Suggestions of plagiarism have skyrocketed in the lawsuit era, as Marvin Gaye's estate successfully sued Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, and Sam Smith has willingly given Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne a cut of the songwriting credit for "Stay With Me" when the song was compared to their "I Won't Back Down." Now an Australian band is going way back in pointing out the similarities between one of its songs and the Guns N' Roses classic "Sweet Child O' Mine" (from NME).
Attention to the subject has come up when Australian blog MAX TV pointed out how similar portions of the band Australian Crawl's "Unpublished Critics" were to "Sweet Child," which hit radios six years after the former.
"[It has] the same chugging chord progression, a similarly-sweeping lead break, the verse melody, and the elongated one-syllable vocal in the chorus," wrote the site.
Yes and no. That "chugging chord progressions" is hardly noticeable in the Guns' song, which became most famous for the "circus" riff of guitarist Slash...of which "Unpublished Critics" has nothing similar. More striking are the melodic similarities between Crawl's James Reyne and Axl Rose throughout the song.
That said, the less renowned band isn't gearing up for a meeting in court.
"I'm not about to take on the might of the Guns N' Roses lawyers," Reyne noted, although admitting that it wasn't "inconceivable" that perhaps the young Los Angeles band had heard his song first.
It would have taken a mighty twist of fate for the song to come across the laps of the Guns however. Although the album Sirocco was a smash in Australia, debuting at no. 1 and staying there for six weeks, it never charted in the United States. Aside from that, "Unpublished Critics" was never a single, so the odds of it getting radio play across the Pacific pond are slim to none. But hey...you never know.
