Does anyone know any songs with very similar lyrics? aka possible plagerized...?

Question

this is for a class project on plagerism

Answer 1

Hey, why don't you talk about the Opal Mehta plagiarism scandal? It's fairly recent and would make for good material.

Visit here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaavya_Viswanathan

Answer 2

One famous case involved The Beatles and Chuck Berry. Chuck has a song called "You Can't Catch Me" with the lyric:

Here come a flat-top, he was movin' up with me
Then come wavin' goodbye a little' old souped-up jitney

In "Come Together" John Lennon wrote:

Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller

Chuck was not happy and he sued, I believe. It doesn't strike me as plagiarism, but I'm not a lawyer.

An interesting recent case involves Bob Dylan and a poet from the 19th Century, Henry Timrod. The story in the New York Times is called "Who's This Guy Dylan Who's Borrowing Lines From Henry Timrod? and it was published on 9/14/06. You can probably find it in your library.

Good luck!