Have you ever listened to a new song and thought, ‘this sounds familiar’?
It might be because the song you’re listening to features a sample. Sampling is the act of taking a sound, hook, vocal or perhaps an entire melody from one song and using it in another.
The music industry loves a touch of sampling, and it’s something that can be traced back to as early as the 1900s. A popular example is Musique Concrète in the 1940s that used ‘real-life’ sounds and integrated them into a track. Fast-forward to today and sampling has almost become part-and-parcel of the art of making music.
A deep-dive into the 2019 Grammy Awards nominees shows they used 853 samples in their work and had their music sampled a massive 1,290 times. Take, for example, Rockstar by Post Malone ft. 21 Savage. Nominated for Record of the Year, the track sampled No Heart (2016) by 21 Savage and Metro Booming and has been sampled nine times, despite not being out long.
The Music Samples Through Time initiative by Currys PC World and the Bose® SoundLink® Micro speaker explores this ever-popular music technique in detail. Use their tool to find out how many songs have used sampling and how many songs have been sampled throughout the years. To give you an indication of what you might find, a certain Mr. Kanye West has sampled over 900 tracks in his career and had his own work sampled over 1,270 times.
You can also get the numbers on which genres tend to use sampling more than others. In the 1980s, for example, hip hop, rap and R&B used sampling the most. In fact, to date, the genres account for 64% of all sampling done across the music industry. On the flip side, the 1970s sees the largest number of songs that have been sampled. Music producers seem to love the sounds of soul, funk and disco with a staggering 91,200 songs from the genre being sampled over the years.
And the most sampled artist of all time? Many artists – including Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Public Enemy and the Wu-Tang Clan – have turned to a certain 70s crooner for their music inspiration. Funk soul singer James Brown takes the ‘Most Sampled’ crown, with his work being sampled a whopping 7,252 times.
Get plenty more insights into music sampling throughout the ages – and across genres – with the interactive tool linked above.
