History OlderThanTheyThink / Music

* El Chombo's 2018 hit "Dame tu Cosita" is actually an extended mix of a 1997 song originally called "[[NonAppearingTitle Introducción B]]" that he released in the album ''Cuentos De La Cripta 2''.

* Those who know "A Simple Game" usually think of it as a classic Motown song by The Four Tops; but it was actually written by Mike Pinder of Music/TheMoodyBlues, and the Moodies recorded it first. The two versions even had the same producer -- Tony Clarke.
* The slapping bass sound popularized by bands like Music/{{Korn}} in the late '90s, was actually pioneered by Music/ElvisPresley's original bass player Bill Black. The method was retired after the band found a drummer.

* Most people seem to believe the East vs. West Coast HipHop feud started with Tupac & Biggie. But the fact of the matter is it started long before them thanks to a east coast rapper by the name of Tim Dog firing disses at a lot of California emcees, even Snoop Dogg. Long before Tupac, and especially before Biggie was even on the scene.
* Bass wobble (aka "wubs") was certainly popularized by {{Dubstep}}, but the technique existed well before dubstep itself did. The other wiki posits 1998 as the origin of dubstep. The techno duo Music/{{Orbital}} used wobble bass on their 1996 EP, ''The Box''. Drum-n-bass DJ Alex Reece used it on his 1995 track "Pulp Fiction". And the Italo disco duo Amin Peck dropped some mad wubs in ''1984'', on their remix of "Running Straight".
* A group of teenagers with questionable musical talent release a song via an obscure music label. Because of its SoBadItsGood and earworm qualities, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xm3qnh1sck the song goes viral]] and almost overnight [[http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=12210 becomes a sensation]] and iconic OneHitWonder...nearly six decades before Music/RebeccaBlack and "Friday", [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Happy_Day_(1952_song) Don Howard]] created a very similar stir with his song "Oh Happy Day".
* Twerking existed long before Music/MileyCyrus's infamous VMA performance in 2013; the word "twerk" can be found in hip-hop lyrics written as far back as the 1990s and the early 2000s (for example: it's used in Music/LilJon's "Get Low", which was released in 2003), and various forms of "booty shaking" are even older than that.
* When somebody mentions the jukebox, most will think of TheFifties and the early rock & roll era. They'll think of a MaltShop with 1950s teens listening to NothingButHits. Actually, jukeboxes are much older than that! They were quite popular in the 1940s too, playing swing music and even classical music along with opera. And they're still older than that. While the jukebox we know of today originated around 1928, coin operated music players date back at least to the 1890s.
* [=CDs=] and dynamic range compression took the practice of mastering music at high volume levels for a perceived advantage in the market to [[LoudnessWar a whole new level]], but the practice itself dates back to the 1920s when records were made loud to take advantage of gramophones that didn't have volume dials. The phrase "put a sock in it" comes from the trick of doing exactly that in order to reduce the volume.
* Many believe Music/BruceSpringsteen was the first to have an album released on CD. While that's true in the United States, overseas, ''The Visitors'' from Music/{{ABBA}} was released in 1981, three years before ''Born In The USA'', the Springsteen album. Sony and Phillips were working the technology since 1974.
* The MoonwalkDance, linked to Music/MichaelJackson, was used in 1932 by Music/CabCalloway, 49 years before Jackson used it in his ''Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever'' performance of "Billie Jean". Further, Jackson's "Billie Jean" moves and costume bear a ''detailed'' resemblance to famous choreographer Creator/BobFosse's performance of "A Snake in the Grass" in the 1974 film adaptation of Literature/TheLittlePrince--notoriously Jackson's favourite film.
* Many younger Millennials thought "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZONKoKIQ9RY All Through The Night]]" by Music/CyndiLauper sampled "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EcGVzCNjw Sugar Rush]]" by Swedish band Music/ATeens due to the similar beat. Lauper's "All Through The Night" was released in October 1983, while "Sugar Rush" was released in February 2001. Even further, Lauper's version [[CoveredUp isn't the original]]; it was originally performed by folksy singer-songwriter Jules Shear, whose version was released roughly five months before Lauper's.
* Three songs tend to get lumped in with the wave of patriotic or inspirational CountryMusic songs that gained popularity after 9/11: Music/DiamondRio's "One More Day", Tammy Cochran's "Angels in Waiting", and Music/BrooksAndDunn's "Only in America". However, they were respectively released in October 2000, March 2001, and June 2001; in fact, "One More Day" had already been off the country music charts for several months (although it did peak on the AC charts in late September). What is particularly grating is that "One More Day" was written about a lover and Diamond Rio are actually not too fond of the mixes found of that song with 9/11 news reels playing.
* On a similar note, many country music fans would tell you that Music/DixieChicks were the first "major" left-wing country act. They forget that Music/DwightYoakam doesn't talk about his views as often as he used to for the same reason. Music/BillyRayCyrus, even with all of the "Some Gave All" flag-waving of 1992, was the son of a prominent Kentucky Democratic Party senator (and Kentucky Colonel), Ron Cyrus, and he and his family are clearly politically liberal/left wing, if one knows where to look. Billy Ray's [[Music/MileyCyrus daughter]] is best friends with the [[UsefulNotes/BarackObama Obama]] family, and endorsed him on Website/{{Twitter}} in the 2008 elections.
** Music/SteveEarle, who holds some decidedly left-of-center views (anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-union), has been around since the mid-80's.
** Music/WillieNelson, whose pro-marijuana stance made him controversial for decades in Nashville.
** And assuming you conflate country music with folk music (as many people do), you can take this back to Music/WoodyGuthrie in the ''1930s''.
** Music/NeilYoung is considered a country-rocker by many people, given his proclivity for wandering between genres.

* Music/ImagineDragons started performing music ''four years'' before "It's Time" and "Radioactive" became mainstream hits. Indeed, "It's Time" originally came from one of the [=EPs=] the band recorded independently prior to signing on with Interscope.
* Ask your average listener to pinpoint the first use of the infamous "double bass" percussion technique that's become commonplace in HeavyMetal and similar genres, and they'll probably mention the first two tracks on Music/{{Metallica}}'s 1984 album ''Ride the Lightning''. Double bass was actually used by Music/JudasPriest several years earlier, as far back as their ''Sad Wings of Destiny'' album.
** The double bass drum setup was pioneered by jazz drummer Louie Bellson when he was 15, all the way back in 1939-40. The constant "thunder roll" wasn't a feature to the degree it is in metal, but snippets show up frequently.
** Similarly, while the name "blast beat" does seem to have originated with Napalm Death, they were far from the first to have played rapid rhythms on bass/snare/cymbal, such as Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer displaying a sort of proto-blast beat on their 1970 single The Barbarian
* Old-school HipHop fans like to lament [[GlamRap "Bling rap"]] taking the popular stage in the wake of GangstaRap's fall. What they might not know is that the style and many of its {{trope}}s go back to the mid-1980s when the genre first became mainstream. One such act was the now critically-renowned Music/RunDMC.
* The hit song "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia is actually a cover of a song by an obscure band called Ednaswap from 1995. Imbruglia's version of the song was produced by Phil Thornalley, who co-wrote the song and produced the original Ednaswap version.

* Robin Thicke, who was supposedly one of the biggest "new artists" of 2013 with his incredibly risqué chart-topper "Blurred Lines", actually released his first album in ''2002''. In fact, the [[TitleTrack album of the same name]] was actually his ''sixth album''. In fact, "Blurred Lines" wasn't even his first Top 40 hit (that would've been "Lost Without U" in 2007), but he was unknown to mainstream audiences at the time.
* A lot of people have known that El chombos 'Dame tu cosita' single came out in 2018 along with the alien dancing video accompanying it. The song was originally part of an album called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoDlgQ7zKBA Cuentos de la Cripta II]] way back in 1997, and was originally under the title 'Introducction B (El cosita mix)'; 2018 was actually the year when the song was remastered and remixed. The alien itself is also a remake of an old CGI animation from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J8PyM0Hg8g 2001]].
* Ask someone in 2014 who John Legend is, and they'll answer "you mean that hot new R&B singer who sang "All of Me"?" He's actually been a star on R&B radio since ''2005'', had two minor Top 40 hits, and even won the Best New Artist Grammy, even though he never had a crossover pop hit until nine years later.
* Pharrell Williams has been on the scene a long time before he recorded 2013's "Happy". He was best known as a producer and featured artist on a number of other musicians' hits (and even had a top 5 hit with "Frontin'" in ''2003''). Still, it doesn't stop the perception that he was a new artist.
* Several Soul groups such as The Chi-lites, The O'jays, and The Spinners, who are synonymous with the 70s, had actually been together since the late 50s/ early 60s. Some of them were quite popular among R&B audiences before finally crossing over in the 70s.

