Ticket to Plagiarize

A friend of mine was casually blasting the new Mother Mother album the other day. It's quite good. But that's not what made it memorable. It was the fact that THIS particular song struck me as so eerily familiar:

You feel an almost intimate connection with the melody, yes? As if you'd heard it hundreds of times before. An impressive accomplishment for an artist, yet I was skeptical. The album is too new for me to have heard it at a party and glitches in the Matrix tend to be more blatant.
Then it hit me:


(specifically, 2 minutes and 47 seconds in)

Hm.
Now I know. there are all kinds of arguments to be made here. "There is no such thing as a creative thought," you say. "It's not stealing if it's an homage," you say. "Stop putting words in my mouth, I honestly don't care enough to have an opinion," you say. Well I agree. On all counts. Call it what you will-- allusions, samples, references, tips-of-the-hat-- unoriginal ideas saturate every type of media and they aren't always a crutch. They can add dimension and support and are sometimes necessary in framing new thoughts.

But seriously guys? That's the same song. Go write your own chorus.