Right. Music and I have a funny relationship, and I think this is mainly because in my formative years I dealt with a lot of people to whom music was a badge of honour. You know the ones, they liked bands that didn't even exist yet. So, an advanced warning, I don't know a lot about this topic but I feel compelled to comment due to one song at the moment: Swagger Jagger.
Yes. Please read on.
Now first things first: sampling. It is a trendy thing at the moment (yes, I am under 40 and just said trendy) and seems to turn up in a high proportion of music, but you know what? I don't mind it. Yes, there are purists but I feel it is fair to say that they have a dangerous tendency of falling into the aforementioned music snob category. A good song is a good song.
Eminem, is a good example of sampling done well. I'm not a big Eminem fan, but Stan, whether you loved it or hated it, was inarguably an anthem for a long time. The reason for the success of this song's use of sampling was the aesthetics (the contrast of Dido's soft voice and the strength of Eminem's rapping) and also the narrative development that Thank You brought to the song as a whole. It wasn't a gratuitous use of a sample, it complimented the meaning and story of the song as well as adding another dimension to the piece with Dido's vocals embodying the voice of the real victim, Stan's girlfriend. This formula has worked well for Eminem and was very recently seen again in Love The Way You Lie, with Rhianna this time being substituted for Dido as the suffering love interest.
However, there is another, less artistic, use of sampling which probably falls into the category of "being a bit lazy". At the moment Jason DeRulo's Don't Wanna Go Home samples Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - this song takes the infamous riff, and of course the irresistible choral "Day-O", and regurgitates a tune which you can thrash about to drunk. Yes it is insipid, yes it is unoriginal but damn it is catchy and at that 3am club-almost-closing point, you will be singing along. So I will have to say that Jason DeRulo, you have sampled well, along with JLS's The Club Is Alive, to create a catchy but meaningless bop number.
So why doesn't Swagger Jagger work? It has an X-Factor contestant, a well known sample and the most meaningless lyrics of all (what the hell even is "swagger jagger"?) I'm going to sum up the answer in three words: Found A Peanut.
While academically we all know that Swagger Jagger is actually a sample of the children's rhyme Oh My Darling, Clementine, I can't help but feel that this musical ditty will be forever be burned into my brain as the longest and most irritating thing that could happen to you on a school trip. Every time I hear this song I am transported back to that school bus on the way home, with my 50p rubber with a museum logo on it, annoyed that I didn't get to sit next to the window. Even thinking about this song now I can feel the anger rising inside me, and with 5,455 likes to 20,554 dislikes on her YouTube video as I write this, I know I am not alone.
So ultimately I think Swagger Jagger can be summed up as follows: "It was rotten, it was rotten, it was rotten yesterday, it was rotten, it was rotten, it was rotten yesterday."
Let's just hope Cher Lloyd's next sample of I Know A Song That Will Get On Your Nerves is much better.