* Pop rap is often considered TheScrappy of the hip-hop world for 'dumbing-down' hip-hop for the masses and ruining the genre in general. Actually, [[UnbuiltTrope the first pop rap song is the first rap song, period]]. "Rapper's Delight" by Music/TheSugarhillGang was the song that kickstarted genre, yet it was heavily pop-centric with its beats, tone, and lyrics all being extremely radio-friendly. Today, "Rapper's Delight" would seem like a song aimed for kids preformed by [[TheMoralSubstitute Moral Substitutes]].
* Music/{{Macklemore}}, one of the biggest "new artists" of 2013 who burst onto the scene with his album ''The Heist'' and songs like "Thrift Shop" and "Can't Hold Us"? Actually, Macklemore released his first album, ''The Language of My World'', in '''''2005'''''. Back then, he was an extremely obscure underground rapper that only Seattleites into the underground scene knew about (the album only sold about 15,000 copies). But, believe it or not, his career actually dates even further than that. He released his first EP "Open Your Eyes" in the year '''''2000'''''.

* Music/{{Sia}} seemingly came out of nowhere in the early 2010s as a featured artist on hits like "[[Music/FloRida Wild Ones]]" and "[[Music/DavidGuetta Titanium]]" before skyrocketing to fame with her own material in 2014-2016. However, Sia released her first album in the ''1990s''.
* Music/{{Marmozets}} are seen as a fast-rising 'new' band after getting signed to Roadrunner in 2013. However, they've been around since 2007. Granted, they were still in their mid-teens at the time but they've been touring and the lineup has been exactly the same since formation.
* Music/TheWeeknd became one of the biggest acts in the world in 2015 after the success of "Earned It" from ''Film/FiftyShadesOfGrey'', his two #1 follow ups "Can't Feel My Face" and "The Hills", and parent album ''Beauty Behind the Madness'', but some might be surprised to learn that he had been making music since 2011. Despite having a large following on the internet, and all of his albums charting in the Top 5, this did not stop the perception of him being a "hot new artist" by the general public due to how gargantuan and inescapable he became, compared to before where his audience was mostly limited to internet circles.
* Music duo Music/TwentyOnePilots rose to fame in 2015/16 with their album ''Blurryface'' going #1 on the albums chart and "Stressed Out" being one of the biggest indie crossovers of the decade and "Ride" becoming almost as big. It may come as a surprise to some that they were formed as a ''trio'' in '''''2009''''', the same year they released their first album. Tyler Joseph is the only original member left, as the other two left and had been replaced by Josh Dun, and became the duo we know today. While predecessor ''Vessel'' was a hit, scoring two minor alternative hits with "Holding on to You" and "House of Gold". But ask the general public what their first hit single was, and they'll almost invariably say "Stressed Out" (and if not that, most likely its predecessor "Tear in my Heart")

* Music/{{Aborted}} was formed in 1995 and released their first album in 1999, but it's extremely easy to mistake them for a much newer band. This is due quite a few factors. Firstly, until their 2012 record ''Global Flatline'' (which was also around the time they finally had a fairly stable lineup), they were a third-tier band at best and received very little attention outside of the brutal death metal scene back then. Second, their sound is consistently updated with elements of modern sounds for the time period. Third, they frequently collaborate with other artists on their albums, many of which are from the current era at the time of release.

* TechnicalDeathMetal band Capharnaum is most famous for featuring [[Music/{{Trivium}} Matt Heafy]] as a member on their album ''Fractured'', and is often referred to among Trivium fans as his side project. In actuality, however, this isn't the case at all. Not only did Matt join the band ''extremely'' early in Trivium's career,[[note]]To drive the point home, he was brought in between ''Ember to Inferno'' and ''Ascendancy'', well before they became popular, and recorded his parts ''before the former was even released''.[[/note]] but ''Fractured'' isn't even their only album. Their debut ''Reality Only Fantasized'' doesn't feature Matt and was released all the way back in 1997, two years before Trivium was established, and in fact a big reason why Matt became part of the group was ''because'' he was a fan of their older music and Trivium's producer at the time, Jason Suecof, was one of their core members.

[[folder:Folk]]

[[folder:Hip Hop]]

[[folder:Metal]]

[[folder:Pop]]
* "Mmm Whatcha Say" (as featured by Jason Derulo, The O.C., and SNL) is from Music/ImogenHeap's "Hide and Seek".
* Anna Kendrick's [[Film/PitchPerfect ''Cups'']] was actually written by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCOYJg9ps4 Lulu and the Lampshades]] back in 2009. The original version of the song was written by A.P. Carter in 1931 and was later recorded by the Carter Family in the 1950s (Carter ''also'' wrote a second, completely separate tune called "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?" which is sometimes confused for this one). The beat itself is also not original, watch it here on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgWsy0N9Nc Full House.]]
* Since Music/MichaelJackson's death, numerous comments have been made on the Website/YouTube copies of Music/WeirdAlYankovic's "Eat It" and "Fat" music videos decrying how "disrespectful" it is to be making fun of Jackson so soon after he died, regardless of the posted dates of the official videos to [=YouTube=] ('''2007'''-03-17), the ostensible copyright (1984 and 1988 respectively), or the fact that Jackson was a fan of Yankovic and allowed him to studio-record all but one ("Snack All Night", a "Black or White" parody that he is allowed to perform in concert) of his Jackson parodies.
* The song "Die Young" by Music/{{Kesha}} suffered a similar fate following the [[HarsherInHindsight Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting]]. Radio stations all across the nation pulled the song from their playlists, causing it to drop by nearly 5,000 spins in the span of a week. The song came out in September of 2012, '''nearly 3 months before''' the shooting. Like the Yankovic parodies, the song wasn't unknown prior to the shooting, but it nearly derailed her career. Additionally, "Die Young" is not the first time a song plummeted down the radio charts due to real-life events. The Dixie Chicks' music was blackballed by radio stations after a controversial remark against then-President George W. Bush shortly after the beginning of the Iraq War. And even before that, Billy Joe Royal's "Burned Like a Rocket" disappeared from the country music charts after the ''Challenger'' disaster in 1986.

[[folder:Rock]]
* RockAndRoll: Although music fans and purists vehemently debate the origins of the music form, most tend to date the start as occurring sometime between 1951 and 1956 (with a few even setting the start date as early as the 1930s and as late as the the 1960s). In truth, elements of rock and roll can be found in musical forms dating back to the late 19th century, and on record from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL0FpB26VSg at least the early 1930s]], with many recordings qualifying as rock and roll in all but name.

[[folder:Other]]
* El Chombo's 2018 hit "Dame tu Cosita" is actually an extended mix of a 1997 song originally called "[[NonAppearingTitle Introducción B]]" that he released in the album ''Cuentos De La Cripta 2''.
* The JustForFun/{{rickroll}} was not the first time that Music/RickAstley's [[TheEighties '80s]] hit "Never Gonna Give You Up" was used in a humorous context; it has featured in comedy routines by [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 Joel and the bots]] and Peter Kay, among others.

