I was having a discussion with my cousin about Led Zeppelin, and his brother starts in about how they plagiarized the opening riff To "Stairway" from a band they used to tour with called Spirit. So, being the scoffer that I am, I chuckled it off and went about my way, until I started doing some digging.

Can anyone else think of some cases of musical similarities or downright cases of plagiarism?

They both go hand in hand, but Spirit sounds so bad ass. I love that old school atmospheric sound it has. It has this sound of mystery.
Stairway to Heaven is way overplayed I actually don't really even like that song anymore and rather listen to Trampled Underfoot x10 before I listen to it or something.

Again I don't really care it they plagiarize because Metallica, Megadeth, Death, Carnivore, Burzum and many others have done it before, but plagiarize the intro to a song from a band you used to tour with is kind of weird.

Also Carnivore and Burzum both used that riff at the end of the song Black Sabbath.

Ehmm... either a tribute or a coincidence. Either way, it's totally fine.

You're right about the similarity part. I never actually knew who spirit was, just LZ.

The only time I've ever taken one of these stolen song things seriously is Daft Punk's Robot Rock. They just sampled a guitar riff and repeated it over and over again.

Well, the greatest act of plagiarism ever.






good thing vanilla ice is still terrible even with plagiarism

Not to mention a riff from master of puppets...

They're not totally similar, but I just thought I'd use it as an example of how predictable music is.

If you were, for example, to take rhythm changes (a jazz progression for I've got rhythm) well, there's a whole bunch of very famous jazz tunes that use that.

Stairway to heaven opening riff is just Arpeggios. If you paid attention to some music, you would notice it everywhere.

I personally think this isn't true, but someone's bound to post it.
I'll beleive if it's true if it was moer than just 1 similarity, like at least half the song, but that one part doesn't really mean anything




If you don't hear the similarity



FFW to 1 minute