Kelly Clarkson Is Jackin' For Beats
"No one's gonna be sittin' at home, thinking 'Man, Ryan Tedder gave Beyoncé and Kelly the same track to write to.' No, they're just gonna be saying I ripped someone off." Kelly Clarkson is pissed because her new single, "Already Gone," uses the same musical track as Beyonce's springtime hit "Halo." Turns out her collaborator, producer Ryan Tedder, really did sell the same track twice. Clarkson didn't hear the Beyonce song, she says, until too late. Her point: "It sucks." But she needn't be so upset.
Recording vocals over another artist's music is nothing to be ashamed of. The practice-which the rapper Ice Cube dubbed "Jackin' For Beats" in his 1990 song of the same name-has a proud history in hip-hop. In fact, Beyonce's own husband, Jay-Z, earned his very first hit, 1996's "Ain't No Nigga," by rhyming over the same "7 Minutes of Funk" sample EPMD had used for "It's My Thing" eight years earlier.
Also, anything that can put Clarkson, a generally milquetoast former "American Idol" contestant, in the same sentence as Beyonce, who is the rightful queen of the world, can only be good for Clarkson. Strangest of all? Despite the cheesy, ghost-symphony video, the verdict here says Clarkson's is the better tune.
Beyonce queen of the world? And elevated in a beat-jacking squabble, when a) she's a known Xerox machine (the after-the-fact crediting kerfuffle over "If I Were A Boy"; her endless copying of her Fosse-mimeo for all her Sasha Fierce videos) and b) Clarkson basically was forced to work with the hacktastic Tedder & other "professional" songwriters after her public squabble w/Sony higher-ups over My December? (Note also that Clarkson and Knowles are both on Sony-distributed labels. Someone should ask Kelly Rowland if she smells a rat!)
Let's not even going to get into the whole Kelly seeming to have a sense of resignation/humor about herself and the industry she's been placed in (NB: I don't know if I'd call someone who was more than happy to take on Clive Davis publicly "milquetoast"??) vs. Beyonce being so into protecting her "image" that she had her people mass-eradicate videos of her taking a header onstage.
In sum, Kelly > Beyonce. And Ryan Tedder needs to go away now.
Also in sum, Maura > Dave Bry
And while we're picking on Bry, the signature element of the track–that meat-brained Bonham-y drumbeat–carries Beyonce's track but is buried beneath stringy noodling on Clarkson's. Meaning "Halo" has the better version of the track.
Also, Bry's use of articles in the second paragraph was just all fucking wrong. Wrong! WRONG!
To be fair, (I think) Bry's point is more: Beyoncé > Kelly, commercially, which is true. Of course, it's not nearly true enough that any mere association Kelly might have with Beyoncé would be commercially lucrative, which I think is also Bry's point. Especially when that association reduces to "Kelly ripped of Beyoncé."
Well, but "Queen Of The World" is a little extreme, no? Not to mention that title would really probably belong to Taylor Swift, if we're going by strictly commercial success. Or Rihanna!
Hasn't "Already Gone" already taken flight by some Eagles?
Come to think of it, hasn't "Halo" already been perching on Depeche Mode's head?
Of course another way she could solve this problems is, ohhh, I dunno, WRITE HER OWN GODDAMN SONGS?
well, she was sort of barred from doing that by her label. who are, let's not forget, her bosses. read up! and free yourself of notions of "authenticity" while you're at it!
There was an interesting article in the latest Believer about musical rivalries in Jamaica bubbling over into real violence, and they talked about how the diss tracks the guys produce are often over the same musical beat tracks ("riddims" in the local terminology). Radio DJs just let them play out one after another so it essentially sounds like a half-hour long song with differend duelling vocalists.
Awww, and they both ask "Remember?" as their first words.
kelly clarkson is a dangerous lesbian badass and i will not hear otherwise.
Isn't "My Life Would Suck Without You" just "Since U Been Gone" in the conditional mode? No matter, I side with Maura that Kelly is superior to Beyonce.
WHERE IS CHO David Bry is totally owning the Jay-Z beat and Cho should BE PISSED.