I’m a bit late to this party, but I just barely listened to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” song over the weekend [I'm not much into all the latest pop songs]. It’s a very catchy song and I caught myself humming it several times. A hit pop song, for sure. But it sounded very much like a song I had heard back in 1989 from another female pop star who was all the rage: Madonna’s “Express Yourself” from the album “Like A Prayer”

I had to listen to both songs several times to make sure I wasn’t just being crazy. Nope, I wasn’t. Here’s a comparison I found that goes back and forth between the two songs

And both songs mashed together, playing side by side

Homage or Rip Off?

I know lots of Gaga fans out there that were just babies when Madonna expressed herself, but for those that know Madge’s music well, what say you? Is the Lady just paying homage or is there some unoriginal chorus swiping going on here?

For me, I think it’s about half. Some homage, some “let’s see how close yet not too close we can get” going on here. Guess we’ll see what happens in the coming months once the new Lady Gaga album drops.

Here are four tracks that are memorable to my many hours of listening to the radio – from classic rock to modern alternative.

Steve Miller Band – “Jungle Love”

I remember hearing this song all the time on the rock radio station. The line “where everything is peaches and cream” and the guitar twinge that follows are permanently stuck in head, not to mention the whistling that both starts and finishes the song.

“Jungle Love”

Guns N’ Roses – “Patience”

To be honest, this is my least favorite song from this great band. Combining cheesy and horrible lyrics with Axl’s whistle has been burned into my memory from the countless times I heard it played on just about every pop and rock station some 23 years ago. Which also explains why I put the YouTube version here – I don’t own this song.

Guns N’ Roses – “Patience”

Supertramp “Goodbye Stranger”

From the 1979 album, “Breakfast In America”, this song has the least amount of whistling of these four, but since I really enjoy hearing this song, I wanted to include it here.

“Goodbye Stranger”

Peter, Bjorn and John “Young Folks”

A giant alternative hit, these guys showed the younger generation what a whistle can do for a song. It’s very catchy, almost to the point of “please stop” but then you hear it again and start to whistle along.

“Young Folks”

What are some other songs that use the power of the whistle that you can think of? Chat away below.

iTunes is getting long in the tooth. The interface hasn’t changed in years. Yes, there have been some cosmetic changes here and there and lots of cool and useful features added, but in general, it’s looked and acted the same for many years. I am mostly ok with that, as I’ve learned how to navigate around my music and videos and can make things work for me very easily. I wouldn’t mind seeing some changes, though.

So when I went to Apple’s main site on Monday morning and saw the above, I became curious. I wonder what changes will be announced this morning. Here’s my guesses:

• Streaming and subscription service – We already have last.fm as a decent site for streaming and music discussion. The previous lala site was purchased by Apple. The inevitable would be to see some sort of offering from Apple.
• 90 Second Song Previews – This would be nice for quite a few songs that need more than the 30 seconds currently available.
• Remove DRM from videos – Hey, a boy can dream, can’t he? They did it for music, maybe someday, our video purchases will be liberated, too.

Ladies and Gentlemen…

… The Beatles

None of the above came true. It was the Fab Four that are now on iTunes for the big news this morning.

I celebrated at 7:58am and purchased “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” from The White Album. This is big news since any change in the types of media that music is offered on, getting The Beatles onto that new format is a labor of negotiations, licensing and all sorts of back and forth talks to work it all out. So love them or hate them, The Beatles on iTunes is an important step in the world of music.

As for my other wishes for changes to iTunes, I guess we’ll wait for future announcements and events.

YouTube and Warner Music Group (WMG) have gone through a divorce.

This all stems around WMG’s decision to not continue their license agreement with Google (owner of the YouTube brand), sifting through the millions of YouTube videos and removing songs “belonging to WMG” that were part of user-uploaded video submissions.

This decision has permanently changed any uploaded YouTube video that used a WMG artist’s song for any reason. Such is Warner’s far-reaching efforts to protect any of it’s precious properties that it takes out other label’s artists in the process.

For example, in my video Snowy Sunday Ep. 002, I use clips of three different songs: Dean Martin “Let It Snow”, Crowded House “Four Seasons In One Day” and Van Halen “Dreams”. Of these three artists, two of them are with Warner [Dean Martin and Van Halen]. Crowded House gets crowded out of the YouTube house, at least when their songs are used alongside any WMG artist in the same YouTube video.

In addition to Snowy Sunday Episode 011 having the audio removed from it [which I completely removed from YouTube right after I discovered it contained no audio], previous videos of mine that had soundtracks of WMG artists have also suffered the same silent fate. Here is the list, each one linked to their respective blog posts where you can still watch the “un-altered” videos using Vimeo:

• Snowy Sunday Ep. 004 – [Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under The Bridge"]
• Snowy Sunday Ep. 002 – [Van Halen - "Dreams"]
• Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 009 – [Led Zeppelin "Tangerine"]

I will not be pulling these videos [at least for now], leaving them in their WMG-revised state.

A Better Solution

While WMG play their greedy fucker card, other labels have used better options for finding their licensed songs in a YouTube video. And I think it’s a WIN-WIN situation.

Let’s take Universal Music Group. There’s been a couple of my videos that have been flagged as having Universal-owned tracks in them. But instead of getting all “nose in the air” and greedy, they get smart: they give me the option to add links to legitimate places to legally download the songs.

The orange-circled area shows the iTunes and Amazon.com buttons to purchase music

Now how hard is that? Actually, not that hard at all. And both Universal and myself benefit. I get to keep the song in my video and they make money from additional purchases of the song [I'm sure Google also has a deal with the labels to make more money on the backend]

A pop-up banner comes up while the video plays, showing the title of the song

They also place a pop-up banner while the video is playing, but it’s easy to click away, if so desired.

The Future

So what am I going to do here? This has put me, a blogger that uploads regular videos, in a different place. Sure, I can be creative and make my own songs and music, but I’m trying to generate laughs on a different level.

I will still continue to use YouTube as an alternative viewing option for my regular videos [sorry, but Vimeo kicks ass in all areas], but I will have to come up with different options when confronted with these new rules.

I can use music from artists that are not on any WMG label, which is what I will try to do. But there are some videos where a certain song fits just right. And sometimes that song belongs to a WMG artist.

I respect the position of any person or company that owns the rights to their music and their efforts to protect that. I’m in no way against that. I’m simply suggesting that there are smarter ways of doing that, where both the end-user and the license owner benefit. It’s called “Fair Use” and it appears to be working for Universal. It can also work for Warner, if they want it to. They just have to put the greedy mindset aside and think like a modern and progressive company should.

Yeah, I’m not waiting, either.