Make It Personal: On Leveraging References and Preferences
Do you worry about whether your work is generic? Make sure you aren’t using generic references, then.
Humans have been telling stories and creating works of art for millennia. Naturally, because we all share a planet, psychology, and genetic history, many of the works we consider to be profound in some way happen to share some critical elements (The Irresistible Novel, Jeff Gerke). With the explosion of the internet, people all over the world are afforded instantaneous access to each other, allowing for rapid growth and exchange of ideas. It also invites many more people to become content creators than ever before. A glut of content has been created in the years since high-speed internet changed the world, such that “originality” for some media only exists in nuances and interpretation.
When comparing novels of the same genre — or even different genres — this might mean that the overarching plots and cast of archetypes might be very similar — only to be differentiated by the background, quirks, and speaking style of the characters involved, or perhaps some detail of the world. This phenomenon shows up in contemporary music quite often. There are two commonly accepted (albeit expensive) methods of directly reusing someone else’s work: sampling and interpolation, which involve reusing another song’s lyrics or instrumental melodies, respectively. In the case of a cover, both might be used — leaving only the singer’s voice as the differentiating element.
On reusing and recycling
Music generally seems to become fair game for reuse after about 20 years, judging from recent samples of “The Boy Is Mine” and “808”. This leads to a lot of debate about whose version is superior. It also invites affirmations that the most recent sampler is devoid of originality, among other things.
One R&B artist in particular inspires a lot of such “originality” discussion: Teyana Taylor. She openly professes her love of 90s R&B and frequently pays homage to it and the artists of that time in her work. Unfortunately, she is frequently accused of “cosplaying” other individuals, most recently: Grace Jones on the cover of her third LP, “The Album” and Michael Jackson in…