* Nobody knows how old the ''Londonderry Air'' (the tune for "Danny Boy") is, to the extent that Julian May decided to assign authorship to the Tanu in the ''Literature/SagaOfTheExiles'' series. Recent music scholars are pretty well satisfied that it was first transcribed in 1792, from a performance at the Belfast Harp Festival by harpist Denis O'Hampsey (Denis Hempson), who was about 97 years old at the time. O'Hampsey's repertoire contained melodies that he asserted dated back to the 17th century, but it's unknown whether this melody was one of them. The earliest known words were published in 1814.
* The song best known as Greensleeves. It's quite possible that the famous lyrics were written by Henry VIII, but the tune itself -- the Dargason, as it's called -- goes back way further.
* The {{Jazz}}[=/=]{{Blues}} standard "St. James Infirmary" first gained fame via a 1928 Music/LouisArmstrong recording, so it's easy to assume a 20th century UsefulNotes/NewOrleans origin for it, but its history is muddled and mysterious and might date back several hundred years. A common theory is that it's a modern adaptation of an old English folk song variously called "The Unfortunate Lad" or "The Unfortunate Rake", about a man dying of syphilis, which was first transcribed in the late 1700s. A sticking point on the song's origin is the very specific use of "St. James" as the name of a hospital, which has led to searches for various London facilities with that name. One possible candidate, an infirmary that treated leprosy, was seized and shut down by UsefulNotes/HenryVIII in 1531, which could push the creation of "The Unfortunate Rake" back into the English Renaissance. But, all the versions of "The Unfortunate Rake" that mention St. James Hospital were collected in 20th century America, not England. Also, the similarities between "The Unfortunate Rake" and "St. James Infirmary" aren't strong enough to establish a direct connection. Other musicologists feel the situation is more a case of "The Unfortunate Rake" being a distant influence on "St. James Infirmary" (and possibly other songs like "The Streets of Laredo", "House of the Rising Sun", and "Minnie the Moocher"--verses only; Cab Calloway added the "Hi-De-Ho" chorus). There have been entire books that have tried to untangle the origins of "St. James Infirmary", but the various early releases crediting the song to contemporary composers were clearly mistaken.

* "Froggy Went a-Courtin'", generally thought to be a 19th-century American folk song, actually dates back much further, to 16th-century Scotland.

* The music now best known as the German national anthem ([[NewerThanTheyThink since 1922]]) originated in 1797 as an anthem in honour of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804 also Emperor Francis I of the Austria). The music was written by none other than Music/JosephHaydn, who incorporated it into one of his string quartets. The German anthem's lyrics come from a 1841 poem. This also serves to explain the dissonance between the lyrics (a call for unity, democracy and liberty) and the very slow, solemn music (the original lyrics for the Austro-Hungarian anthem were in praise of their emperor, their "God Save the King").

* Similarly, the song "Ain't We Got Fun" became popular during TheGreatDepression, but it was first published in 1921.
* Music/MassiveAttack recorded "Teardrop" before ''Series/{{House}}'' got hold of it. How anyone manages to miss this when the credits ''say'' "Theme song by Massive Attack" is a mystery.

** "He has a woman's name and wears makeup. [[ItsBeenDone How original.]]" -- Music/AliceCooper. As comedian/talk-show host Dennis Miller once said, "I love Marilyn Manson's music! In fact, I've been a fan of Marilyn Manson ever [[BetterByADifferentName since the days when he called himself Alice Cooper]]!"

* Press any kid growing up in the 90's or 00's when they think {{ska}} started and most will say that it was started in the United States in the 90's with bands like Music/ReelBigFish, Music/TheMightyMightyBosstones, and Music/NoDoubt, and that it's "punk with horns". In fact, ska is a Jamaican music genre that's only slightly younger than RockAndRoll. {{Reggae}} spun off from ska (Music/BobMarley and the Wailers started out as a ska band). If you want to go further, some American rock and R&B songs from TheFifties that picked up followings in Jamaica basically use a ska rhythm, like Barbie Gaye's 1956 original version of "My Boy Lollipop" and Music/FatsDomino's 1959 hit "Be My Guest".
** By 1964, ska had attracted enough attention outside Jamaica that Music/TheBeatles threw a ska-rhythm guitar solo into "I Call Your Name", and Creator/AnnetteFunicello recorded a DanceSensation song called "Jamaica Ska".
** Furthermore, the fusing of ska and punk itself is older than the early 90's and dates to the late 1970's English "TwoTone" scene, and artists like Music/{{Fishbone}}, Music/TheSpecials and Music/{{Madness|Band}}.
** Interestingly, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and No Doubt also qualify. They're two of the first bands that would come to mind when one thinks of mid-90s ska, and both enjoyed massive popularity then. But both bands formed and performed in the 80s; The Bosstones started in 1983, No Doubt in 1986.

