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Abstract
This article explores the practice of altering familiar music for use on television, whereby producers dodge copyright law by hiring a composer to craft a new piece that evokes the work they wanted to use. This article will examine how composers navigate the delicate process of creating new pieces that unmistakably call to mind familiar tunes by providing a detailed overview of this practice in relation to two long-running animated sitcoms: The Simpsons and Family Guy.
Notes
† All musical examples are the author's own transcriptions. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the Society for American Music Conference in Little Rock, AR, USA (March 2013).
[1] The practice of copyphrase is not unique to these programmes, but the examples found on these two shows are more frequent and more diverse than any other source. Other examples of copyphrase appear on The Cleveland Show (2009–2013), a Family Guy spinoff, especially in the early episodes of the fourth season. On The Ren and Stimpy Show (1991–1996) there are isolated examples as well. In a 1992 episode ‘Out West’, a paraphrased version of the Jeopardy theme appears when two especially dim-witted characters try to solve a problem. There are also a growing number of copyphrases in the web-based animated series How It Should Have Ended. One of the most memorable appears in the 2011 short ‘How Harry Potter Should Have Ended’, in which we find a clever paraphrase of the primary theme from the Harry Potter series.
[2] New York Times critic David Itzkoff has showered praise on the music for Family Guy, describing ‘orchestrations to make Nelson Riddle jealous and lyrics to make Dorothy Parker blush’, explaining that there are ‘just two men who deserve [our] praise’ for the corpus of music on Family Guy: composers Walter Murphy and Ron Jones. Itzkoff continues, ‘[a]t a time when most television series employ a single composer each, armed with little more than a computer sequencing program and a synthesizer, Family Guy has two composers … whose works are played by a live … orchestra’ (Itzkoff, Citation2007).
[3] In Family Guy's 200th episode (2012), a navel-gazing retrospective of the show's history to date, it was revealed they use a 50-to-90 piece orchestra in every episode. This is an increase from earlier seasons. As of 2007, 40 players was the approximate average (see Itzkoff, Citation2007). On The Simpsons, a 35-piece orchestra is still the standard, so far as I am aware (see Adams, Citation1997, p. 24).
[4] Nelson Goodman explains that music is an ‘unfakable’ art, noting that ‘in music, unlike painting, there is no such thing as a forgery of a known work’ (Goodman, Citation1976, p. 112). Gérard Genette echoed these thoughts when he said:
[I]n certain arts such as painting, the production of fakes or forgeries … is really an existing practice … It is likewise the case that in other arts, such as literature and music, forgery is not practiced, because a correct copy of a text or score is simply a new copy … neither more nor less valid from a literary or musical point of view, than the original. (Genette, Citation1993/Citation1997, pp. 15–16)
[5] Clausen has won two Emmy awards for his original music on the show, and has been nominated an astonishing 21 times besides (see Emmys.com, accessed February Citation2013). Adams calls Clausen The Simpsons' ‘secret weapon’, noting that the composer ‘has proved beyond a doubt that television scoring is not the vast wasteland it is often purported to be and that an intelligent composer can take even the most demanding shows and elevate them to new heights’ (Adams, Citation1997, p. 24).
[6] The earliest examples from 1990–1992 relate to their respective model somewhat more distantly than Clausen's later copyphrases do. In one of the first episodes that Clausen scored (‘Dancin’ Homer’, 1990), he composed a tune called ‘Capital City’, performed by Tony Bennett, which is designed to evoke Frank Sinatra's ‘New York, New York’. The notes and rhythms of the respective melodies have little to do with one another, and there is no attempt at mimicking the iconic instrumental lick of ‘New York, New York’. Rather, the connection between ‘Capital City’ and ‘New York, New York’ relies on the shared association of similar orchestration, text, and the fact that both are sung by Rat Pack singers of the same generation.
[7] Goldmark, in an interview with Clausen, mentioned this song in particular, noting that ‘it comes so close to [its source that] you really need to be paying attention to hear the differences’ (Goldmark, Citation2002, p. 246).
[8] Friedwald notes that the title of this musical, Stop the Planet of the Apes: I Want to Get Off, is a reference to ‘the hit British show Stop the World: I Want to Get Off, which opened on Broadway in 1962’ (Friedwald, Citation2002, p. 255).
[9] Note that ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ begins in A minor and modules to B minor about midway through the song. In I have presented the B minor statement of the refrain for ease of comparison with Clausen's version in Bb minor.
