Is the Song an Offspring?

“Well I guess it ain’t easy doing nothing at all but hey man free rides just don’t come along every day.”

--”Why Don’t You Get a Job?” by the Offspring

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In its hit song “Why Don’t You Get a Job?,” the Offspring chide slackers who sit back and let others do the work. But some music critics say the rock group is committing that very same sin with the tune.

The jangly, up-tempo track has helped push sales of the punk band’s latest album, “Americana,” well over 3 million copies--but to some people it sounds a bit too much like the Beatles’ playful “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”

The Houston Chronicle said the song was “reminiscent” of the catchy Beatles tune, while the Washington Post and the Buffalo News both said it “echoes” the Paul McCartney and John Lennon composition. The Detroit News characterized it as “very close to mimicking.”

Perhaps even more hurtful to the Orange County band, the Southern California radio station that has been its biggest supporter has been mocking the situation.

Sluggo, a popular night-time DJ at KROQ-FM (106.7), has repeatedly played a version of “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” with added snippets of the Beatles song.

Not everyone in the industry hears it the same way.

Pete Howard, publisher of the music newsletter ICE, called the debate “a tempest in a teapot” and added that “there are some vague melodic similarities but if this is plagiarism, then there are 10,000 other cases out there.”

Still, the issue has become a major sore spot for the band, which has in the past weathered criticism from punk purists for its commercial success.

The quartet is on tour and declined to be interviewed for this story. Officials at the group’s label, Columbia Records, also refused to comment.

Meanwhile, key executives at Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which owns and administers the bulk of the Beatles catalog, were out of the country on Friday and could not be reached for comment, according to a spokeswoman. Sony/ATV is the joint partnership between Sony Music Publishing and singer Michael Jackson.

Ultimately, the question is whether the talk about “Get a Job?” moves from the realm of critics to the courtroom.

Several observers said it is highly unlikely that any shared traits between the songs would rise to the level of copyright infringement.

For one thing, some said, it seems certain that the Offspring’s managers or label would have taken the precaution of having a musicologist compare the songs before releasing “Why Don’t You Get a Job?”

“They sound enough alike that I’m sure someone there checked on it,” said a music expert who asked not to be identified. “That’s a standard practice these days.”

Proving one song is too close in sound to another is a murky endeavor, according to Edward P. Murphy, the president of the National Music Publishers Assn.

“There’s no standard, no set pattern you can use,” says Murphy, whose industry association represents 600 American music publishers. “If there was a standard, people wouldn’t be going to court.”

Very few music plagiarism cases actually make it to court--in part because legal fees can balloon to the point of surpassing court rewards--and most complaints are either settled or dropped.

Attorney Donald S. Passman, whose client list has included Mariah Carey, R.E.M. and Quincy Jones, says that to make a case for song copyright infringement a plaintiff must show the defendant had access to their song and show a substantial similarity.

Passman points out that a defendant can lose the case even in cases where they did not knowingly steal part or all of a song--the classic example being former Beatle George Harrison who in 1981 lost a case for unconsciously copying Ronnie Mack’s “He’s So Fine” to create his “My Sweet Lord.”

“It sounds strange,” Passman said, “but it’s part of protecting an artist’s work.”

M. Fletcher Reynolds, a Dallas copyright attorney with a doctorate in musical theory, said the often limited lexicon of pop music and the ongoing influence of key pioneers--such as the Beatles--can make it difficult to separate out instances of plagiarism from general fashion trends in sound.

“The music tends to trade on what’s familiar and what has been successful, so there’s things that sound a lot like other things,” Reynolds said. “Originality is great up to a certain point but [pop music] has to be in a stylistic context. If you play something completely original on the radio, who wants to hear that?”