* Most people (in the United States anyway) are very surprised the first time they learn that ''music videos'' existed before Creator/{{MTV}} started in 1981. Although when you think about it, the alternative makes no sense... if videos didn't already exist, how would MTV have had anything to show? Many people today don't even realize MTV dates back to '81 (or [[NetworkDecay that it used to show music videos]]!).
** If you're looking for an OlderThanTelevision UrExample, music videos are about as old as sound film itself if you consider cartoons such as WesternAnimation/SillySymphonies and Music/CabCalloway's appearances in WesternAnimation/BettyBoop cartoons to be music videos.
** Another OlderThanTelevision UrExample is the Music/JimmieRodgers (not the 50s-60s pop singer, but the late 20s-early 30s country singer) 1930 short film "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHulWOZBpk The Singing Brakeman]]" produced by Creator/ColumbiaPictures where Jimmie performed on a movie set looking like a railroad dressed in a railroad suit performing "Waiting For a Train", "Daddy and Home" and "Blue Yodel No. 1 (T For Texas)".
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundies Soundies]] (a combination jukebox and film projector) were around in the 1940's.
** Another early video is Music/BobDylan's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srgi2DkDbPU Subterranean Homesick Blues]]", made in 1965 as a lead-in to the documentary ''Film/DontLookBack''.
** Music/{{Queen|Band}}'s "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975) is often claimed to be the first "true" music video, despite the fact that many [[TheSixties '60s]] groups, such as Music/TheBeatles and Music/TheMonkees, were doing them ten years earlier. Music/TheBeatles' clips were even made for the same reason the Queen clip was -- to stand in for live TV appearances on various shows (''Top of the Pops'' in Queen's case). The idea of having a group shoot a video to promote a single on TV spots and send out as many copies of it as required, rather than have them jetting from studio to studio to appear (often miming) was sensible. Music/PinkFloyd, Music/{{Yes}}, Music/EmersonLakeAndPalmer and Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} also appeared in films during the 1960s and '70s. Most were intended for release as theatrical features, for internal music industry promotion, or were just the group messing about. Some had limited releases at the time, and most of the others remained hidden for years before the general public saw them (Music/DavidBowie's featurette ''Love You Till Tuesday'' was made in 1969 but not screened until 1984, for instance).
** Music/RickyNelson was also a pioneer in music video, judging from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0janfcZ8LUw this promo]] of him singing "Travelin' Man" in ''1961'', filmed as part of an episode for his sitcom ''Series/TheAdventuresOfOzzieAndHarriet''. And Nelson predated Music/TheMonkees as America's first TV-promoted rock and roll TeenIdol by a decade.
** Humble beginnings: The ''Dickson experimental film'', made in late 1894 or early 1895 at Edison's ''Black Maria'' film studio on West Orange, New Jersey. It is the first known film with live recorded sound, a kinetoscope film accompanied by a phonograph cylinder. The 17-second film features a man playing the violin, while two men dance to the music nearby, and a fourth man walks by near the end. The music played was "Song of the Cabin Boy", from Robert Planquette's ''Les Cloches de Corneville''. The cylinder containing the live sound recording was lost for decades, eventually being found in TheSixties, broken in two. It was repaired in 1998, and finally film and sound were reunited after more than a century of being recorded. You can watch it [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwIcRSvQ_TY here.]]
* Music/MichaelJackson gets a lot of hype from his estate and fans as the originator of the story-driven ConceptVideo, a point also argued in [[http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/06/michael-jacksons-unparalleled-influence/58616 this article]]: "Jackson turned the low-budget, promotional clips record companies would make to promote a hit single into high art, a whole new genre that combined every form of 20th century mass media: the music video." But concept videos existed in the late 1970s and early '80s, while Jackson's ''Music/{{Thriller}}'' videos didn't arrive until 1983. The Jacksons (including Michael) ''did'' have a ConceptVideo in 1980's "Can You Feel It", but even then they're predated by the work of such artists as Music/GeorgeHarrison (1976's comic "This Song" and "True Love" clips) and Music/DavidBowie ([[Music/{{Lodger}} "Look Back in Anger" and "D.J."]] in 1979). Often forgotten is the fact that the first winners of the MTV Video Vanguard Award in 1984 were Music/TheBeatles and Richard Lester, due to the influence of the films they made in TheSixties, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9K3Qh0nYTQ Bowie]]. Jackson didn't win until 1988, but the award was renamed after him in 1991, which only aids misperceptions about his influence.
** Music/{{Devo}} thrived on the use of multi-media in this regard, having creating the short film ''The Truth About De-evolution'' in 1976 which could be described as an early concept video (featuring two songs and a dialogue between their mascot characters, Booji Boy and General Boy). They also created concert interstitials set in their fictional Spudland universe such as ''Roll the Barrel'', and several pre-MTV promotional videos that in some way or another tied in with de-evolution. The home video compilations ''The Men Who Make the Music'' (1978) and ''We're All Devo'' (1984) expanded on this universe with further scenes from the band, General Boy, Rod Rooter, and so forth.
** Several of the segments of the '''[[TheForties 1940]]''' movie ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'', which in effect is a two-hour music video, are story-driven. The last-but-one, illustrating Music/ModestMussorgsky's "Night On Bald Mountain", has some heavy satanic imagery -- over ''fifty years'' before ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''.
** In terms of pairing a song with images that tell a story, way back in the 1890s songwriter Charles K. Harris ("After the Ball") produced slide shows with painted photographs that were supposed to accompany performances of his songs.
* When Music/TheyMightBeGiants came out with "Why Does The Sun Shine?" in 1993, most people didn't know that it was a cover. The original version was written for ''Space Songs'', a 1959 educational album for children performed by folk singer Tom Glazer. "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" has a similar lineage. It was written in 1953, and first recorded that year by the singing group The Four Lads.
* "Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am!" is nearly always a reference to Music/DavidBowie's "Suffragette City"; the phrase had been around since well before UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* Even though the term was coined during the TurnOfTheMillennium, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AlhQrXtdck this song from 1984]] sounds remarkably similar to a modern [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denpa_song denpa song]], complete with off-key synths and chanting. Denpa is an umbrella term and can be applied retroactively to it as well. The 80's band Zin-Say (especially "Kyofu Kamereon Ningen"), Sukisukisu Fumie Hosokawa, and Computer Obaachan by Ryuichi Sakamoto are also retroactively labelled denpa. Music/JunTogawa was also hugely influential in early denpa.
** Denpa being Older Than They Think doesn't even just apply to unintentional examples like the above. Otaku-oriented doujin music with strange lyrics and intentionally off-key vocals and instruments that resemble denpa song in all but name date back to the early 90s, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXK_WpT0HyE like so]].
** A lot of people think that ARM from Music/{{IOSYS}} and Camellia are responsible for creating denpa that incorporates more mainstream EDM elements. While they certainly popularized it, they were not the first. If you were to tell someone [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGth7ekVNso this early denpa song from 2002]] was made by IOSYS, they'd probably believe you.
* Many people think that the saxophones are rather new instruments. While they became ubiquitous in TheRoaringTwenties, the instrument was invented by the Belgian Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. Of 19th-century musical works requiring a saxophone, the most commonly performed is Bizet's ''L'Arlésienne'' suite for orchestra, No. 1 (1872). By the standards of classical music, the saxophone is quite new (and also unusual in that it was purposefully invented). The next-newest instrument in common use is the clarinet, which was developed in the early 1700s from an older instrument called the chalumeau. It gets even older than that -- the oboe and harp can trace their lineage to ancient Greece.
* "Avantcore", a song by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busdriver Busdriver]], includes a sample of the song "Turtles Have Short Legs" by Music/{{Can}}. One of ''VideoGame/ParappaTheRapper''[='=]s songs sampled it before then. People on Website/YouTube were wondering why Busdriver would sample Parappa.
** Can themselves pioneered a number of musical techniques that are now common today. Looped break-beats, for example. Most people would associate with Rap and HipHop, though Can first used the technique ([[UnbuiltTrope in combination with live drums]]) on the 1971 epic "Halleluhwah" from "Tago Mago".
* Manufactured pop music is a funny example in that just about ''every'' generation tends to think they birthed it. In fact, pop music manufactured to appeal to teenage girls has been around since ''TheFifties''. And it was every bit as derided then by critics and music snobs as it is now (albeit perhaps not as vocally, since the internet didn't exist until much later). To give a good example of this, lots of people think that the Music/BackstreetBoys and *Music/{{NSYNC}} were the first mainstream pop boy bands. In fact, Music/TheMonkees were manufactured in 1966 as a knock-off of the Beatles. Music/{{Menudo}} is a long-running Puerto Rican boy band famous for its rotating roster of singers, who are replaced as they age (Music/RickyMartin was once a member, [[BreakupBreakout well before he was famous as a solo artist]]). Kids Incorporated had a TV series running [[LongRunner nine seasons on the air]] in the '80s, with a rotating roster (including Stacy Ferguson 20 years before she started [[Music/TheBlackEyedPeas flaunting her lovely lady lumps]]). Musical Youth is another early boy band, formed in 1980 and known for their "Pass the Dutchie" single; a few years later Music/NewKidsOnTheBlock were one of the hottest acts of the late 80s. See the page image for a satirical take on this idea.
** Many Americans aren't aware that not only have British & Irish boy bands existed long before Music/OneDirection and Music/TheWanted, but that some of them tried to go for U.S. success. Take That, Westlife, Boyzone, Five, [=BBMak=], A1, and JLS all tried to become popular in the States, but became commercial failures over there. The Wanted would soon follow suit, but One Direction would go on to become more successful in the USA than all of the others ''combined''. Most people are aware of the Beatles and know they're British, but don't exactly associate them with the term "boy band".
** Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers of "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" were arguably a precursor to the "boy band" back in TheFifties!
* The earliest synthesizer album was not ''Music/SwitchedOnBach'' by Music/WendyCarlos -- Morton Subotnick's ''Silver Apples of the Moon'' was released a year earlier, Perrey and Kingsley's ''Kaleidoscopic Vibrations'' in the same year as Subotnick's, and Perrey and Kingsley's ''[[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture The In Sound From Way Out!]]'' (which almost certainly ''was'' the first synth album) in '''1966'''. In fact, synthesizer music is older than L.P.s themselves. The first public performance of music on a synthesizer took place in Russia in 1920. According to Website/TheOtherWiki, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer the first synthesiser was invented in 1876(!)]].
* There has been an edit war on the Wikipedia page for Isao Tomita's "Snowflakes Are Dancing", with one editor trying to claim that there is somehow something "remarkable" about the fact that Tomita used multitrack layering to record this album. All previous synth albums also used this technique, because if you're using a monophonic instrument (as all synths were at the time) but also want complex melody lines, there is no alternative. Indeed, Music/TheBeatles used multitrack layering in '''1964''', and it was an old technique then.
* Many people think that the song "Hurt" was originally recorded by Music/JohnnyCash, not Music/NineInchNails. The Youtube 'debate' on this is cringe inducing.
* A video from 1973 circulating on Website/YouTube features Music/DollyParton singing her own composition, "I Will Always Love You". Not only did she write it, but she recorded two different hit versions before Music/WhitneyHouston covered it. This doesn't stop people from gasping at Parton's gall for daring to "sing that Whitney Houston song".
* A large number of Music/{{Beyonce}} fans are upset that Music/LadyGaga's robot suit in "Paparazzi" got more attention than the similar one Beyoncé wore in "Sweet Dreams". However, [[Film/{{Metropolis}} Brigitte Helm]] did it first, she did it best, and she did it 80 years before either of them did. While it's understandable that these fans aren't familiar with the original silent film, they've also forgotten that similar costumes have been used in popular music videos and live performances for at least two decades, some of which came out [[FleetingDemographicRule only a couple years ago]].
* If you were to ask anyone where the line "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end" is from, if they knew, chances are they'd say it's a line from "Closing Time" by Semisonic. But it's actually a direct quote from the Roman Philosopher Seneca the Younger, making it OlderThanFeudalism. The song's other famous line, "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here", was a long-established cliche for bar and restaurant owners to say to customers as they closed for the night. A 1944 ''Boston Herald'' article quotes the line verbatim, but calls it a line from "the old days", suggesting it was probably a few centuries old by the time Semisonic used it.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM Pachelbel Rant]] anyone?
* How about a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpB_40hYjXU four-chord song]]?
* One [=YouTube=] video of a certain elder statesman of Rock doing a version of "All Along The Watchtower" drew several indignant comments about this "old geezer" [[CoveredUp covering]] Music/JimiHendrix. The "geezer" in question? Music/BobDylan, who wrote the song on ''Music/JohnWesleyHarding'' before Hendrix covered it on ''Music/ElectricLadyland''.
* Folk music icon Dave Van Ronk tells a tremendous story about "House of the Rising Sun". The song itself is a traditional -- it dates back at least a hundred years and was first recorded by Alan Lomax in 1933. Somewhere around 1960, Van Ronk did his own arrangement of the song (many others had been done previously) that originated some of the now-common melodic features of the tune. At the time, Van Ronk's friend and protege was none other than a very young Bob Dylan. When Dylan was signed by Creator/ColumbiaRecords in 1961, he recorded (without asking) Van Ronk's arrangement. When the record came out in 1962, Van Ronk had to stop playing the song because people started accusing him of stealing it from Dylan. The two of them stayed friends, but Van Ronk would get a measure of revenge two years later -- when the song became a huge hit for Music/TheAnimals, and Dylan had to stop playing it when people accused him of stealing it from Eric Burdon.
* Speaking of Hendrix, before he unleashed his slowed down cover of "Hey Joe", Tim Rose made a version that had a similar tempo. Hendrix himself would say that this Rose's rendition was the one that inspired the Experience to record it.
* The 2008 ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'' rendition of "Samson and Delilah" is generally cited as being a cover of the Music/BruceSpringsteen song of the same name, recorded in 2006. Believe it or not, Springsteen did NOT create the song, nor did Music/TheGratefulDead who recorded a memorable version in 1977; gospel singer Blind Willie Johnson did, and back then it was called "If I Had My Way, I'd Burn This Whole Building Down".
* "In My Time of Dying" is not a Music/LedZeppelin original; it's a cover of Blind Willie Johnson's "Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed". There are number of versions of that song, that predate the Led Zeppelin version.
* The {{Britpop}} band Space is best known for the song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1NBpVKWh_c Female of the Species]]" (1996), with the lyric "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." Rudyard Kipling, who may have originated the sentiment, wrote [[http://www.potw.org/archive/potw96.html The Female of the Species]] almost ''one hundred years'' earlier. It's not even the first song to use the phrase. The Walker Brothers recorded the remarkably similar "Deadlier Than the Male" in 1966.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPgHbt0ODr4 "Stand and Deliver"]] may sound like an anti-grunge song at first. Then you realize it's from the early 80's.
* Go to Website/YouTube and look up "Twilight" by Music/VanessaCarlton. Now look at the comments for the video. I guarantee you that you'll encounter in the first page someone who thinks it's connected to the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' series, or more likely, someone complaining that there's no connection and the earlier poster is an idiot for thinking there is. The song was written in 2002, before the first Twilight book even came out, let alone when the series truly become a cultural phenomenon upon the release of the film.
* Pay close attention to any TV commercial that advertises a band's "brand new single". The single might be new insofar as the band hasn't performed it before, but it's surprising how often it's a cover or remix of an older song. Though not universally true, Pop music seems to be especially prone to this.
* Some Music/KateBush fans are adamant in claiming that she was the first quirky keyboard-playing female singer-songwriter, and that every female musician with a penchant for weirdness to come after ripped her off. What they don't know is that Music/{{Nico}} predated Kate by ''12 years''. Bizarre chords and melodies, expert piano playing and unorthodox vocalizing are also the province of one Music/JoniMitchell.
* Some people seem to think that the refrain from Music/{{Kesha}}'s song "Take It Off" is original, this is not true the melody is from a song called "The Streets of Cairo" which dates back to the late 1800's. You might also know it as that StandardSnippet that's associated with snake charmers and belly-dancing, or as that schoolyard chant about a place in France where the naked ladies dance. Given the subject matter of the song and the fact that both mention "a hole in the wall", the Ke$ha song was probably alluding to the latter.

