Robbing Full House

Recently, I was listening to the "new" (apparently, it's been out since May and I'm that out of touch) Green Day song, "21 Guns," in the car. I liked it even, but when the song progressed to the guitar solo, I did a double take. That sequence of chords wasn't new to me; instead, it made me think of Full House.

It's funny because, just prior, if you had asked me to hum the Full House theme song , I couldn't have done it. Yet suddenly I was ready to accuse Green Day of ripping off a TGIF show, which I recognized was ridiculous. Surely I was just misremembering and had the TV series on the brain since I had just visited the Full House houses a few days earlier in San Francisco.

Look, here I am dancing in front of the house!

And here are my friends. Three blond sisters: JUST LIKE THE SHOW! I guess that makes Lindsay both Mary Kate & Ashley.


At any rate, after my car ride, I found "21 Guns" on YouTube and re-listened to the guitar solo before comparing it to the Full House intro. I was shocked to find my intuition was on the money: the two songs were nearly identical. I needed to alert everyone by blogging this immediately! I did a google search to see whether anyone else had recognized the similarity and found that I was not the first to catch on.

You can hear a good side by side comparison here or watch this video:



Sigh. Being a discoverer is hard work -- someone else is always going and discovering good stuff first. That's why I have such beef with Christopher Columbus. I could have done all that, he just had a several century head-start Plus, I never slaughtered Native Americans. One Native America, granted, but certainly not plural.

At least I'm not as pathetic as Green Day. Did they think no one would notice? For better or worse Full House is a classic; even my former sixth grade student watches the show on a regular basis. What's next, sampling some notes from the Family Matters theme?

Actually, what's next is ELO. While looking for the above clips to share, I also discovered this video that demonstrates how "21 Guns" chorus is remarkably similar to ELO's "Telephone Line."



The Electric Light Orchestra? Really? That's probably more bottom barrel than Full House, truthfully; if you're going to steal it, at least choose from music that has some credibility.

In the meantime, Green Day, you've got some 'splaining to do! Plagiarism is not cool, just ask Helen Keller. As future meth addict Stephanie Tanner would say:


"How Rude!"