Plagiarism or legitimate inspiration in Catalan music?

BarcelonaCopy consciously, says the devil. Be careful not to be accused of plagiarism, recommends the lawyer. In any case, make influence a virtue, don't hide it, because we will all benefit, as it's about knowledge transfer. After all, music is a combination of familiarity and uniqueness. The avant-garde tightens the string of uniqueness, chasing the chimera of originality. The mainstream calls for familiarity, recognizable things. Between the two, there is a long way to go, including copying and legitimate inspiration, issues that intellectual property legislation sanctions or protects. Nothing legitimate, however, is extractive plagiarism, such as dispossession of authorship or passing off someone else's work as your own.

Ferran Mestre, in an article in Núvol about the album Pel barri es comenta by La Ludwig Band, asked for a critical approach to the avalanche of loans, plagiarism, and tributes in the songs of that album, while positively valuing "taking an existing song and creating a new one, with its own personality." This is what Bob Dylan did with Woody Guthrie, Oasis with The Beatles, Rosalía with La Niña de los Peines, Nacho Vegas with Nick Cave, Los Planetas with Étienne Daho, John Williams with Gustav Holst, Händel with a good part of his 18th-century contemporaries, Feliu Ventura with Raimon and Víctor Jara... and La Ludwig Band with Bob Dylan and The Killers. Throughout history, immense compositions have emerged from well-digested influence. They still are. In this article, we collect some of the most successful borrowings from Catalan music in recent years.

Mazón and faith in The Beatles

The trumpet melody of Fe dins la tristesa (2025) by Mazoni, the project of Jaume Pla from Bisbal, makes one think of The Beatles' Penny Lane (1967). Even too much. "When I started writing songs again and thought about making an album, since I was enjoying myself doing it, I said: 'Don't overanalyze your work. If you loved The Beatles as a child and these melodies are coming out now, then keep going, keep going'", Pla explained a few months ago.explicaba Pla hace unos meses. Years ago, Mazoni, like other musicians, would surely have given up in the face of the notoriety of the influence, but now they incorporate it naturally. The result justifies the decision, because the trumpet of Fe dins la tristesa rounds off one of the best songs on the album Banderes per daltònics (2025) and at the same time shows without subterfuge where a good part of Jaume Pla's musical imagery comes from. Mazoni, by the way, had already made other excursions based on others' material, such as the album Ludwig (2021), a pop-rock exercise based on the work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Other times, the influence is quite accidental or unconscious, like the introduction of Teresa Rampell, from Manel, which is the same as the introduction to You Only Live Once, a song by The Strokes from 2006. "We had no idea, and it turns out that the first few seconds are similar", said the singer Guillem Gisbert.

The recurrence of La Ludwig Band

A part of Creure, one of the songs on the album Pel barri es comenta by La Ludwig Band, sounds a lot like When you were young, by The Killers. "I copied more than ever, I copied without any shame. I dedicated a couple of therapy sessions to talking about whether plagiarism detracted from my personal value or not. We agreed with my therapist that absolutely not, and from here on out, the axes are buried," the singer of La Ludwig Band, Quim Carandell, told el ARA. The gesture with The Killers is similar to what Los Planetas did in Segundo premio by copying a melody from the song Promesses, by the French artist Étienne Daho.

Aside from The Killers, the artist most present in La Ludwig Band's songs is Bob Dylan, and in various ways. In the album "Pel barri es comenta" alone, there are at least three approaches to the Dylan legacy. In "Tal dia farà un any", there's a double reference in the songs "Simple twist of fate" and "True love tends to forget"; it's a clear game, like the one they played on previous albums, and it shows the group's ingenuity in absorbing the influence of someone like Dylan, a true master of creative appropriation. Another song, "El teu amor", is almost a cover of "Is your love in vain?", but with a keyboard that spreads the aroma of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, two references that accompany the lyrical and expressive talent of Carandell and the band. Finally, there's "On t'has ficat aquesta nit?", one of La Ludwig Band's best songs: the framework is "Where are you tonight?", but Carandell climbs onto the Dylan-esque structure to create a pop monument in a good example of combining familiarity and uniqueness, in which the influencer and the influenced are easily recognizable. On an album about love with poetic traces from the album "Blood on the tracks" (1975), La Ludwig Band, as Ferran Mestre recalls, uses three Dylan borrowings from the album "Street-legal" (1978), as if it wanted to expressly champion this album.

Seagull.mp3 and the strength of the version

A timely cover can catapult a band's career and at the same time establish codes of a different style. The British duo Soft Cell, formed by Marc Almond and Dave Bell, covered in 1981Tainted love, a composition by Ed Cobb that Gloria Jones had recorded in 1964 and which was part of the repertoire of northern soul clubs. Soft Cell turned it into an emblem of techno-pop that reached number 1 on the British charts. It is just one example, scrupulously legal, of the power of a cover. In the case of Soft Cell, the cover was born out of admiration for a song they had heard in a club (covered by Ruth Swann). Although as a result of its success they came to hate it for a time, Tainted love changed their lives. Admiration is what Max Codinach (Gavina.mp3) feels for the Italian musician Calcutta (Edoardo D'Erme), whose song Gaetano he covers. He adapts it into Catalan, retitles it L'hivern avança and performs it according to Gavina.mp3's musical aesthetic (just as Soft Cell had done with Tainted Love); in fact, it could easily pass for his own composition. And it's wonderful. The problem is that neither on YouTube nor on Spotify does he credit the authorship.

