Are Guitar Solos Making a Comeback in Pop Songs? Mailbag

This month we dive into questions about songs from the 1980s, musical lawsuits, best-selling rap groups, and so much more.

If you are of the Christian faith, happy Easter! If you are not, happy Sunday! In either case, we’re back with another mailbag edition of Can’t Get Much Higher, or the newsletter where I answer reader questions. This month, we’ve got two questions for everyone and six more for paid subscribers.

Should you have a question for the next edition, you can submit it using the button below. If your question is selected, you get a free premium subscription to this newsletter for a month. Premium subscribers get access to our entire archive of posts, biweekly interviews, music industry link roundups, and priority when submitting questions.

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“Pink Pony Club” is one of the first songs in years (that I can recall) that charted and has a guitar solo. Has the guitar solo really died? Is it coming back? When did it peak? - Anthony

I actually don’t have data readily available on this topic. But as someone who spent years listening to every Billboard number one hit, I can say for sure that the guitar solo’s popular peak was somewhere between 1968 and 1988. Nevertheless, your observation about the solo in “Pink Pony Club” has me thinking about other recent pop hits with six-string solos.

Limiting to things that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, here are some that come to mind from the last 15 years. After the song name, I list the year it was released and where it peaked on the Hot 100.

• “Yoü and I” by Lady Gaga (2011 - 6): Performed by Brian May of Queen.

• “Rude” by MAGIC! (2013 - 1)

• “Dive” by Ed Sheeran (2017 - 8): Though credited to an “Angelo Mysterioso,” rumors circulate that this was actually Eric Clapton

• “Dangerous Woman” by Ariana Grande (2016 - 8)

• “I Guess I Just Feel Like” by John Mayer (2019 - 94): You could probably grab a bunch of songs by John Mayer, but this was his last solo single to chart that has a solo.

• “Take What You Want” by Post Malone ft. Ozzy Osbourne (2019 - 8)

• “Adore You” by Harry Styles (2019 - 7)

• “I Wanna Be Your Slave” by Måneskin (2021 - 7)

• “Love Somebody” by Morgan Wallen (2024 - 1)

What do you think is the worse plagiarism lawsuit that resulted in a settlement? Was it "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison? - Dan

For those not in the know, in the 1970s George Harrison lost a lawsuit because his number one hit “My Sweet Lord” plagiarized the 1963 number one hit “He’s So Fine.” While I agree that Harrison deserved to lose this case, it’s fascinating because he didn’t lose for actively plagiarizing the song. He lost for subconsciously plagiarizing the song. That set a weird precedent that I ruminate on a bit more in my forthcoming book.

Let’s get back to your question, though. I do think there are more egregious copyright infringement cases. The one that comes to mind is “Ice Ice Baby.” Clearly built around a sample of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” Vanilla Ice initially claimed that the bass line in his song was different than the one played by John Deacon on the earlier classic. Vanilla Ice did eventually settle with Queen and Bowie.

Though it did not result in a settlement, the most ridiculous music lawsuit ever was when Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty got sued for copying himself. I’m not kidding. Because of a bad business deal, Fogerty didn’t own the publishing rights to many of the classics he had written for Creedence. In 1985, Fantasy Records, the label that did own the publishing, sued Fogerty because they said his new song “That Old Man Down the Road” copied his earlier song “Run Through the Jungle.”

Regardless of how similar these songs are, the lawsuit was obviously ridiculous. Thankfully, Fogerty won. Interestingly, subsequent litigation about Fogerty trying to collect attorneys’ fees from Fantasy Records went all the way to the Supreme Court. I wonder if he’s the only member of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame to be listed as a plaintiff or defendant in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Who is the most successful rap group of all time? - Stephen