. I very much love your content, good sir.

A composer here, really love you shining the topic on this frustrating boundary that shows with copyright.

Well, luckily "Happy Birthday To You" can now be added to this list.

Love how you distilled this retro game's little soundtrack into a concentrated analysis of our collective cultural musical understanding. Your channel is one of a kind JJ. Love from Ontario

Interestingly, I played this on the PC around that time and I remember a very very different soundtrack. No recognizable songs (public domain or otherwise) but still catchy. The game play looked very slightly different too (I didn’t recognize the levels but I’m going back 30 years now). I recorded the songs on cassette (and maybe converted them to CD) because of their catchiness but I don’t know if I still have those recordings or if I did a way to play it. EDIT: OK a RU-vid search tells me I played “Oh No More Lemmings”, which would explain a lot. Including why they seemed to go all original music for this sequel.

Hey JJ, completely unrelated but I was curious if there was an interesting story to how the Northwest Territories split in two. When I was growing up I could always tell how well funded a school was just by how old their posters were of Canada and whether they had Nunavut on it or not. I've asked once or twice over the years but have never gotten a concise answer on how it happened or why it was wanted. The closest I got was somebody explaining it to me as something like the provincial/territorial equivalent of a tax dodge.

The green bottles one kills me because it sounds so classy and you damn well know the American version is “99 bottles of beer on the wall” 🤣

Hard to imagine somebody just sitting down and writing "How much is that doggy in the window?" It just gives off such thick traditional nursery song vibes...

Never was a fan of contemporary copyright laws. The term is too damn long, most bits of culture that become public domain tend to be culturally irrelevant due to the vast amount of time that has passed since its creation. I always liked the timeframe established by the American Founding Fathers: 28 years. In a world in which the 28-year term is still law, a young couple could watch the original Star Wars trilogy in theaters, and then see their Gen-Z kid writing their own Star Wars movie in the 21st century. People should be free to play with and re-use recent culture. Needing to ask a rights-holder's permission (who are often not even the original creators, but their descendants, or a company that purchased the rights from the estate) is stupid.

Nothing like a guy in his late 30s talk about children’s music. Truly a great video JJ!

9:50 I think the phrase “London Bridge is falling down” is a euphemistic or more formal way to say that the British monarch is dying.

For the Ten Green Bottles song, we have a song with bottles of beer on the wall that I think is pretty similar in the US. The music isn't the same, but the premise of having an amount then losing one each verse is the same.

The artist Charles Vess made a book that had comic book adaptations of traditional folk songs, only to discover that one of them, “The Black Fox” had been written relatively recently, so much so that the songwriter was still alive. Luckily he was cool about the whole thing when Vess gave him a credit

Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" is a part of every graduation ceremony.

Not gonna lie, this dude did a good job remaking/remixing these songs. Track 8 especially...

Interestingly, the copy of Lemmings (+ 'Oh No! More Lemmings') I had on PC back in the 90s (UK market) seemed to have omitted some of the tracks you mention where the rights to it are more in contention. I was confused when they were brought up as I played that game to death and never heard them.

I would add "Ode to Joy" aka "Symphony Number 9 in D minor, Opus 125" by Beethoven. This is probably the most pervasive of the music that come from the Western canon produced by one of the old Masters (Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Handel, Tchaikovsky, etc.) It became an Olympics song, church song, national anthem, children's song, drinking song, tv theme song, holiday song...

One of my favorite inclusions was in Wild Gunman, when you would lose a duel, the Funeral March would play with "YOU LOSE" flashing across the screen. A nice touch imo.

Great video! You could do a follow-up about the composer Kevin MacLeod. He releases all his music royalty free and is the source of like half the background music on RU-vid.

In Scotland there is a song to the ‘She’ll be coming round the mountain’ tune in Scots, called ‘You Cannae Shove yer Granny Aff a Bus’, in other words, you can’t push your grandmother of a bus

I'm sure it's been mentioned already but the same practice applied to the Parodius series from Konami where it was mostly wacky remixes of classical tunes (as well as Konami game music) and it really adds to the vibe if that makes sense

The soundtrack for the first Doom games from the 90s is pretty interesting. Apparently it was created by some dude who had a deep knowledge of copyright laws. Every track is a super recognizable heavy metal song from those years, but with enough changes to make the game sue-proof

The sequels appear to have even more public domain classics. I'd love to hear a breakdown of Greensleeves, it's a personal favorite!

