Love in This Club: Completely Original

To the masses,

      Last year the singer Usher released the debut single from his latest album Here I Stand entitled “Love in This Club.” Having been a long-time Usher fan, I enjoyed his familiar harmonies expressing a desire for dance, inebriation, and pleas for public copulation. I also found the rhythmic, techno-inspired backing instrumentals, produced by Polow de Don, of particular interest for its unique sound and catchy melody. Needless to say I was not surprised in the least when “Love in This Club” became the number one song in the United States within three weeks of its release, a record for American singles.
      Usher’s album went on to receive commercial success and critical acclaim, and the music video was nominated at the prestigious MTV Music Awards later that year. The track’s producer Polow de Don received high praise from the music community for his creative track, and continues to command six-figures for every song he produces. “Love in This Club” still receives heavy airplay to date.
      At my job as a salesman at the local Apple Store, we at Apple often receive significant periods of downtime when customers lack the urge to purchase Apple computers and Apple computer-related equipment. To occupy themselves, the employees often engage in various Apple tasks, including learning about new Apple products, ensuring that the Apple store is in array, and playing on the Apple computers. During the downtime of my most recent shift my co-worker demonstrated for me some of the features of one of the Apple software packages, Garageband— an audio manipulation tool that allows for the recording of instruments as well as provides a sample of pre-recorded stock Apple loops with which consumers can create simple tracks. After playing around with the Apple software for a bit, he threw together a short recording that consisted of a few Apple loops from a software package add-on released in 2006.
      He then played a few stock Apple loops with the program that he claimed sounded identical to the song “Love in This Club” and that, consequently, Polow had stolen the tracks from Garageband and sold them to Usher for hundreds of thousands of dollars under the guise that they were his own creative effort. Personally I was not able to discern any real similarities between the stock Apple loops and the expressive track created by Polow, but I have since discovered that others on the internet have made similar claims. However, Polow has denied such allegations, claiming that the loops are of his own creation and that there is no possible way that someone without the ability of a professional producer could create a track of similar sound.
      I am inclined to believe Polow de Don due to my firm belief in the genuine wholesomeness of Usher and anyone associated with his music, including his producers. But to those who would require some further proof that the seeming similarity between the stock Apple loops from a three-year-old software package and the number-one single is due to nothing more than coincidence and a biased ear, I attempted to re-create the track using the stock Garageband loops and have provided a sample of both tracks so that anyone may compare the two:

All the Best,

Timothy Lee