I've heard of this before, a phenomina that sometime affects even professional songwriters. You think you've written a brand new song, the words and melody for a chorus just kindof poped into your head. You finish and demo the song. Then it turms out that your "inspiration" came directly from a song you've acually heard before (playing quietly over the intercom speakers at the doctors office eight years ago, for example). They call your song a rip-off, tell you that you've made a copyright infringement. Now you've embarased you're self in front of industry professionals, and your reputation is tarnished forever.
But it was an accident! It was a mistake of you're subconsious! Now, i've done this before once or twice (when I was first learning to play) with bit's of music, or riffs, generaly accompanied by some vague vocal melody. I would think they were my own, most of the music I wrote (and write) come's to me with a vocal melody already in mind. Then later I would hear them on the radio, some song from my past, or some album that i hadn't played in a very long time. Crap! No big deal, but what if a chorus you've written, complete with the hook and melody, was identical, or almost identical, to someone elses?
I don't believe that this would be able to happen with really deeply personal lyrics, but what about commercial lyrics?
Has anyone ever heard of, or have any thought's on this?
-joel