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Olivia Rodrigo: song similarities
[JB note: I’m pleased to welcome my friend and colleague Will Bennett as a guest blogger. Will (no relation) is a PhD musicology researcher at Harvard, and also a valued member of the JBMS consultancy...
View ArticleThis Is Our Time – Expo 2020 anthem
As you might imagine, most of the work of a forensic musicologist takes place behind necessarily closed doors due to commercial sensitivities. Once in a while a project I’m working on makes it to a...
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Research: 40 years of The BRIT Awards’ Song Of The Year
Earlier this year, I was commissioned to research the history of the BRIT Awards’ Song Of The Year, to celebrate 40 years from the first award (Tainted Love, Soft Cell, 1982) to the most recent...
View ArticleDid Dua Lipa copy from Artikal Sound System?
I was interviewed by Rolling Stone this week about the Dua Lipa complaint that was filed in LA on Wednesday. Yes I *know* these 6-beat fragments are incredibly similar, but similarity is not the same...
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WWE – the walk-on themes
I was recently asked by WWE to analyse and transcribe five of their top ‘walk-on’ wrestler themes, and to comment on how WWE music is designed to reflect to the personas and character roles of each...
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JB interview – Ed Sheeran’s copyright case win
[JB comment – I was interviewed by The Guardian regarding the (IMO appropriate) outcome of the Ed Sheeran ‘Shape Of You’ 2022 case. Here’s an excerpt from the full article. Reproduced by permission....
View ArticleJoe Bennett interview (BBC): Ed Sheeran court case
Watch on YouTube Interview with Professor Joe Bennett (Forensic Musicologist / Berklee College Of Music) discussing the Ed Sheeran “Shape Of You” verdict in the UK high court. Interview date: April...
View ArticleEurovision live blog 2022 – get ready!
As regular readers will know, I have been live-blogging the ESC since 2011, and in 2020 undertook a larger-scale song analysis for Netflix, where we looked at the meta-characteristics of 259 finalists...
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Creative processes in Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s ‘I Should Be So Lucky’
This article is an excerpt from my PhD thesis, posted here in relation to a documentary project for which I was recently interviewed. Stock, Aitken and Waterman were one of several case studies I...
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Have you been hearing Bohemian Rhapsody ‘wrong’ all these years? [answer:...
You know that feeling when a song's intro seems to trip up your ear, so that when the band comes in it sounds like the timing's out? There are a few rock classics that play with our rhythmic ears in...
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