Α story was recently brought to light by Metro, according to which a Reddit user found that Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” might have been copied from YouTube star Zack Kim’s “Robot Dance”, a tune that was uploaded 2 years ago.
Does the resemblance between the two tracks go beyond mere coincidence, or is it just one of those “things” that happen?
Zack Kim is a Korean guitarist who became famous via YouTube for playing simultaneously two guitars, mixing “Super Mario Bros” and “The Simpsons” themes. The “Robot Dance” video was uploaded on YouTube in 2011, quite some time prior to Daft Punk’s single, featuring Pharrell Williams.
There are many debates and forums on the internet calling for Daft Punk to financially compensate Kim for all the success they made by stealing his tune. We still don’t know where Zack Kim stands in all this… Bonnie Hayes on the other hand- chair of the songwriting department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston- believes the only valid similarity between the two songs is their chord progression. One thing is for sure though; Zack Kim gained a lot more attention once again, thorough this internet fuss.
“The tempo is close, but even the rhythmic structure is different, all I hear is the chord progression in common”.
Singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt adds: “There are thousands of songs in the last two years that have the same chord progressions all in the chorus,” she said. “Unfortunately, chord progressions can’t be copyrighted. If they could, there would only be eight songs.”
Whether this alleged music “theft” really took place or not, is something we are probably never going to find out.
Here are the two tunes…
Daft Punk:
And Zack Kim:
Robot Dance de Zack KIM – Buzz
What do you think?
