JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum In This Together

Good morning guys,

It has been a while since I have posted, I do hope everyone is doing well. I am just stopping by to share a new song that I hope will bring some encouragement and hope during these times.

In This Together



Have a great day everyone

Bless

Hey Stephen,

That's using our Theme Song and Org Motto "We're All In This Together" written by Harold Payne, Alan O'day and Brian Austin Whitney in 2002. (Yes well before the Disney version). You can hear an acoustic solo version at the the 2 minute point of this video:



There's a full band recording of it that was linked here for 18 years until we switched servers, we need to relink it.

Just letting you know that the choruses, especially in the copyright version, is very similar. "We're all in this together" has been our organizations registered service mark since 1998.

Ouch! They do sound similar. And Stephen’s a top poster? Hmm.

I dont think they sound that much alike, Harold Paynes song has much better feel, better flow, better performed, even as an acoustic solo. ANd I think it could be a reggae type of song if done full blown.

He did use the hook, which when I first saw the post, thought it was going to be related to JPF. Theres been alot of stealing of ideas been going on here recently...ahemmm.

That said, nothing to worry about, It is a pretty nice recording....

I dont understand why people still post their songs here.... is it to call more attention to it?

Good luck to both songs as it were anyway...

Hi guys, Brian.
I never heard the song until just now when I listened to the link you provided. Do you think they are melodically and lyrically the same?

I think the hook is similar enough to warrant legitimate concern and would have to talk to my two co-writers and their attorneys to see what they think. One, Alan O'day (Undercover Angel, Angie Baby, Rock And Roll Heaven etc.) has passed away, so it would be up to his publisher and estate. I am only 1/3 of the writing. Harold is also represented by a major publisher and these big companies are free to take action with or without my endorsement.

That said, it only matters if your version becomes a hit as part of any infringement case is damages. The Disney version also similar, and I know that we had Disney staff at our awards shows in 2003 & 2004 when it was performed well before the film. It became the signature song in their High School Musical film. Being that it was publicly linked here from 2002-2020 there clearly was easy access to hear it by anyone visiting the site which were in the millions per year.

The group recording complete with a chorus of 40+ nominees sounds way more similar. I can't upload it to the board, but will try to figure out how to get it back up on line for comparison. It has been our group's tag line and motto since the early 90's. It used to be the global top link on every single page on this message board and was also featured on the website home page until we lost it recently.

Just an FYI. Did you write it alone or with others? Snoop Dog used one of Harold's songs and had a hit with it (I wish he didn't trust me so much) without crediting or paying. They worked it out without a lawsuit and that was a platinum song. We actually discuss it on the interview linked here.

Brian

By the way, Harold wrote another song which used a line from our song and he had to clear it with me and Alan's estate and it was only 6 words with no melodic similarities. When you deal with major writers, publishers and labels they can be unpredictable which is why communication is important.

I am not angry and I don't want you to feel unwelcome here in any way. Just the opposite is the case. I just don't want you to be blindsided if the song has commercial success. Since the phrase has become so common today and there is our version plus the Disney version 3 years later, it's a minefield. The phrase has been at the top and bottom of every issue of our newsletter dating back to the 90's.

Brian

The two songs don't sound very similar to me. Also "We're all in this together" is a good hook, but hardly original or inventive. It's a common phrase and there are several songs by that name. Nobody can really claim to have come up with it. In my opinion (which is not worth a whole lot), Stephen is perfectly entitled to use this well worn phrase as a title and hook. It might be different if the songs were melodically more similar.

Any time you go with a line or phrase that is very well worn, you'll get a ton of stuff all sounding the same, even if they might have never heard the earlier song at all. They just all sort of work out that way. The phrase "we're all in this together" has been used unendingly over the past year as the Covid era. It's on pretty much every blog, video, commercial, out there. It's why its hard to write "bumper sticker" ideas. If you can see it on a billboard, or bumper sticker, it's already going to have been done ad naseum long before you even thought of it.

M

Per Marc.... It has been a slogan used for covid, but i kind of understand what Brian means, he is a member HERE, having a good chance to see the slogan HERE. So, usually in copyright cases, the first thing they try to establish is how did this person come to hear the other song. If they cant establish that, the case loses. Which is why if you have a hit song, you will win more of those cases than you lose, because everybody has access to that hit.

I dont think the title is relavent any more to covid anyway, last year it woulda been much more so.

Now the biggest concern is getting people vaccinated. "one small shot in the arm for man, one giant shot for mankind" hey I like that...

But you're right, over the years ive come up with tons of hooks and titles that I thought were pretty clever, wrote an entire song out of it, and see that not only has the hook been used, but its on T Shirts and bumper stickers.... so technically I stole it from them, but didnt know it..

One such song was called "you had me at Hell No" I remember posting it on one of the older sites, and getting laughs and virtual hi fi's for it, and "what a great idea, wish I thought of that"

Well, low and behold the slogan has been out there, i guess its easy to come up with... from hello to hell no, just fumbling around with the vowels you might hit on it.
https://poshmark.com/listing/You-Had-Me-At-Hell-No-Tshirt-5ba884403b5f822dbbf55bdc
but its out there

Just about anything you can think of as a hook, will show results on google.

That's what I'm talking about. Usage of common phrases and terms. I deal with it a lot here, as almost everyone will have some song that they start out saying "I'll bet you've never heard this before..." and I always have, usually they are lines, hooks, titles, melodies, grooves, etc. that were hits before they were even born.
That's what I was talking about. I didn't listen to the song, just saw the line of conversation. There was a point in the early 2000's that I had 17 titles, melodies, lines, that all ended up in hit songs that were written by friends of mine. But it just proves we all pretty much think alike and do similar things. I've found myself on stage at the Bluebird about to play my new "amazing song" and realize that I had accidentally copied it from some friend of mine. It just happens. Ain't nothing new under the sun. But when you have a phrase that has been used recently, A LOT, it is going to get even harder to find a way NOT for it to sound like something else. That was my point.

MAB

Yeah record companies hire people to go out and find unique, undiscovered talent. But what exactly is that?

and were all guilty of plagerism, because if we had never heard music before, or seen lyrics before what would our songs sound like? what would our lyrics look like. Its already been established... songs have verses, choruses and sometimes bridges. If somebody posted a song that was one verse going on for 15 minutes, the first things people would say... too long, no chorus, etc. But thats cause they have already learned from previous music what a song sounds like.

If they ever did an experiment, some baby is born, but grows up in a remote island, and then give him a few different instruments, and tell him to figure it all out himself. Wonder what the music would sound like, if it would sound like anything, or would he blow us away with his creativity.

I think hed have a better chance of making the drums sound like something, than say a guitar, when he doesnt even know that a guitar should be tuned... but then again, tuning is another invention we came up with, i guess a guitar doesnt have to be tuned.

Long story short, everything is based on everything. Some artists get labeled as unique, maybe they attempt something a bit different, but go too far, and nobody will listen.

I posted a song on here a while back, and Vic pointed out that the chorus melody was very similar to a well-known song. I knew the song, but it had still somehow happened to me. In this case, the similarity was so strong that I think I could have been sued were it not for the fact that the song was hundreds of years old and out of copyright. Still, I changed it so that listeners wouldn't spend the whole time wondering, "What's that tune? I'm sure I've heard it before."

There's an interesting instance of alleged plagiarism in the news right now, where Olivia Rodrigo is accused of copying a distinctive riff from Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up," though not by Elvis himself, who takes a far more relaxed and realistic view, pointing out where he got the inspiration for "Pump It Up," and even where the song that inspired him might in turn have derived its inspiration.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57650176

Ok, let me know what the outcome is.