Whatever, Rachel.

I am a longtime Coldplay fan. Viva la Vida rocked my socks off and their latest EP is great. I wish I could write like they do.

But “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall” is NOT 100% original. Is that bad? Not really. Most music, especially pop music, HAS BEEN DONE IN SOME FASHION OR ANOTHER BEFORE.

But that’s not to say everyone is plagiarizing. There is constant creativity going on all the time.

I listened to the new single and thought the chord progression sounded sooooo familiar. I couldn’t trace it until it just came to me recently.

This is the Coldplay song. Listen to the chord progression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kf_6BWcOOg

Great, huh? Yeah, it’s sweet. But I did some research and found that Chris Martin actually took the basic riff of the song from THIS latin dance hit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QMKr_EoSWI

Oooookay. Interesting?

But I found out that THAT song is SAMPLED from THIS Peter Allen song! This is the one that I had heard before that made me furrow my eyebrows when I heard Every Teardrop for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgq1g-2cQ54

So there you have it. NOBODY “STOLE” ANYTHING! They just worked off of each other.

Because pop music relies on basic hooks, simple easy-to-recognize progressions, and is almost always 4/4 - there’s only so many core progressions and rhythms you can do, because only a few progressions are pleasing to the human ear. Anyway, this goes for Rock, Blues, Worship, and even many Jazz songs (same progressions, just a lot of augmented chords is all). Music is ever changing, but you can’t change the human nature of the listener, which means that in 200 years everything that can be done will have been done….or will it?…………