[10] Curiously, Clausen has denied that the ‘Dr Zaius’ is based on ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. When Goldmark asked Clausen in a 2002 interview if there ‘was a particular composer [he was] trying to emulate’ with the music for this scene, Clausen's responded, ‘No, that was simply Troy McClure at his best’. Either Clausen told a lie, or simply did not remember this cue (Goldmark, Citation2002, p. 247).
[11] See IMDb.com, ‘Family Guy’ (accessed February 2013). He also voices Peter's next-door neighbour, Glen Quagmire, and a number of other recurring characters.
[12] Murphy and MacFarlane won an Emmy 2002 for their original song, ‘You've Got a Lot to See’. Murphy has been nominated thrice besides, and Jones has had four Emmy nominations for his work on the show (Emmys.com, accessed February Citation2013).
[13] Of note, two parodies of this song also appear on The Simpsons, though neither is a copyphrase. In the episode ‘Bart Gets Famous’ (1994), the instrumental track from Hammer's song is used unaltered, with Bart saying ‘I Didn't Do It’ instead of ‘Can't Touch This’. During the following season, in the episode ‘A Star is Burns’ (1995) a group of ‘Rapping Rabbis’ present two lines of a re-recorded (but generally unaltered) version of Hammer's song, reminding their community that pork is one of the things they ‘can't touch’.
[14] Even without this explicit citation of the source, the text of ‘Can't Touch Me’ is saturated with references to ‘U Can't Touch This’. Both sets of lyrics mention dance, specifically the superior dancing ability of the speaker, though the irony in McFarlane's is hardly hidden. Certain lines are altered as well to ridicule Peter; Hammer brags, ‘I've toured around the world, from London to the Bay’. Peter instead says ‘Hartford to Back-Bay’, highlighting his narrow view of the ‘world’, which stretches from Connecticut to Massachusetts, the two states that border his native Rhode Island. Other lines are lifted directly from MC Hammer's text, replacing the word ‘Hammer’ with ‘Peter’, including ‘Stop! Peter Time’ and ‘I'm Peter, go Peter, I'm Sir Peter, Yo Peter’.
[15] The settlement for which was Rick James being listed as a co-writer (Wikipedia, 2005 ‘U Can't Touch This’, accessed March Citation2013).
[16] Note that this one of three examples of copyphrase found in this episode. Another appears in part of a sequence of scenes derived from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. As Peter and Stewie, dressed as Indiana Jones and Short Round flee the angry Disney guards, the underscoring is reminiscent of Williams' score for said film. Yet another copyphrase appears in a cut-away gag mocking the late Michael Jackson, in which he is shown dancing to signified ‘Thriller’.
[17] It is perhaps surprising that Disney did not sue over their depiction in ‘The Courtship of Stewie's Father’. The episode is full of jabs at Disney; the dozens of small children (referred to by Disneyworld security as ‘multi-cultural slave children’), held against their will to sing in a ride, is only the beginning. When Peter and Stewie first arrive at the park, a ‘Disney Stock Slide’ is shown in the background, with children riding the sharp descent on a line graph representing the stock values of the Disney Corporation. Peter later encounters the crows from Dumbo, which is an easy opportunity to shame Disney for the appalling racism of the ‘black birds’ whose incoherent utterances are an insensitive (to say the least!) take on African-American Vernacular English. Lastly, Peter and Stewie encounter Michael Eisner, acting like the priest from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, who rips out the hearts of sacrificial victims. Eisner especially may well have pressed charges for character defamation.
[18] Susan Sontag argues that ‘the relation of Camp taste to the past is purely sentimental’, asserting that ‘things are campy not when they become old—but when we become less involved with them’ (Sontag, Citation1966, p. 285).
[19] The show was first broadcasted in 1999. Season 2 was completed in August 2000, but Season 3 resumed almost a year later, in July 2001, after a brief cancellation. The show was cancelled again for a longer period of time before Season 3 was complete (IMDb.com, ‘Family Guy’, accessed May 2012). In May 2005, Family Guy returned to Fox with a new fourth season, becoming the first show to be ‘resurrected based on DVD sales’, each of the first two volumes having sold 1.6 million and 1 million copies, respectively (Levin, Citation2004, para. 3).