* What about people who think "I'm A Believer" was written by/for "Shrek"? Or even if they think they know better, believe the song was written by Music/TheMonkees. (It was written for them by Music/NeilDiamond.)
* Many people, when asked about the history of the ConceptAlbum, will date it to mid-to-late [[TheSixties 60s]] rock bands, possibly naming ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'' as the first of the genre. These people are wrong. Serious historians of music generally mark Music/FrankSinatra's ''Music/InTheWeeSmallHours'', released in 1955, as the first true concept album (with the thoughts of lovelorn men [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin in the wee small hours]] of the morning being the concept). Even way older than that is Music/WoodyGuthrie's ''Music/DustBowlBallads'' (1940), with songs about the poverty and drought in the American Midwest during TheGreatDepression.
** A possible ancestor of the concept album is the song cycle, dating to the early 19th century, as Website/ThatOtherWiki defines it as having [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_cycle "Unification achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs."]]
** An inversion was when Creator/RichardHarris (yes, he of subsequent [[Franchise/HarryPotter Dumbledore]] fame) announced circa 1969 that he was to record a concept album; the announcement made it clear that he believed that he had invented the idea and that nobody had done one before, despite this being '''two years after''' ''Sgt. Pepper''.
** When people think of the term "album" in general, they'll think of an LP record. The concept existed earlier as 78 rpm records packaged together in a book like a photo album. Creator/RCARecords even marketed albums of 45 rpm records when they were engaged in a format war with Creator/ColumbiaRecords' LP, but eventually dropped these to market 45s as a format for singles to teenagers once it became clear that the LP was here to stay.
* Music/DonMcLean didn't write "Babylon". It's generally credited to 18th-century American composer William Billings.
* Inverted with the Music/LadyGaga hatedom who love to point out that some female musician (usually Madonna) 'did it first'. And then played straight as most of the haters of the Madonna loving variety seem to forget that Madonna faced very similar criticism in her early career. Even Madonna wasn't the first female pop singer to play out her sexiness. Music/TinaTurner already danced and pranced around in very short dresses in the 1960s. And Madonna was criticized in the 1980s for blatantly copying styles from other pop singers and Hollywood actresses way before her, the most obvious being Creator/MarilynMonroe.
* Music/GoldenEarring, of "Radar Love" fame (1973), formed in 1961. Music/FleetwoodMac formed in 1967 and Music/{{Rush|Band}} formed in 1968 along with Music/{{Yes}}. Journey formed in 1973.
* The iconic title song from 1994's ''Film/PulpFiction'' is a song from the early 1960s, Music/DickDale's "Misirlou" from ''Music/SurfersChoice''. Dale didn't write the song (though he is the first to adapt it to SurfRock, where it has since become a standard)--it's a folk song from either Greece or Turkey, dating back at least to the 1930s. It was recorded, in its original slower tempo, many times before Dale. And then there are people who know the song solely from Music/TheBlackEyedPeas's [[CoveredUp "Pump It"]]... In fact, many people recognize the tune from both ''Pulp Fiction'' and "Pump It", but can't identify it as "Misirlou".
* A lot of romantic music of the 19th century were re-adaptations of earlier works and medieval music. Music/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky was quite fond of delivering this, most notably in his symphonies drawing themes from Russian or Ukrainian traditional music. Perhaps the best example is the final coda of his ballet "Sleeping Beauty", featured in Disney's film of the same name, which is a direct rearrangement of the national anthem of the Kingdom France, "Marche d' Henry IV" (prior to the French Revolution).
* Most musical concepts in general fit this trope
** Musical tablature notation is OlderThanFeudalism, existing in China in the Warring States Period (475 BCE - 256 BCE), though it was a little [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Youlan.jpg different]] than the modern guitar tabs you see.
** Western notation dates back to around the 12th century.
** Sampling is OlderThanPrint in Western music. Motets are generally mashups of various sacred and secular songs dating back to the 13th century.
*** Recorded samples for musical effect in the modern sense is generally attributed to Pierre Schaffer in the late 1940s (called "Musique Concrête"). Oddly, the first time this concept was used in pop music was The Singing Dogs, the novelty music project from TheFifties that used differently-pitched dog barks to simulate a melody (most famously "Jingle Bells").
** Composers as far back as Music/JohannSebastianBach have been caught using tone rows.
* Leave it to ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' to [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19094_6-songs-that-were-decades-ahead-groundbreaking-music.html take this one on]].
** Industrial music -- invented in the early '80s, or in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8jOhqOsouM 1969?]] (Cromagnon - "Caledonia")
** Music/{{Radiohead}}'s "groundbreaking" electronica-rock album ''Music/KidA'' sounds surprisingly similar to the album ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__-lpvXfI6E&feature=player_embedded Love Without Sound]]'' by the '60s psychedelia band White Noise.
** Music/DaftPunk in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2q8Fpf3eLQ 1970]]. Or, better yet, in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW-n6GWFAvI&feature=player_embedded 1958]]''.
*** Even more impressive is that some of those sounds existed as early as 1919, as seen in Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari.
** What if [[Music/TheSmashingPumpkins Billy Corgan]] was around in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl741QJJiRE&feature=player_embedded 1964]], and was a French chick named Françoise Hardy?
** NewWaveMusic... [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDUFaRiUwsk&feature=player_embedded in 1968!]]
*** You could even say that Joe Meek did it nine years earlier with his 1959 album ''I Hear a New World''.
* What was the first rap record, the Music/TheSugarHillGang's "Rapper's Delight" in 1979? Music/GilScottHeron's beat poetry on ''Music/TheRevolutionWillNotBeTelevised (1974)''? Or the ouevre of the Last Poets, who formed in 1968 and released their debut in 1970? Or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvMBxlu62c0&feature=player_embedded this track]] by comedian Pigmeat Markham from '68? Or the Jubalaires back in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNzKZ7lJRUc 1937?]] In a sense, scatting from the 1920s is a precursor to rapping.
* Music/{{KISS}} invented grunge rock. No, seriously. At least, they can make a case for it. Their 1974 sophomore album, ''Hotter Than Hell'' (which reportedly [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sold better in Japan than in the United States]]) included, in addition to what is arguably history's first thrash-metal song ("Parasite", which you may know better from the Music/{{Anthrax}} cover version), "Goin' Blind" and "Got to Choose", both of which have a surprisingly modern, '90s alternative sound evocative of Music/PearlJam, Music/{{Soundgarden}}, etc. True, Gene Simmons's vocal on "Goin' Blind" is a good deal more basso than any of Eddie Vedder's, but the singing style is almost exactly the same.

