It's hard to tell around here sometimes.

James Brown then took 'Fame' and used it to build his song 'Hot (I Need to Be Loved, Loved, Loved)' on which he's listed as the sole composer. Look, I get what everybody's saying; credit should be given when credit is due, and there were definitely mistakes made here. And obviously Ocasek has the right to decide how…

One word: money.

I'm sure Toledo figured that Ocasek would be flattered; I mean, it's an affectionate thing to do. And it's not like they didn't try to get permission. I guess where the whole thing gets fuzzy for me is how Matador thought they had permission, when it turned out that they didn't. Feels like something you might want to…

For my money, what Toledo did here is basically no different than what Bowie does with 'A Day in the Life' at the end of 'Young Americans,' except that either Bowie had perimission from Lennon/McCartney, or they just had a better sense of humor than Ric Ocasek.

People, myself included, are calling it a sample as kind of a catch-all term, even though CSH's use of the material is closer to an interpolation. He's not using a piece of the actual, original track, but instead rerecording it as a portion of his own song. So, yeah, it's kind of something like a mini-cover.

'Lemonade' is a great example of crediting samples responsibly, even if the YYY's credit gets a little arcane for me. That said, Beyonce occupies such rarefied space at the moment that it wouldn't surprise me if I found out that artists were paying her to sample them.

2016 has been brutal, but keeps getting it wrong. Sure, Prince was incredibly protective of his music, but the stretch of albums from Dirty Mind to Sign O' the Times gave him license to do whatever he wanted. And if Bowie routinely turned down collaborations, did he commit any greater crime than saving the world from…

Sad but true. There's tons of music that we wouldn't have if sampling laws had existed in the 1980s. And while the law are hard to argue against—you wrote a song, someone wants to use it, you get paid for that use—the prohibitive expense for an artist to actually obtain the rights to use the sample they want totally…

Well, you did use a zero instead of an O. So, you're probably in the clear.

I think it's important that the laws exist and that artists are paid for the use of their work, whether it's being sampled, interpolated, homaged, whatever.

The band and the label thought that they had permission to use the song. Nobody was trying to rip anybody off.

To me there's a big difference between sampling 'Those Shoes,' which isn't an Eagles song that a casual listener is going to be able to identify, and 'Just What I Needed,' which is pretty instantly recognizable. I mean, there's no straight-up cause and effect guarantee that hearing CSH's song is going to send people…

Well, obviously he isn't particularly concerned, but he's not doing himself any favors. If his music is so ubiquitous and lucrative, it makes an even less sympathetic case as to why he won't allow some kid to use a riff from his song. And yeah, I think a lot of younger listeners would be more turned on by hearing…

Ok, now you're just making my day.

Yeah, I feel like it's the tens of Vanilla Ice fans left out there who are throwing their dilapidated, 90s-eras boomboxes out the window when it turns out that the DJ is doing a Bowie tribute block.

Think what you want of sampling, but I doubt you're going to get much sympathy for having to cope with the impossible indignity of having to change the radio station.

It's totally within Ric Ocasek's rights to deny the sample, but he missed a golden opportunity to score 'cool points' with another generation of listeners by either clearing it, or just letting CSH do the homage. I mean, a song that incorporates 'Just What I Needed' so blatantly basically works as an advertisement for…

This reminds me of hanging out with my college friends. The competition, the drunken boasting, the sudden fights and equally sudden reconciliations, the streaking through the park at midnight, the handjobs…

More gay side characters, like Mitch in ParaNorman, would obviously be welcome. But, for example, a Disney princess with a gay best friend as a sidekick isn't going to have the same impact as a gay Disney princess. A gay sidekick is never going to have the same emotional arc as a gay protagonist. It was kind of easy…