[20] Twentieth-Century Fox initially withheld this episode from television, fearing that some of the content might be perceived as anti-Semitic. The episode was ready to air in 2000 (during the third season of Family Guy) but it did not appear on television until 2003, first on the Cartoon Network. The following year, Fox at last agreed to air the episode after changing the penultimate line of the song from ‘even though they killed our lord’ to ‘I don't think they killed our lord’ (Wikipedia, ‘When You Wish Upon a Weinstein’, accessed March Citation2013).
[21] In Itzkoff's words,
[a]fter wishing upon a star, and then consulting upon a lawyer or two, the producers of the animated comedy Family Guy were vindicated Monday when a New York judge dismissed a lawsuit against them which said they had infringed upon a classic song from the Disney movie … In dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts wrote that the original song's wholesomeness makes it fair game for “ridicule by parodists seeking to take the wind out of such lofty, magical, or pure associations”, according to The A.P. (Itzkoff, Citation2009, p. C2)
[22] Burnett's Complete Legal Statement can be found on The Smoking Gun.com (accessed March 2013).
[23] ‘Brain Freeze’ is performed by Weird Al himself, who lent his voice as a guest artist for the episode. ‘Shave Me’ and ‘Brain Freeze’ are identical musically with the exception of the loud, declamatory screaming of the songs' respective title words. Dan Castellaneta (who voices Homer) does not sing a high B, presumably because it is out of his vocal range; Weird Al, rather is successful in imitating Kurt Cobain's B4, though his voice cracks.
[24] Two such examples immediately come to mind. In ‘The Cleveland Loretta Quagmire’ (2005) the character Cleveland learns that his wife is having an affair, so Peter attempts to comfort him by singing the B-52's song ‘Rock Lobster’; surely, this number is only used to give MacFarlane the opportunity to sing a B-52's song in the voice of Peter Griffin. Though humorous, its use is incongruous in this context. Another is Stewie's three-minute rendition of Bryan Adams' ‘Everything I Do’ (complete with a music video), which contributes to a sub-plot of the episode ‘Oceans Three and a Half’ (2009) only tangentially.
[25] Specifically, in the second measure of my transcription of ‘Shave Me’ above, the final beat is cropped, making this measure sound as though it is in 3/4 time. Similarly, in the instrumental introduction to ‘Margarine’ (not transcribed), a beat and a half is trimmed from the bar, producing the disorienting effect that one measure in 5/8 appears mid-phrase.
[26] Clausen has lamented how little the producers know about music, and how unwilling they are to take it seriously, stating that ‘in many series, including this one, the pecking order is dialogue first, sound effects next, and music third’ (Goldmark, Citation2002, p. 244).
[27] In a personal interview with a member of the Family Guy studio orchestra, my informant called MacFarlane the only producer he had ever worked with who was ‘both hands on and never in the way’ when it came to music.
[28] This is not to say that only more recent music is used on The Simpsons. The ‘Ho Hi’ and Morricone examples speak to this, and there are plenty more from old musicals, including (1) ‘The Monorail Song’, treating ‘Trouble’ from The Music Man in ‘Marge vs. The Monorail’ (1993), (2) ‘The Garbageman’, modelled upon ‘The Candyman’ from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in ‘Trash of the Titans’ (1998), and (3) when many of the most memorable songs from Mary Poppins, including ‘Feed the Birds’, ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’, and ‘The Perfect Nanny’ are recomposed and sung by a nanny named ‘Shary Bobbins’ in the episode ‘Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(D'oh!)cious' (1997).
[29] MacFarlane released an album of big-band era standards in 2011 (called Music is Better Than Words—it is worth a listen) as a sort of love letter to this repertory. Watching a few episodes of Family Guy makes it clear that MacFarlane is unabashedly, unironically enamoured of these styles.
[30] As evidenced by Burnett's legal statement above, the Family Guy producers went through the appropriate channels to ask for permission to use Carol Burnett's theme, but were denied the rights (despite presumably having been willing to pay handsomely for the privilege), and thus paraphrased her theme.
[31] As a matter of course, the orchestras for both The Simpsons and Family Guy record non-diegetic cues at tremendous cost, even if they already have one that is virtually identical that could simply be reused. Clausen has explained that,
[p]retty much everything is started from scratch … Once in a while there'll be a transition cue that seems like it's repeated. Most of the time it's not repeated verbatim. It's restructured for new timings, maybe a new twist of something … I say we can pull one from the first season and use it in the seventh season and all of a sudden they appear on back-to-back nights in syndication. [laughs] So, we try not to do that too much. (Adams, Citation1997, p. 24)