10 Classic Songs You Didn't Know Were Ripped Off
4. Come As You Are - Nirvana
If you're going to copy someone else's idea, you're going to have to be really tricky about it. Since the copyright lawyers are more than willing to take any successful rock band to court, you're going to need to have some creative extensions to back up the song that you're...l et's say paying tribute to. Or in Nirvana's case, just change the genre and rewrite the riff from the ground up.
Ever since they started, Nirvana always had punk roots, even finding their way into one of their mellower songs Come As You Are. For as free-flowing as this song seems on the surface, the original droning lick that Kurt Cobain starts the song with was actually lifted from the song Eighties by Killing Joke. You'd never find that out unless you were told though, with both songs feeling like night and day when put beside each other.
Aside from the foundational walkup on the guitar, Kurt really did a good job of switching things up to suit his style, drenching the guitar in echo and putting a more radio friendly melody over top of everything. That way, the tune started to sound much more lucid in comparison to the punk rager that Cobain had loved in his teenage years. Whether it was subconscious or not, this kind of plagiarism becomes the best of both worlds, being both a huge hit for Nirvana and giving exposure to one of the more overlooked punk acts of the '80s.