* Music/ElvisPresley is often (mis)attributed as the writer of ''Love Me Tender'' (he didn't even write the song, he just performed it), which debuted in 1956. But in actual fact, the tune itself was lifted from an old Civil War ballet called ''Aura Lee'', written over a hundred years prior in 1861, by George R. Poulton.
** Similarly, the melody for "It's Now or Never" comes from "O Sole Mio", composed by Eduardo di Capua in 1898.
*** "It's Now or Never" wasn't even the first hit English version of "O Sole Mio". "There's No Tomorrow" reached #2 on the ''Billboard''' chart for Tony Martin in 1950. Elvis wanted to cover the song but his publishers told him it would be less of a hassle to just write new words instead of trying to make a deal with the publishers of the older version, so a new set of writers penned some [[SuspiciouslySimilarSong Suspiciously Similar]] lyrics.
** ...same with its [[SpiritualSuccessor Spiritual Successor]] "Surrender", same tune as the Italian "Torna a Surriento" or "Come Back to Sorrento".
** "Wooden Heart" is adapted from the German song "Muss i denn" written by Friedrich Silcher in 1827.
** "Can't Help Falling in Love" is derived from the 1784 French song "Plaisir d'amour", tune by Jean Paul Égide Martini.
** Speaking of Elvis, Elvis impersonators have been a thing not only since before he died, but also since his peak popularity during the 1950s. Website/TheOtherWiki gives some examples of this.
* Most new listeners are surprised to learn that Music/YellowMagicOrchestra released [[Music/YellowMagicOrchestraAlbum their first album]] in 1978, which had the same SynthPop sound that would come to dominate the 1980s. Or that synthpop itself dates back to 1966 at the latest, with Perrey & Kingsley's first album.
** Same can be said for Kraftwerk.
* Two Music/DropkickMurphys songs, "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" and "Gonna Be a Blackout Tonight" are actually covers of two previously unrecorded sets of Music/WoodyGuthrie lyrics (with new music written by the band).
** Meanwhile, "Tessie", their famed 2006 Red Sox World Series song, is actually ''NewerThanTheyThink'' - parts of the chorus are adapted from the original Royal Rooters chant from the turn of the 20th century, but the verses are original to the Murphys' version, and tell the story of the Rooters themselves.
* Many younger people think that the idea of a graduation song dates back to Vitamin C in 2000 (or Green Day two years before -- that was not even about graduation to begin with). The Four Freshmen did it in 1954.
* Lady Gaga's infamous meat dress? The Undertones' 1983 compilation album ''All Wrapped Up'' [[http://www.chartstats.com/images/artwork/29589.jpg did it first.]]
** And the indie musician Brittany Brazil donned a meat bra a few years before Gaga did in her video "Piece of Meat" (which is probably best known for having a cameo by WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd).
** And before them all was Music/TheBeatles' infamous [[http://stores.thebeatlesbutchershop.com/~stores/426817_preview.jpg "Butcher Shop" cover]], way back in 1966.
** Creator/RossNoble mentioned in a stand up show that he'd done a bit in 2004 about gluing meat to himself "to ward off amorous vegans" and that Lady Gaga had copied him.
* Music/{{Metallica}}'s ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'' from ''Music/RideTheLightning'' is a quote from Creator/JohnDonne's [[http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/meditation17.php Meditation 17]], via a 1940 [[Literature/ForWhomTheBellTolls novel]] by Creator/ErnestHemingway. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;[[spoiler:It tolls for thee.]]

