Heath ዟ
Heath ዟ
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

You are the first to comment on that. :)

I was actually stuck for a title and happened to be listening to Comfortably Numb at the time. The mood of the music really resonated with what I was writing.

I’m fairly meticulous about crediting, so I think your question is a good one and I’m happy to answer.

If I lift a complete thought, a very unusual phrase, or a set of words that are intrinsically related to a source, I would not publish without crediting.

I felt that I Can’t Explain — You Would Not Understand is such a general phrase/feeling (used, commonly enough, before and after that song, without regard to the song’s existence) that crediting it to Pink Floyd would detract from what I was writing. There is no relation to, or inspiration from, that song in the body of the poem.

If it had been (for example):

When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I’ve got that feeling once again —
I can’t explain
You would not understand
This is not how I am

I would have been a complete jerk and absolutely wrong to not include a credit.

In my opinion, even the following would have required that of me:

When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons

or

Now I’ve got that feeling once again —
I can’t explain
You would not understand
This is not how I am

or even

Now I’ve got that feeling once again —
I can’t explain
You would not understand

Those all, to me, all borrow enough of the writer’s specific word combinations to warrant a credit.

I don’t feel that I Can’t Explain — You Would Not Understand does. To me it’s like saying the phrase should have put a ring on it should have a Beyonce (or her writers) credit, but people have been saying that before and after that song, with no relation to Beyonce, though a large amount of people, these days, who hear that phrase will have that song pop into their heads.

Now, if someone uses:

Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it

then I think a credit would be warranted.

For the record, this is all stated in the interest of discussion not argument. I think you raised an excellent question that should always be in the front of a writer’s mind when touching anyone else’s creations. I would be interested in hearing further thoughts from you on the subject anytime.

Here are some examples where I used what I consider to be the artist’s intellectual property:

[that second one is having issues timing out when I tried to pull it up]

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