Thursday, November 13, 2008

Blatant Thievery

Beyonce has a new album coming out called "I Am/Sasha Fierce". It's a two disc release that is supposed to reflect two distinctly different sides of her personality. One of the first releases was "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)". Here's the video.



Catchy tune, although her use of "oh, oh, oh" is becoming old, and the track on this song is eerily similar to "Get Me Bodied" from her last album.

When you search for the above video on Youtube, a clip of Gwen Verdon pops up. She's doing her husband, Bob Fosse's choreography entitled "Mexican Breakfast".



Notice any similarities? No? Well then, watch this.


Here's the rant: Are you kidding me?!!!! Did she just blatantly lift Fosse's choreography? Right there at the beginning. Yep, she sho' did! Okay then, well I must have missed it in the video when she gave Fosse a shout out. I missed it, right? Must have blinked. Let me play it again. Nope, no shout out. I can't believe she stole choreography!

Okay, there is this video of her on BET's "106 & Park" in which she admits to having seen the Verdon clip on Youtube. Here's that clip (play the second video on the site. It's about 20 seconds in). http://hiphop.popcrunch.com/beyonce-106-park-video-october-14/ She said she thought it was cool that it was done in one shot and that she wanted to do something in one take like that because it's different than what videos today look like. Never once did she say anything like, "Fosse is cool and I wanted to honor his choreography and add my own twist to it". Nope. Nothing that remotely sounded like that. I'm an English major, and in my world, this would be called plagerism.

Note: All videos were found on www.youtube.com.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

But we live in the Vocorder generation. What do I mean? I recently heard an interview with T-Pain (aka Teddy Penderassdown), in which he said, among other outlandishiggerish nonsense, that he doesnt really credit anyone for his style. T-Pain. Meet Roger Zapp. Roger Zapp. Meet T-Pain. Okay, so I realize that isn't possible, but honestly....you have got to be kidding Teddy Penderbehind.

(I realize that Roger Zaap used a voice box, and that T-Pain uses Auto-Tune on ProTools, but the effect is the same...a computerized sounding voice).

I say "Blatant Thievery".