Publishing companies like Primary Wave and Hipgnosis are making old hits new again. And again. And again.
The rise in catalog acquisition helps to explain how we’ve arrived at a moment when the pop charts are littered with chunks of old intellectual property. Nicki’s “Super Freaky Girl” and Yung Gravy’s “Betty” are just two high-profile examples; you don’t have to look far for more. The Santa Clara, California rapper Saweetie’s “P.U.S.S.Y. (Powerful, Utopia, Supreme, Sacred, Yummy)” samples Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit,” the basis for Biggie’s “Juicy.” Atlanta’s Latto double-dipped Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love,” famously sampled on Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy,” for her song “Big Energy,” bringing in Mariah herself for bonus points. Samples don’t even need to be universally regarded classics to break through, a point Jack Harlow proved when he reused Fergie’s “Glamorous” for “First Class.”
The echoes have grown so constant that self-described music theorists have found fruitful sidelines in doing side-by-side comparisons of the plagiarism charge of the day, game-show style. Lil Nas X’s “That’s What I Want” contains a sly nod towards OutKast’s “Hey Ya” that almost seems like a dare to copyright lawyers or red meat tossed to TikTok detectives; typing the words “Lil Nas X Hey Ya” into Google unleashes a hurricane of conjecture, as well as citations by The Guardian and L.A. Times. Pop-star fashion plate Harry Styles’ “As It Was” so nakedly recalls a-ha’s “Take On Me” that fans did mash-ups of the two tracks, and Genius even lists “Take On Me” as a “sample” on “As It Was,” though it isn’t technically credited in the proper liner notes.
Peering at the pop charts with this mindset, every song becomes a potential whodunnit, rife with potential red herrings. When the brash British pop singer Raye sings “I don’t wanna feel how I did last night” on “Escapism,” is that an intentional reference to a certain Red Hot Chili Peppers classic? In some ways, the Hot 100 right now feels as recursive, all-encompassing, and allergic to new input as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Perhaps some of this recursion is a reflection of a changing guard. Gen Z grew up with even more media at their fingertips than previous generations, and a cohort for whom TikTok is the dominant medium might have fewer hang-ups about repurposing looks and ideas wholesale. But just as with the MCU, once you tune out the parade of surface nostalgia, it’s easy to hear the massive engines of corporate consolidation whirring beneath, and they’re being fed by companies like Primary Wave and Hipgnosis.
