Inter-textual Analysis

We value originality, don't we. We admire talent and those who bring us something new.

But, on the other hand, there's nothing new under the sun and all books owe a debt to previous books, all poems are somehow related to previous poems even if it is only because they are nothing like them.

There is no point putting a link here to the programme on Radio 2 last night about the history of Glam Rock because it will run out in six days time. But it included much treasure, the best of which was probably the making of Ride a White Swan, and how a song that could have been ordinary in other hands became a sensational piece of work with considerable thought and effort.

But it was also explained how Bowie's seminal Starman came out of Judy Garland's Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Just sing to yourself, 'There's a Star-man' and then, from Judy, 'Some-where', and you will see what is meant. Who would have thought it. I can't remember anybody pointing it out at the time.

We know Marc Bolan took the riff for Get It On from elsewhere and then Oasis recycled it to some kind of use of it 20 years later in Cigarettes and Alcohol but the 'Star-man/Some-where' borrowing is more deeply hidden.

I only hope that when my song, Break, causes me to be an inadvertent millionaire one day that nobody notices it is made out of Ronan Keating's Life is a Roller Coaster and Jennifer Paige's Crush. Because it is.

But, here's a quiz question for you. Who wrote quite a lot of T.S. Eliot's poems? It couldn't have been him, could it, or else he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to provide so many footnotes to show that he didn't.

But in the same way that every breath we take includes some air that, say, Julius Caesar might have breathed, we also have to use the same words, ideas or chord sequences that others have used before us. Although we seem to admire originality, we might not have much chance of either achieving it or seeing it in others.

So, keep up the good work.