Every generation has its anthem, the song that gets stuck in your head for weeks and feels like it came out of nowhere. Yet a surprising number of these massive hits owe more to earlier work than most listeners ever realize, sometimes through open borrowing, sometimes through legal battles that only came to light years later. Some of these stories ended in courtroom drama, others in quiet settlements, but all of them reveal how much of pop music history is built on layers of influence, sampling, and, occasionally, outright copying. Here is a closer look at eight songs that turned out to be far less original than their chart success suggested.
Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice
Vanilla Ice’s 1990 breakout hit rode a bassline that instantly sounded familiar to anyone who grew up with classic rock radio. The groove came straight from Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 collaboration “Under Pressure,” and the resemblance was so obvious that Freddie Mercury reportedly recognized it the moment he heard the song playing during breakfast. He made a call to Queen’s manager, and Queen and David Bowie embarked on an enforcement of their IP that ended with a successful settlement and both artists of Under Pressure receiving creative credit for “Ice Ice Baby.”
Rather than continue paying royalties indefinitely, Vanilla Ice eventually took a more permanent route. In an interview, Ice revealed that rather than just settling out of court when Queen and Bowie sued him, he ended up buying the rights to “Under Pressure,” explaining that he went to Brian May and bought the song because owning the publishing rights worked out cheaper than battling both acts in court. Even with that unusual arrangement, the court case did eventually result in Queen and Bowie getting official songwriting credits on “Ice Ice Baby.”
My Sweet Lord by George Harrison
George Harrison’s 1970 solo triumph became the first number one hit by any former Beatle, but it also became one of music’s most cited plagiarism cases. The song, released in late 1970, was the subject of a lawsuit by Bright Tunes, Inc., which asserted that Harrison’s song borrowed musical phrases from “He’s So Fine,” a 1963 hit by the Chiffons, although Harrison claimed he did not intentionally plagiarize.
The case dragged on for years before reaching a verdict that has shaped copyright law discussions ever since. Judge Richard Owen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Harrison had “subconsciously” copied the Chiffons’ tune. Harrison himself later admitted the oversight was painfully simple to have avoided, reflecting that “why didn’t I realize? It would have been very easy to change a note here or there, and not effect the feeling of the record.”
Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr.
The theme song for the 1984 blockbuster became inseparable from the movie itself, but its bouncy bassline drew immediate comparisons to another hit from just a year earlier. Not long after Ghostbusters exploded into cinemas, Huey Lewis took legal action and sued Parker Jr for plagiarism, alleging he’d lifted the melody and bassline from his 1983 song “I Want a New Drug.”
What made the accusation especially awkward was the film’s own production history. It was confirmed that “I Want a New Drug” was used as temp music when Ghostbusters was being pieced together, with Huey Lewis and the News even declining the chance to write the film’s theme song. The case settled quietly at first, though Huey Lewis later discussed the settlement publicly in a 2001 VH1 Behind the Music special, most likely forgetting there was still a legally binding confidentiality agreement in place. That slip led to a second lawsuit, this time with Parker suing Lewis for breaking their original deal.
Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve
Few songs illustrate the messy economics of sampling quite like this 1997 Britpop staple. The song samples a segment of an orchestral version of the Jagger-Richards 1965 composition “The Last Time” from an album by former Stones manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham. The Verve believed they had cleared the sample properly, but the arrangement fell apart quickly.
The Stones agreed to license a five-note segment in exchange for 50 percent of the royalties, but Klein claimed the Verve voided the agreement by using a larger portion of the song, and ABKCO Records filed a plagiarism case, after which The Verve relinquished all their royalties and publishing rights to ABKCO, with the song credit reverting to Jagger and Richards. The dispute lasted over two decades until a surprising resolution. Nearly 22 years after the release, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards assigned to Richard Ashcroft the songwriter royalties and rights from the song, and removed their writing credits.
Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams
This 2013 summer hit became one of the most consequential copyright cases in modern pop, reshaping how courts think about musical influence versus outright theft. The estate of Marvin Gaye argued that Thicke and Williams stole the “general vibe” and certain percussive elements of “Got to Give It Up” for their song “Blurred Lines.”
The financial fallout was staggering for a case built partly on feel and atmosphere rather than a note-for-note melody match. The court ruled in Gaye’s favor, and Thicke and Williams paid 5.3 million dollars in damages and would pay a 50 percent royalty fee, making it one of the biggest payouts in music copyright history. The verdict worried many songwriters at the time, who feared it would make it easier to sue over general style rather than specific musical elements.
Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin
Rock’s most analyzed guitar intro faced its own reckoning decades after the song became a classic rock staple. The estate of guitarist Randy California, who wrote and recorded “Taurus” with his band Spirit in 1968, argued that Led Zeppelin borrowed the descending chord progression that opens “Stairway to Heaven” after Zeppelin toured alongside Spirit in the late 1960s.
The case went to trial in 2016, and a jury initially sided with Led Zeppelin, finding the songs not substantially similar enough to prove infringement. That verdict was appealed, revisited, and ultimately upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020, cementing the song’s legal status even as the musical resemblance between the two intros continues to spark debate among fans and musicians alike.
Come Together by The Beatles
John Lennon’s swampy opening line on Abbey Road, “here come old flat top,” turned out to be lifted almost directly from a much older rock and roll record. The phrase and its rhythmic delivery closely echoed Chuck Berry’s 1956 song “You Can’t Catch Me,” a similarity that publisher Morris Levy noticed almost immediately after the Beatles song became a hit in 1969. Levy sued Lennon rather than the band as a whole, since Lennon was credited as the sole writer. The dispute eventually settled with Lennon agreeing to record several songs from Levy’s publishing catalog for a later solo album, a resolution that avoided a courtroom fight but tied Lennon’s creative output to the settlement terms for years afterward.
Shape of You by Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran’s 2017 chart dominator became one of the best selling singles of the decade, but its pre-chorus melody raised eyebrows almost immediately among fans who grew up on nineties R&B. Critics and fans made comparisons between the melody in the pre-chorus of “Shape of You” and the main hook in the chorus of TLC’s “No Scrubs” since Ed Sheeran’s track was first released.
Rather than let the comparisons escalate into a lawsuit, Sheeran’s team moved quickly to settle the matter through songwriting credits. Xscape members Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, as well as producer Kevin Briggs, were credited under “Shape of You” on American copyright website ASCAP. The financial stakes were considerable given the song’s reach, since the track spent ten weeks at number one in the UK and amassed more than 577 million streams on Spotify alone.
What ties these eight songs together isn’t dishonesty exactly, but the blurry line between influence and infringement that has always existed in popular music. Melodies get absorbed, basslines get borrowed, and sometimes an artist genuinely doesn’t realize how closely their new idea echoes something they heard years earlier on the radio. The songs remain classics regardless, but knowing their backstories adds an extra layer to hearing them now.
