Sheila

September 1962

Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" is one of those songs. You know? It's totally iconic, everybody's heard it a million times, and to us, it's one of the defining rock and roll songs of the 50s. And probably rightly so. It's a terrific song, simply written but with a fresh sound—the drummer's patter-patter rhythm on the toms, together with Holly's charming vocal eccentricities, make it really stand out from the pack of tired oldies.



In his short career, Buddy Holly cast a wide influence on many singers and performers. But "Peggy Sue" also cast a very specific influence on a guy named Tommy Roe, who is the singer of "Sheila," our #1 hit for today. Wikipedia states simply of "Sheila" that "the song is similar to Buddy Holly's 'Peggy Sue.'" Uh, yeah, you're not kidding. In fact, it's about as clear cut a rip-off as you'll find. Everything that made the former song stand out—the aforementioned drum beat and even Holly's weird singing style—are copied without shame. The subject matter and title—simply a woman's name—makes the connection even clearer.



Is this such a bad thing? Today's lawsuit-driven culture would seem to think so. Intellectual property is serious business, and people get sued for a lot of money for infringements on it, real or perceived. But a century or more ago, people would probably disagree. In fact, the very idea that when you write a piece of music, it's yours and yours alone; well, it's a fairly new concept in the grand scheme. Folk and blues singers of the early century would travel the country, collecting songs and adding them to their repertoires. Where do you think they got those songs from? From our modern perspective, we'd probably say they were stealing those songs from other singers. But from their perspective, things were different. Once a song or a piece of music was created, it belonged to everybody. A singer was free to make his own changes to a pre-existing song, and present it anew.

The concept goes way back. European classical composers constantly aped each other, and there were no hard feelings, to my knowledge. Mozart wrote a set of string quartets that sounded so much like those of his contemporary Haydn, that they are known as the "Haydn quartets." And yet, the two knew each other and were quite friendly in a professional capacity. Austrian law students do not study the historical case of Haydn v. Mozart.

But somehow this seems different, and I can't put my finger on why. Perhaps it's because our pop musicians are now superstars, with wealth and fame beyond anything Haydn or Mozart could have imagined. Maybe that is the reason we expect some degree of originality from them. Or maybe it's because the culture of lawsuits has affected our perception of what is ethical or appropriate in the performance of music.

So anyway, I can't really hear "Sheila" without comparing it to its forebear—once you know the relation between the two songs, you can't unknow it. And it's pretty clear which one stands the test of time.

C+