[youtube]http://youtu.be/lU82yOe2AN0[/youtube]
Last week, the internet got up in arms about One Direction allegedly ripping off Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” for the title track of their new album. The two definitely do sound enough alike, as demonstrated by the above video, but that doesn’t mean that Leppard are about to sue. In fact, the band’s guitarists Vivian Campbell and Phil Collen recently told Billboard just that, while kind of giving the band a backhanded compliment.
“The chords are one-four-five,” Campbell tells Billboard. “Those are the blues. You don’t get more basic than that. I think what’s more reminiscent of the Leppard thing is the production, the sound, the vocals, the reverb and the way it’s assembled. That is very flattering that all of a sudden these kids think it’s a cool sound. I think a lot of people of their generation aren’t going to connect their music to ours.”
Yeah, so the chords aren’t ripping off Leppard, just everything else. But Collen told the magazine that there’s enough of a difference that it’s not like this Summer’s hit Robin Thicke song “Blurred Lines” and Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” which Gaye’s family is suing Thicke for:
“That’s different,” he says. “In fact it’s got the mayonnaise jar and people hooting in the background which Marvin Gaye had. I don’t see that you can do that. The One Direction one is very similar in structure, but it’s all good.”
If any good came of this whole thing, it’s that some 1D fans are listening to Def Leppard for the first time ever.
