BEHIND THE BEAT :: Washed Out + Change + Gary Low - V
We blogged about Washed Out quite awhile ago and you really can’t visit any music site lately without hearing the work of Georgia’s Ernest Greene touted as some of the best and most original music of the year. While we are not in any way about to claim blatant thievery, we did recently come across an undeniable parallel between Washed Out’s Get Up and a track titled, quite similarly, Got To Get Up from soul funk outfit Change, off their 1983 album This Is Your Time. Let’s be honest here, it’s the exact same instrumental line and similarly to how a DJ might work, Washed Out warped and filtered Change’s original composition and overlaid a new vocal melody. It’s hard to define the ethical bounds of sampling, and we’re still big fans of Washed Out’s interpretation, but we’re nodding our heads in the general direction of credit where credit is due.
Below you can compare Changes’ Got To Get Up with Washed Out’s Get Up. And, as an added bonus, let’s also examine Gary Low’s 1983 track I Want You and Washed Out’s Feel It All Around side by side.
Change - Got To Get Up (128 kbps)
Washed Out - Get Up (320 kbps)
Gary Low - I Want You (128 kbps)
Washed Out - Feel It All Around (320 kbps)
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Gotta say, I like the Change track better than the Washed Out one.
Wow, the similarities are shocking! They must give credit to those artists in liner notes, right? Both tracks sound like loose covers of the originals. Good job on making this discovery.
Scot to my knowledge there are no credits. Nor was I able to track down discussions of sampling in interviews.
Damn, I gots to get me some Change and some Gary Low.
Washed Up.Funny how fine the line between artistic merit and blatant forgery has become.
ridiculous. i don’t see how them being samples ruins anything. it should be clear from the first listen. people have a lot of silly preconceptions about ‘originality’ in music and they act betrayed when they discover an obvious sample or lift, even if it was expanded upon to create something new and evocative, and singular.
i recognized "i want you" the second i first heard "feel it all around" and it never for a second affected my enjoyment of it.
i agree with mike. this is a non-issue. enjoy music, don’t ruin it.
It makes sense to want to fault Washed Out for forgery. But listen to his music after or before hearing what he’s sampled… his music is simply transcending of any or all preconceptions. His music is beautiful in a way no one’s heard in ages.