Haydn in Plain Sight

February 18, 2023 7:42 AM

I'm looking for a comprehensive list of pop songs that borrow from classical music

Not looking for:
Web pages like "10 hits you didn't know stole from classical music"
Songs that sample classical music
Specific examples

Ideally it would be a web page in which I could type in "chopin" and I would see a list of all pop songs that borrowed from Chopin or type "Beethoven Piano Sonatas" and see all of those.

I am aware of wikipedia

posted by falsedmitri to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

I love the title. Are you looking for something like https://www.whosampled.com/search/?q=chopin
or https://www.whosampled.com/search/?q=beethoven+sonata for starters?
posted by adekllny at 7:57 AM on February 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

This might be deleted as a non-answer, but I have my doubts that a comprehensive list exists.

We don't have a comprehensive list of pop songs (Discogs has a lot of data, but there are plenty of things that aren't in there), which makes me think we probably don't have one for classical music either. I'm not sure we even have universally-agreed-on definitions for 'pop song' or 'classical music.'

Finding a universally-agreed-on definition for 'borrow from,' especially when we're talking about music, doesn't seem like it's going to be any easier.
posted by box at 9:45 AM on February 18, 2023 [3 favorites]