No song is an island. Simple as that, really. If you've ever heard music, you've been inspired by music. Even if you decide that you will only create your own instruments and play music in 13/8, then you are inspired by all the music you are trying to not sound like.
However, somewhat original sounds pop up all the time. No one had made a song like Autobahn before Kraftwerk (more or less, bear with me here) because the feeling of driving along an endless autobahn wasn't well known before that. No album had sounded exactly like Fear of a Black Planet before, for the rage on that album was born out of a very specific time and place and sense of directionless rage. My attempt at a moral would be: Stop obsessing about 'sound' and 'influence', and start thinking about 'feel' and 'content'.
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Agnes Varda's Le Bonheur + thoughts on women in Akhmatova and Mizuguchi: The Centrifugue
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