* "Hello Kitty" wasn't the first song Music/AvrilLavigne used GratuitousJapanese in the lyrics. Before that, Avril released versions of her song "Girlfriend" with its chorus sang in various languages, [[https://youtu.be/L0D-3LLkzk8 including Japanese]].
* [[Music/TheBeatles "Norwegian Wood"]] wasn't the first Indian classical music influenced song by a pop-group. That's probably ''See My Friends'' by Music/TheKinks, recorded a few months earlier. The first pop song to feature a sitar was the Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren novelty record ''Goodness Gracious Me'', from 1960.
** Bizarrely enough, the ''James Bond theme'' from 1962's Film/DrNo is also based on a pastiche-Indian melody, "Good Sign Bad Sign" by Monty Norman.
* The "Flying V" and "Explorer" type electric guitars. They're usually associated with late 70's/early 80's heavy metal acts and Japanese guitar companies creating modern "shredder" guitars. They were actually limited production models from Gibson released in 1958 (although selling for less than a year due to low popularity). The Flying V was first reissued in 1967, and one well known user was Music/JimiHendrix.
* The lyrics to "Turn! Turn! Turn!" by Music/TheByrds are taken nearly word-for-word from Literature/TheBible -- ironically, from the same book where we get the saying, "There's nothing new under the sun." Also, the Byrds didn't write that. It was written by Music/PeteSeeger in about 1952.
* Lots of people know Eric Prydz's hit [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiVnU4TeV6U "Call On Me".]] However, years earlier, a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZdmk2pNmxA house track]] of the same name was made by Thomas Bangalter (of Music/DaftPunk) and DJ Falcon. However, they decided not to release the track, as they felt it sounded basic and uninspired. Similarly, the Freeloaders' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boZ9sN5jFHc "So Much Love To Give"]] is based on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGEOYmMe-aI another track]] by Bangalter and Falcon (under the name Together), which also has the same name.
* Look to most Website/YouTube clips of Music/{{Skillet}}'s "Monster" and Music/ThreeDaysGrace's "Animal I Have Become" will have fans of the opposing band claiming that one ripped off the other. "Monster" was released in 2009, "Animal I Have Become" in 2006.
* Some Gaga Website/YouTube viewers Music/ChristinaAguilera have commented on how she is "ripping off Music/LadyGaga" especially on "Dirrty" - a song released in 2002, while Gaga didn't become active until 2005.
* Music/JustinBieber? Well he is a teen pop star and teen Idol, we had them in the 90s, Music/AaronCarter, and the 80s, Tiffany Darwish, and the 70s, Donny Osmond, in the late 60s/early 70s, Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy, and the early 50s, Frankie Avalon, and even the mid 30s to early 40s, Frank Sinatra.
** A Canadian pop star singing SillyLoveSongs that appeals mostly to teens? Surely you must mean Music/AvrilLavigne.
** Bubblegum pop from Canada? Let me take you back to TheSeventies and introduce you to the [=DeFranco=] Family.
** Or Music/PaulAnka who had his heyday in the 1950s. A Canadian teenage boy? Check. Cute and baby-faced? Check. A teen heartthrob with many obsessive teenage girl fans? Check. Sings romantic pop songs with questionable artistic merit? Check.
** Oh my god! A Canadian act despised by the internet? [[Music/{{Nickelback}} Where have we seen that before?]]
* Many fans of Music/{{Drake}} think that he coined the term "yolo" with his song, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYDKK95cpfM "The Motto"]]. He popularized it, but {{Deathcore}} band Music/SuicideSilence had a song the predates it by a few months, and Music/TheStrokes had [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT68FS3YbQ4 song of the same name]] in 2006. The term "you only live once" goes back to 1937, with a Creator/HenryFonda film titled ''Film/YouOnlyLiveOnce''.
* Here's a little drinking game for you: find any Youtube video for the band Overkill that includes an image of their mascot Chalie (a skull with bat wings) on it, then look through the comments section and take a shot each time someone insists that the idea was stolen from Avenged Sevenfold. Take an extra shot if they stick to their guns even after being informed that Overkill has been using the character since the early '80s, well over a decade before [=A7X=] existed.
* People who only know Music/CarlyRaeJepsen from "Call Me Maybe" would be very surprised to learn that her first album (''Tug of War'') was released in ''2008''.
* Music/{{Psy}}'s work before "Gangnam Style" (and to a lesser extent, "Gentleman") predates to '''2001'''. However, his earlier songs were DarkerAndEdgier, which resulted in controversies and he's unable to get out of his AudienceAlienatingEra until later.
* It might come as a surprise to fans of Music/LilWayne and Music/JayZ that Music/LilWayne started in [[TheNineties 1992]] and Music/JayZ Started in [[TheEighties 1989]].
* Disney's Teen Idols are nothing new. They've been marketing young singers since Walt himself was alive. Closer to today, people like Music/HilaryDuff come to mind years before Music/MileyCyrus and Music/TheJonasBrothers popped up.
* Music/WhitneyHouston's powerful melismatic style of singing has been around for awhile in the Soul/Gospel community (especially gospel). It just [[EndOfAnAge fell out of prominence]] when the over produced [[TheEighties eighties]] [[DawnOfAnEra arrived]].
* Quite a few misinformed people think the rapper Drake (including Drake himself apparently) is the first to infuse R&B stylings into his rap delivery, over looking the fact that Slimkid of The Pharcyde, and Music/BoneThugsNHarmony did it first.
* People thinking Music/JimiHendrix was the first black rock artist, which is so untrue it's not even funny. Then there are those who think Music/LivingColour was the first black rock band. But bands like Sound Barrier, Music/BadBrains, The Black Muerda (started in the early ''sixties''), Music/TheIsleyBrothers, and The Chambers Brothers predate them.
** These is even weirder when you consider that rock draws much of its background and inspiration from blues, which was originally predominantly performed by black artists for black audiences.
** Hendrix wasn't the first black PsychedelicRock musician either. {{Music/Love|Band}}, fronted by African-American Arthur Lee, released its debut album a year before ''Are You Experienced?''
** He was also not the first Native American rock musician. That would be Willie Mitchell and the Northern Lights (Algonquin-Mohawk). The one you're more likely to have heard of is Music/BuffySainteMarie (Cree), more of a folk artist.
** Actually, the first Native American rock musician was probably Link Wray (Shawnee from North Carolina). His instrumental "Rumble" was a top 20 hit in 1958 (and is also sometimes cited as the first heavy metal song).
* Common trope with many artists or bands who experience a career revival, a change in lead singers or a genre shift. Gary Numan experienced this same trope when he released the goth and industrial influenced "Exile", a sharp diversion from his former, softer proto-electronica sound. in 1998. Some fans thought that Exile was his first album. Mind you, Gary Numan at that time had been active in the music business for 20 years. Cher experienced the same trope with younger listeners when 1999's "Believe" hit the top 10 and revived her career.
* Also a common trope when artists in a formerly underground genre gain crossover appeal. Often the people who predated the artists (sometimes by decades!) are accused of by younger fans of ripping off the pop artists' sound.
* There are documents dating back to before [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar the Civil War]] that call the fiddling tune 'Cotton-eyed Joe' "an old favorite". The (in)famous late 1990s dance mix by Music/{{Rednex}} was only one of many, many covers the song has had in its long history.
* Music/DavidGuetta has been active since 1984, but released his first album in 2002 and didn't become a global household name until the turn of the new decade.
* The title of the 2000 Shaggy song [[ImplausibleDeniability "It Wasn't Me"]], which some have dubbed the "Shaggy defense", as well as its subject matter, is taken directly from the 1987 Creator/EddieMurphy comedy special "Raw".
* No, {{Emo}} is not some weird subculture that appeared in the early 00s. The term and a related style of music[[note]]that sounds absolutely nothing like what's thought of as "emo" in the mainstream.[[/note]]has been around since the ''mid-80s''.
** No, {{Screamo}} is not some stupid word created in the same decade to describe angsty bands with screaming vocals. The word's first recorded usage dates back to 1997, and it was used to describe a style of HardcorePunk music that's even older. Records of what later became known as screamo were released while the Soviet Union still existed.
* Many Music/CannibalCorpse fans don't know that their second vocalist George Fisher (aka "Corpsegrinder") was active in the music scene well before joining the band, most notably as the former vocalist for Monstrosity, a much, much more obscure band in death metal.

