Did Piper Leigh think nobody would notice?

Tiffany and i were cooking/watching Aidan, lis­ten­ing to the radio. Omaha’s local folk show was on (in the 4:00 pm hour on a Sun­day, what else would be on?) and they had as a guest a folk singer from Wichita, Kansas. Her name is Piper leigh, and she has a web­site.

She intro­duced one of her songs, “You Left Too Soon”, and we missed the part where she either did or did not say that she’d writ­ten it. On her web site it does dis­tinctly say, “by Piper Leigh.” It also, hand­ily enough, pro­vides the lyrics, reprinted below, just in case, and a Real Audio file of the song. (Unfor­tu­nately, the ram file seems to be broken.)

As we half-listened to the song, we both did a double-take. “Didn’t that sound like the Indigo Girls?” I asked. Tiffany agreed. So we paid more atten­tion, and she did it again. A lit­tle incred­u­lous, we kept lis­ten­ing, but after the song she never made any men­tion of the Indigo Girls. So we dragged out our CDs (how quaint, a fixed medium!) and qeued up Love’s Recov­ery.

And sure enough. Some­body copied some­body. And since all over it says that Emily Saliers wrote the song, I’m guess­ing she’s not the one that ripped it off. Even the melody is a direct rip-off, where the words are the same.

Does this burn any­body else? ‘Cause it pisses me off.

For your perusal, the lyrics, empha­sis mine, hover your mouse over the linked lyrics to see what the other one sings…

You Left Too Soon, by Piper Leigh

Oh how I wish we had a sec­ond chance
So that we could change our cir­cum­stance
Put some hap­pier words to this tune
But nobody gets a life­time rehearsal
Our deci­sions become uni­ver­sal
The knowl­edge we have now is what we already knew
Baby, you just left too soon

Inse­cu­rity is the wall I hide behind
To let it fall would hurt your pride and mine
How could I show my face beyond this room
Guilt is the can­cer of my intel­lect
The act of love is soon neglected
And lays dying in the strength of its cocoon
Baby, you just left too soon

Cho­rus
You left too soon to know the won­der that your life would be
The prophecy of God’s will come alive
You left too soon to know the thou­sand things that make your life unique
The har­mony that heart and beat com­bine
You left too soon to know that you were mine

I see myself in younger days
Count­ing the stars and map­ping the ways
My life and love would be
Watch­ing for curves and mis­di­rec­tion
I put my faith in love’s per­fec­tion
But there’s no future in a past that wasn’t meant to be…baby

Cho­rus

and

Love’s Recov­ery by Emily Saliers

Dur­ing the time of which I speak
It was hard to turn the other cheek
To the blows of inse­cu­rity
Feed­ing the can­cer of my intel­lect
The blood of love soon neglected
Lay dying in the strength of it’s impu­rity
Mean­while our friends we thought were so together
They’ve all gone and left each other
In search of fairer weather
And we sit here in our storm and drink a toast
To the slim chance of love’s recovery

There I am in younger days, star gaz­ing
Paint­ing pic­ture per­fect maps
Of how my life and love would be
Not count­ing the unmarked paths of mis­di­rec­tion
My com­pass, faith in love’s per­fec­tion
I missed ten mil­lion miles of road I should have seen
Mean­while our friends we thought were so together
Left each other one by one on the road to fairer weather
And we sit here in our storm and drink a toast
To the slim chance of love’s recovery

Rain soaked and voice choked
Like silent scream­ing in a dream
I search for our absolute dis­tinc­tion
Not con­tent to bow and bend
To the whims of cul­ture that swoop like vul­tures
Eat­ing us away, eat­ing us away
Eat­ing us away to our extinction

Oh how I wish I were a trin­ity
So if I lost a part of me
I’d still have two of the same to live
But nobody gets a life­time rehearsal
As specks of dust we’re uni­ver­sal
To let this love sur­vive
Would be the great­est gift that we could give
Tell all the friends who think they’re so together
That these are ghosts and mirages
All these thoughts of fairer weather
Though it’s storm­ing out I feel safe within the arms
Of love’s discovery

The sheer, unmit­i­gated gall. Does she think she made it bet­ter? Did she think nobody would notice? That some­one in a cre­ative pro­fes­sion would take another’s work and call it their own… it just floors me.