Everytime I hear this topic I remember about the tragic episode of Australian band Men at Work and the legal dispute with the copyright holders of the song "Kookaburra".

these full Length vids are nice man. would love to see more

I loved Lemmings, this is a fantastic nostalga trip. Thanks J.J!

This is such an interesting topic that I never knew I wanted to learn about. Thank you J.J.

Man this is why I love this channel, what an interesting and unique topic that's so well presented.

For most of my childhood, the Lemmings soundtrack (particularly the version I played, the DOS version) was my favorite music.

Who would've imagined these guys would go on to make Grand Theft Auto.

Trance is iconic. You know, the songs that played during youtube tutorials back in the day

I didn’t expect that I would be watching a video today on the music from the video game lemmings but it brought back lots of happy memories. JJ your content is always so different from everyone else which I love

I've often heard that the lyrics to "She'll be coming round the mountain" were a coded star map that slaves could use to navigate when they escaped at night. The six white horses were the pleadies specifically, but I don't know if it's true.

Fun fact DMA Designs turned into Rockstar North

We know the last song in Belgium as "If you're happy and you know it clap your hands" or "I've seen the sun descending in the sea" (translated from Dutch). I've never heard of "She'll be coming 'round the mountain when she comes" before this video. It's interesting to hear the different lyrics of kids songs in other languages!

You are so full of information and the way you tell your facts is interesting and entertaining. Great video, love your channel.

I love your accent & speech pattern/rthym! I could listen for hours!

Considering almost all music composed before 1915 is public domain, and I think at least some music written before then is good, I would say yes! Lol

Just want to correct you on something, this game's renditions of the Can-Can, How Much is That Doggie in The Window, Ten Green Bottles and She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain are actually Brian Johnston (the composer you mentioned earlier)'s remaining tracks in the final game, (as proven by the original demo's files which featured only Johnston's tracks, including the copyrighted ones, seen here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0g5MZ2NmmK0.html) alongside 3 original tracks that weren't made by other people. Alongside the tracks you' ve shown, Tim, as mentioned in the quote, also did original tracks plus 4 covers of tracks from other games by the publisher, Psygnosis. The sequel, Lemmings 2: The Tribes, also uses a lot of public domain tracks alongside original ones, such as Entry of the Gladiators, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Scotland The Brave, and many others. Other than that, great video, always enjoy seeing more love for this game ^^

Thanks for an excellent video of music history! Quite a smart idea to use old songs as a base in a video game. Now I have to check out your other videos. :)

Lemmings is a childhood favourite game of mine, and I remember it so fondly especially for the use of public domain music, which a good chunk of the tracks are. There's another one I believed you have overlooked, though that one is up for debate on whether it is an original tune or another public domain track, the one that's commonly referred to as Pachelbel's Canon, which although it has partly a different progression and melody, still follows the structure of the original composition, and of course, being a composer of the Baroque period, Johann Pachelbel was born in 1653 and died in 1706.

I love these topics so much lol!

Absolutely frothed Lemmings back in the day, have revisited the soundtrack several times as an adult lol. It's so good!! So many of these are bangers, but Lemmings O Little Town of Bethlehem goes off particularly hard - and of course Pachelbel's Canon which is in the game too!

I recognised London bridge is falling down because for some reason, It is also taught to small kids in India's English medium schools, along with baa baa black sheep, twinkle twinkle little star and many others. You are expected to know these songs if you aren't from a village.

The Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven is a very popular classical song still frequently used in the US. It has also been included in many game soundtracks throughout the years included Earthworm Jim, Resident Evil, and the fairly recently the Watchdogs Franchise.

Love the videos thanks for the good content

As soon as 8:59 hit, every '80's horror fan started singing "Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween/Happy Happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock" the infamous lyrics given to London Bridge Is Falling Down by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth for the cult classic Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

The last song in Finnish is a song about stuff that a person wants to give to the listener after the singer has died. Like "When I die you can get my bicycle" ("Kun mä kuolen polkupyöräni sä saat").

