It's Now or Never

August–September 1960

And so we return to Elvis, one of the true stalwarts of the #1 slot. In my opinion he never had a bad hit (to my knowledge – I may eat my words later), and so it's nice to see his name pop up on the list a few times a year. Ol' reliable.

You may recognize the melody (or not – it's okay, I didn't either) from the classic Neapolitan song "O Sole Mio." And so this song has the nice effect of sounding familiar, even if you've never heard it. And what else can I say? It's classic Elvis, on top of his game, delivering his typically charismatic performance and making it sound easy.

Hey, but isn't this cheating, from a songwriting point of view? Can't think of a melody? Just reuse an existing one! Well, not really. I see it more as a new take on an old classic (the original song was written around the turn of the century), breathing new life into an old song and introducing it to a new generation. There's something to be said for that – the original author likely didn't live to hear Elvis's version 62 years later, but I'm sure he (or she) would have been pretty darn happy to hear people whistling his tune again. Of course, if this happened today, there would probably be a lawsuit (the Internet tells me that the song has somehow been re-copyrighted until 2042. Sigh).

Lots of songwriters rewrite their own songs, or create different versions with different lyrics. Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" is almost musically identical to his earlier "Girl From the North Country," but with different words. And both are great, emotionally distinct songs in their own right – there would be no reason to compare them if it weren't for the similarity in the melody and guitar part.

So is taking a melody from someone else's song so much different? Ethically perhaps, it may be wrong to seek monetary gain from another writer's work. But aesthetically, it works just fine. Hey, the entire genre of blues is basically made up of only a few different song formulae. And what about the folk tradition? Once a tune becomes part of the popular awareness, it takes on a life of its own and can take many different forms. Dylan got in legal trouble with his slily-titled Love and Theft album, when he tried to adapt the folk tradition to our modern world of copyrights and lawyers, but he wasn't doing anything that countless other singers haven't been doing since forever ago.

And to take it even further, here's a meta-songwriting example – Neil Young's "Borrowed Tune."

I'm singin' this borrowed tune

I took from the Rolling Stones

Alone in this empty room

Too wasted to write my own

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