Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on the “BREWtally Speaking Podcast,” Jay Gordan commented on Rihanna allegedly sampling Orgy’s cover of New Order‘s “Blue Monday” on her song “Shut Up And Drive.“ That track appeared on the pop singer’s 2007 album “Good Girl Gone Bad.”

Gordon said the following [transcribed by The PRP]:

“No. Um, well see it’s, even though it’s our version… I mean it Good question. Especially on this, and I don’t really know where would fall into place with this whole thing. I mean, granted that, that New Order did that song first, right?

We just did a cover of their song. But there was never that heavy chorus part in there, and that’s the part Rihanna used. So I am a little bit, you know, curious as to, you know, how does that, how does that work? You know what I mean? Like, that could be a whole revision of some laws right there, as far as I’m concerned. You know what I mean?

Like, I, I would, I would love to. At least, you know, inquire about that just to find out if, like, did we just lose out on a shit ton of money? Or is it like, can we make this better for bands in the future or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, I think if you change a song enough, that you should maybe get a little bit of a…—especially if somebody samples it after that—it’s like, bro… that’s a redub of the redux. You know what I’m saying?

So I don’t know. there might be some considerations, I don’t know, that people could take for other people. I, you know, I’m just saying if, uh, if looking into it would, would, would fix some things. There’s some things like that that should be fixed, uh, on a lot of levels.

And I just can’t think of it off the top of my head. But there’s a lot of things that I know like that happened and… I mean, you should have a clue as far as like, if you’re gonna plagiarize someone’s shit and you’re gonna like straight, you know, ganks somebody’s music like that or whatever, you should at least clear it, you know what I mean?

…And one thing that I will say to, you know, your listeners or whatever is, uh, you can’t copyright an actual drumbeat. So if there’s no music and it’s a drumbeat of any kind, you cannot copyright. I don’t care if it’s Led Zeppelin or if it’s like the Beatles or anything. If you just have like dry drum tracks that you, you could put, anybody could use that…

…But yeah, you should, you should at least inquire and get a license.”