Great video J.J, always exited for your videos on saturdays.

Interesting thought I had about track #9: I actually thought it was “Ten German Bombers”, the infamous jingoistic football chant sung by some England fans at international tournaments. Knowing DMA Design’s (which BTW is now Rockstar North, the developers of the GTA franchise!) background, I feel like that was how they knew the tune in the first place.

Imagine someone writing that your music was seen as what was wrong with pop in an obituary for you lol

I didn’t think I would enjoy this video as much as I did! Very good JJ, thanks!

A lot of stuff in the public domain that is undervalued or forgotten these days. I credit my former choirmaster for introducing me to C.H.H. Perry's Songs of Farewell. "My Soul, There is a Country" is transcendent. Pearsall's setting of "In dulci jubilo" is most excellent as well. In fact, many good hymns we sing today originally came from "Piae Cantiones", a Swedish book of Latin hymns and secular songs for all seasons. "In dulci jubilo" is one. "Tempus adest floridum" is an Easter hymn which is the setting for "Good King Wenceslas". Anyone who has played Europa Universalis II has heard at least a few songs from PC.

Dam it, what was the song at 1:39 supposed to be? It's going to bother me to not remember. I think i've heard it before but i can't remember.

Extremely interesting... I know that Williams tune for O Little Town of Bethlehem about as well as I know the original one, and I'm from the states as well! I immediately picked it out though and was pretty proud of that! :D

This is such an interesting topic, love your videos!

Fun fact: To Chopin himself, his funeral march was just a march. "Funeral" was added to it by someone else.

I no longer look at the calendar to see if it's Saturday. I check my notifications to see if there's a new JJ video.

Dmca free music is a bop tho

I'm british and grew up with "10 green bottles" and even I thought it was supposed to be "Itsy bitsy spider".

One of my favorite YT channels talking about one of my favorite things (retrogaming and video game music)? :O Can't believe this! Great video as always JJ!

Honestly stunned to find out "O Town of Bethlehem" was both an American song and a different one that I used to sing in carols. Might be me only hearing a short snippet, but I still prefer Ralph Vaughan Williams since it musically sounds more uplifting.

Twinkle twinkle little star (or ABC) and most recently happy birthday. I'd love a discussion of how certain songs sound different across the pond. Like the bethlehem one had the same words but different melodies, i like the ones that are similar tunes but totally different words like twinkle twinkle, god save the queen, and there's an irish hymn that fits this but i can't remember at the moment lol

So happy to hear all these again:) I used to play this with my mom on the PC forever ago! The music was Awesome especially the original pieces!

interesting.. informative even.. I randomly came across this vid and i dig my man! cheers!

The Wedding March reminded me of how we kids sang it in the '40s and '50s: Here comes the bride, All dressed in pink, Open up the windows, To let out the stink.

'She'll be coming round the Mountain' has an interesting memory for me, (for context I was 10 when Operation Iraqi Freedom started also the celebrity Katie Price was known by her stage name 'Jordan' back then) and at school I remember a version which was called 'We'll be going off to Baghdad when we go' one of the verses I remember was kind of interesting; 'We'll be going off to Baghdad when we go We'll be going off to Baghdad when we go All the Taliban we will hit We'll show the Arab's Jordan's We'll be going off to Baghdad when we go.' Also we had an alternative version of 'What's the Time Mr Wolf' called 'What's the Time Mr Bush' (which would end with them calling out War Time and we'd all play with imaginary guns rather than the standard Dinner Time and chasing of the original version). There was also an advertising jingle at the time 'Hey Mr Kellogg's Man give me your banana' from an advert which would probably not be made today, viewer discretion is advised; (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--mNDDi9fGYs.html) which became 'Hey Mr Taliban give me your Bin Laden'. Interesting times.

A really interesting topic for a Video would be the topic of the most famous and iconic Folk Songs from each country

5:45 this song is actually used in the 2020 Mario game, paper Mario the Origami king. Neat.