Recently, the internet has been buzzing about artists “stealing” other artists’ songs, with people saying that “copying” another song is lazy. But realistically, it is not lazy; it is usually unintentional or something called music sampling or interpolation.
Music sampling is when artists take the exact pieces of music, lyrics or instrumental, out of an already existing song. There are also melodies online that singers and producers can sample, without sampling another singer’s music. They then put that piece into their own work to create a different or similar version of an existing piece. Music sampling is different from music interpolation, though, which is when an exact piece of the song is re-recorded by the artist to use in their own song.
A very popular example of music sampling is Doechii’s song “Anxiety.” Doechii’s song was released in 2024. Very quickly, people noticed that the intro sounds identical to Gotye’s 2011 song “Somebody That I Used to Know,” to the point where people can not tell which song is playing until the lyrics start. Doechii sampled “Somebody That I Used to Know” for her song, but even before that, Gotye sampled the melody from the 1967 instrumental “Seville” by Luiz Bonfá. In some ways, these two artists bring more attention to the original artist by sampling his piece, therefore not stealing his work, but repurposing it and sharing it with younger audiences.
But sometimes songs just sound the same, either written by the same writer like “Halo” and “Already Gone,” which were both written/co-written by Ryan Tedder, or using commonly sampled melodies like Sabrina Carpenter’s song “Espresso.”
Music has existed for thousands of years and there are only 12 notes on a Western musical scale. These different notes are played on different octaves and in different orders, but all songs consist of these notes. A piano, an instrument used in almost every song, only has seven octaves, plus a few extra notes. A guitar can have three or four octaves. Drums do not have octaves, but are tuned to produce a specific pitch. There are only so many different chord progressions that can be made from these limited notes, so some songs are bound to accidentally sound the same.
Two other songs currently being compared heavily online are Taylor Swift’s song “The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter)” from her album released in October 2025 and the Jonas Brothers’ song “Cool” from 2019. The beginning of the choruses of the songs are almost identical for about six to ten seconds, where they differ. This could be an example of interpolation, since the music was not taken directly from the original song as a clip and the chord progressions are still a little bit different. However, this could all still be a coincidence.
When artists are sued for “copying” others’ work, it is usually due to lack of consent by the original artist, or failing to give credit to the original artist, not just sampling music. For example, Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” sampled Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure.” In this case, Vanilla Ice did not credit Queen or Bowie for the original bassline. The artists went to court for the dispute, where it was decided that Vanilla Ice had to give Queen and Bowie writing credits for “Ice Ice Baby,” and had to pay royalties to Queen and Bowie.
Lots of songs over the years have used sampling or interpolation and that is okay. Each song can be appreciated differently and artists should not be shamed for reusing a melody, lyrics or chord progressions, as long as it is done responsibly and respectfully.
