One of the things I hear most frequently from Songwriters, regarding their new songs, are comments along the lines of, ‘This reminds me of something… I think I stole this from another song… I know this is exactly like something else, I just can’t remember what…”, etc., etc…

Many things you write will remind you of other songs and will in fact be similar to other songs… There are only 12 notes in an octave… only a limited amount of rhythms in a bar… only so many stories to tell… everything is like something else!

So my suggestion is to borrow freely (call it ‘steal’ if you like). If you take from a source you will almost always transform it in some way that’ll make it unique. And  you’ll learn something about what that writer does, how they think, how they put songs together.

There are two parts to this. One is when you write a song and don’t intend for it to be like something else… but it reminds you… of something. Or maybe you even figure out what song it reminds you of. Don’t let the vague feeling (or certainty) that ‘this song is too much like another one’ stop you from moving forward. I think all songwriters have that feeling sometimes – and it’s even occasionally true. But it’s actually kind of hard to copy something exactly enough for it to be plagiarism. Legally (disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer) it has to be not similar but exactly the same in melody and/or words.

The other part is when you use another song as a model and actively ‘copy’ it, or some part of it – using the groove, the type of melody, the chord changes, or the lyric idea as a starting point. I encourage writers to do this. Far from hindering your originality, I think it can help you find it. As Songwriters, in addition to our own creativity, we draw from a well – the well of the great traditions of popular Songwriting, that we are a part of. The more you know others’ songs, the deeper your well is.

What damage can you do by copying somebody good? Your song might be so close that you can’t use it. Not going to happen very often, if ever. When/if it does, you just don’t use the song.

Or it might be a song very much ‘in the style of’, which a lot of times isn’t such a bad thing. But most of the time it’ll be a song that sounds like you, and you will have learned something from a Songwriter you like.

“It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours.” – Bob Dylan