The misrepresentations of Remedios de Casa la Fresca

"Tergiversando Paper planes" from M.I.A.", indicates the group Remei de Ca la Fresca in the credits of the music video for Tot el que volem és ocupar-te el xalet (2023). The song, indeed, takes the main musical elements from the track by the British artist of Tamil origin, but changes the lyrics (and the language). Less of a distortion is the version that the Arbucienca band made of Born slippy (1995) by Underworld: Nascut descarat. The maneuver with Paper planes (2008) was to take a pre-existing song and change the lyrics to address a theme close to Remei de Ca la Fresca. This is precisely what the group Kortatu had done in 1985: take the music of Chatty chatty, by Jamaican Toots Hibbert (Toots and The Maytals), add new lyrics (in Basque) to explain something else and change the original title to a new one: Sarri, Sarri, the song about Joseba Sarrionandia's escape from prison. It is a quite common practice in music, especially when traditional melodies are used. On the album Descasada (2026), Magalí Sare covers The secret marriage, "a German song [An den kleinen Radioapparat], with music by Hanns Eisler and lyrics by Bertold Brecht, about a World War II refugee". Sting completely changed the lyrics and made "a beautiful poem about a secret marriage". "I identify with what Sting did, because I like to tinker with songs," explains Magalí Sare.

One of the problems with making adaptations that significantly alter the original song (like changing the language or the lyrics) is that, beyond receiving the corresponding remuneration, the author (or the owner of the composition rights) has the power to authorize or deny the version. If the rule is broken, even if the copyright is paid, it can happen that the author requests that the song be withdrawn from points of sale and streaming platforms, and can even claim compensation if they consider that the adaptation infringes moral rights.

Maggie, Paula, Manela and normal people

Deregulating or relocating songs can have fascinating results. To compose Maggie's Farm (1965), Bob Dylan drew on a whole tradition of folk pieces about farms, such as Tanner's Farm (1934), by Gil Tanner and Riley Puckett, and Down on Penny's Farm (1929), by the Bentley Boys. In 1980 the British group The Specials turned Maggie's Farm into a protest against Margaret Thatcher's policies. In 2007 Mazoni created a magnificent adaptation into Catalan, La granja de la Paula (Paula's Farm), steeped in funk-rock, which could be interpreted as a call for emancipation in a rural setting. In 2022 La Ludwig Band took the spirit to create Manela, no quiero currar para usted (Manela, I don't want to work for you), a variation of the story of Maggie's Farm in the Alt Empordà with an irresistible chorus and a dose of mocking irony nonexistent in the original. Other great examples of adaptation into Catalan come from the group Manel: La gent normal, a version of Common People by Pulp, and Les estrelles (The Stars), a cover of Stars, by Janis Ian, which the Barcelona-based group made inspired by Nina Simone's version and with Joan Manuel Serrat in mind.

Manel, Madonna and the art of nailing the 'sample'

Hang up (2005), by Madonna, owes a large part of its success to Abba. Madonna used a sample from Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A man after midnight) (1979) by the Swedish group; in fact, this sample is the fragment that sets the disco tone of Hang up. Without the sample, the song would not be the same. Approximately, this is what happens with Per la bona gent (2019), by Manel, which incorporates a sample from Alenar (1977) by Maria del Mar Bonet that appears up to three times throughout the track. Each time Alenar bursts in, the song receives a boost. The group Manel asked Maria del Mar Bonet for permission for the phonographic reproduction, which is essential in cases like this. On the same album there were other samples, such as a less notable one from Vine a la festa, by Els Pets, at the beginning of the song Aquí tens el meu braç.

The sample technique developed by hip-hop in the eighties has generated great musical moments, as well as a few lawsuits for plagiarism or improper use. This is what happened to the British group The Verve, who in the song Bitter sweet symphony (1997) used a fragment of the orchestral arrangement that Andrew Loog Oldham had made for The last time (1965) by The Rolling Stones. Adan Klein, who owned the rights to the production of The last time, sued the group. The litigation was complex because The Verve had asked for permission to use a specific five-note fragment, but Klein considered that they had used more material than agreed. Finally, the group had to give up the rights to the song. Be careful not to tie the samples too tightly.

The inspiration of the point of view: Leonard Cohen, Dolly Parton, Rocío Jurado and Manel

Sometimes inspiration (talking about plagiarism would be careless) has nothing to do with music or lyrics, but with point of view. Famous blue raincoat (1971) is one of Leonard Cohen's best songs. It belongs to the epistolary genre, subgenre "the protagonist addresses another man", perhaps the lover of the woman he loves, perhaps himself as a lover in a disturbing mirror game. This point of view, that of the lover addressing the "third vertex" of the sentimental triangle, has led to extraordinary songs, such as Jolene (1973), by Dolly Parton, in which the protagonist asks (implores, in fact) the husband's lover to leave him. "I cannot compete with you, Jolene (...) / Please don't take him just because he's mine (...) / You can have your choice of men", sang Dolly Parton in a song for which magnificent covers have been made (especially one by Miley Cyrus). Benvolgut (2011), one of the peaks of the group Manel and the talent of Guillem Gisbert as a lyricist, draws from this epistolary tradition, and is inspired by two masters of point of view: José Luis Perales and Manuel Alejandro. From the former, it takes the curiosity and unease of ¿Y cómo es él? (1982): the man who questions the woman about the lover's shadow. From Manuel Alejandro, it assumes the forcefulness of Señora, the song immortalized by Rocío Jurado in 1979 and which seems to be a response to Jolene where it is the lover who addresses the wife. Benvolgut plays with both points of view in a perfect example of legitimate inspiration that yields a splendid fruit.