* Music/KeithUrban has been active since 1991. He released an album in Australia that year, then had dozens of credits on other people's albums ranging from INXS to Music/GarthBrooks, and fronted a short-lived band called The Ranch (which did two low-charting singles and an album for Capitol Records in 1997) before putting out his "real" country music debut in 1999.
** Also, "Somebody Like You" (2002) was not his first hit on the country charts -- it was the first single from his ''second'' country album. His first country album had three of its four singles land in the country Top 10, including the now-forgotten #1 hit "But for the Grace of God". Most of the output from his first American album is likely forgotten now due to EarlyInstallmentWeirdness that puts it out of sync with his current body of work. He wasn't even the first Australian to have a #1 country hit -- Jamie O'Neal's "There Is No Arizona" reached the top of the charts literally ''one week'' before "But for the Grace of God".
** And of course, the idea of an Australian country singer having success in the U.S. dates all the way back to Olivia Newton-John in TheSeventies, before she genre-shifted to Pop in TheEighties. (She never had a #1 hit at country, though.)
* Dennis [=DeYoung=] of Music/{{Styx}} mentioned in an interview that his band, which did not get major mainstream success until 1977, was often accused of being a rip-off of Music/{{Queen|Band}} in their use of operatic, high-pitched harmonies and grandiose prog-rock/arena-rock instrumentation, in spite of the fact that the band, formed in Chicago in TheSixties, claims they experimented with the sound long before Queen were well-known.
* Fans of Music/JoyDivision who dislike their later work as Music/NewOrder frequently cite how the band's later incarnation ditched their old "rock" sound in favor of electronic music. However, Joy Division were already heavily influenced by Music/{{Kraftwerk}}, and it showed. In particular, the B-side [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvZYrT48Np0 "As You Said"]] is a direct pastiche of Kraftwerk, featuring little to no identifiable rock elements.
* DeathMetal band Music/{{Kataklysm}} did not become popular until the release of their acclaimed 2006 album ''In the Arms of Devastation''. Even to this day people are a little surprised to find out that they've been a band since 1991. Also, many of their younger fans don't know that Maurizio Iacono isn't their original singer; Sylvain Houde was, although Maurizio was always in the band, just as bassist for a while.

* The swing rhythm of jazz did not actually originate in the 20th century. Rather, swing rhythm was used as far back as the Baroque era as "notes inégales", a performance practice where notes with the same time value are played with unequal durations. J.S. Bach famously wrote in a swing rhythm in several parts of the Art of Fugue.
** Some jazz musicians have revered Bach as "the first jazz composer". There is even an Alec Templeton composition called "Bach Goes to Town" (famously performed by the Benny Goodman group) which although a jazz/swing number, is also fugal in structure.

* The diss track is associated with {{Hiphop}}, though as early as the 1960s reggae musician Music/LeeScratchPerry already recorded a musical attack at his former record boss called "People Funny Boy (1968)".
* Music/ElvisPresley is associated with sexually suggestive pelvis movements while dancing on stage, but Music/MuddyWaters did this almost a decade earlier.
* Openly singing about sex seems to be something that is very modern. But early 1920s and 1930s blues recordings prove that musicians back then weren't shy about the subject either. Website/TheOtherWiki [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_blues has an entire article about it]]. And even Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart once composed a piece called "Lick My Arse, Quick!" We are NOT making this up! But this has probably been done for ages before Mozart. The English ayre ''It fell on a summer´s day'' from about 1600 goes into detail on the subject of fingering. Other madrigals from all over Europe tend to be ''very'' explicit on this subject as well.
* Music/MichaelJackson is often credited being the first black musical superstar who gained an international audience among all races. Never mind the fact that before him we had Music/LouisArmstrong in the 1920s.
* The phenomenon of musical superstars in itself seems to be something from when RockAndRoll was created. Yet classical composer Music/FranzLiszt was so popular in the mid 19th century that crowds of people flocked together to hear his works be performed, coining the term "Lisztomania". Yeah, you thought Creator/KenRussell made [[Film/{{Lisztomania}} that]] up, didn't you? And even before Liszt troubadours were well beloved by people, even so that people in the Middle Ages regarded music as "the tool of the devil", which also sounds familiar, doesn't it?
** You don't even have to go back that far. You only have to look back about a decade, and you'll find Music/FrankSinatra. Sinatra was a band singer with Tommy Dorsey, and when he went solo, he drew enormous crowds of teenage girls, known as bobbysoxers, who would scream and pass out at his concerts, to the point where it became the go-to stock Sinatra parody in the mid-20th century.

* RockAndRoll: Although music fans and purists vehemently debate the origins of the music form, most tend to date the start as occurring sometime between 1951 and 1956 (with a few even setting the start date as early as the 1930s and as late as the the 1960s). In truth, elements of rock and roll can be found in musical forms dating back to the late 19th century, and on record from [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL0FpB26VSg at least the early 1930s]], with many recordings qualifying as rock and roll in all but name.
* "Mmm Whatcha Say" (as featured by Jason Derulo, The O.C., and SNL) is from Music/ImogenHeap's "Hide and Seek".
* Anna Kendrick's [[Film/PitchPerfect ''Cups'']] was actually written by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWCOYJg9ps4 Lulu and the Lampshades]] back in 2009. The original version of the song was written by A.P. Carter in 1931 and was later recorded by the Carter Family in the 1950s (Carter ''also'' wrote a second, completely separate tune called "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?" which is sometimes confused for this one). The beat itself is also not original, watch it here on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgWsy0N9Nc Full House.]]

* El Chombo's 2018 hit "Dame tu Cosita" is actually an extended mix of a 1997 song originally called "[[NonAppearingTitle Introducción B]]" that he released in the album ''Cuentos De La Cripta 2''.

* It can be as true of bands as of songs; some examples include Music/{{Pulp}}, who started in 1978 but had most of their mainstream success in TheNineties, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith of Music/{{Underworld|Band}}, who had hits in the 90s and are still touring but started working together in 1980 and started Music/{{Underworld|Band}} in 1987, and The Music/FlamingLips (who formed in 1983 and solidified themselves as a mainstream force in 1998 with ''Music/TheSoftBulletin''). Consequently they're probably OlderThanTheyLook for many people.

* Music/JohnWilliams's film music abounds with homages. For instance, some sections of the more "jazzy" battle music sections in "Star Wars" are straight out of Music/IgorStravinsky. The Bearded One is honest and cool about these borrowings but younger fanboys can get a bit hot under the collar when this is pointed out. (Also, the famous "Jaws" cue sounds a lot like the theme of the Doomsday Machine in the original ''Series/{{Star Trek|The Original Series}}''.) Then there's the title music for Film/JurassicPark -- or, as Baroque fans prefer to call it, "Fugue no 2 from Book 1 of ''The Well-Tempered Clavier''".

* Heavyweight vinyl records of 180 grams or higher, colored vinyl, and those suitcase-style record players: all modern gimmicks to hook costumers of the 21st century Vinyl Revival? Absolutely not.

** Portable wind-up turntables housed in a suitcase-style case with handles were sold in TheRoaringTwenties. Battery-operated portable turntables launched in TheFifties and became popular among younger listeners for being cheap and compact from then up until TheSeventies, when cassettes became the preferred portable audio format. The suitcase players were then supplanted by boomboxes. There was also the very expensive [[https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/17199/lot/118/ "portable jukebox"]], which could hold 40 singles; Music/JohnLennon owned one and took it with him on the Beatles' later tours.

* Booklets containing lyrics, artwork and other information were most identified with the UsefulNotes/CompactDisc format, but they were also previously used for some [=LPs=], such as Music/TheWho's ''Music/{{Tommy}}'' and Music/LouReed's ''Music/{{Berlin}}''. These booklets were obviously sized for the 12-inch LP release, but they were fairly easy to adapt when it came time to reissue them on CD, as it was essentially only a matter of shrinking the booklet down to CD size.

* '90s kids might believe Music/GreenDay was the founder of {{PopPunk}} (i.e., punk rock with a pop sensibility. But the roots of pop punk can be traced to the 1970s with bands like the {{Ramones}} and the {{Buzzcocks}}.

* '90s kids might believe Music/GreenDay was the founder of Music/PopPunk (i.e., punk rock with a pop sensibility. But the roots of pop punk can be traced to the 1970s with bands like the Music/Ramones and the Music/Buzzcocks.

* People thinking Music/JimiHendrix was the first black rock artist, which is so untrue it's not even funny. Then there are those who think Music/LivingColour was the first black rock band. But bands like Sound Barrier, Music/BadBrains, The Black Muerda (started in the early ''sixties''), Music/TheIsleyBrothers predate them.