California Gurls quotes California Girls. Can you imagine the nerve?

It’s sad when artists mistake the nature of their creations, when they somehow think they exist apart from culture as lone innovators. It’s especially pathetic when they believe their work is something like the real property they buy with whatever they’re lucky enough to earn from those works, something they can fence off from the rest of the world and keep trespassers off of. Techdirt points out an exceedingly outrageous instance of this:

[T]he Beach Boys are threatening to sue Katy Perry and/or her label if they’re not given songwriting credits for her song California Gurls. The Beach Boys, of course, did have a famous song back in 1965, called California Girls, with the classic line “I wish they all could be California Girls…” In the Katy Perry song, which is very different than the Beach Boys song, at the very, very, very end, Snoop Dogg says “I really wish you all could be California girls,” so the quote isn’t even a direct one.

I share techdirt’s hope that Katy Perry and her label stick to their guns. It’s tough to imagine a more obvious non-infringing use. Quite plainly, Perry was paying homage to the Beach Boys. Could you imagine requiring permission every time an artist riffs on an earlier work of art? We’d have no culture. Mike Love says, “I think [Perry's song] brings the Beach Boys’ 1965 classic to mind, that’s for sure.” You think? Would that mean the producers of the Dukes of Hazzard have their own claim?