I was watching a Pearl Jam Yellow Ledbetter video and wondered what the lyrics were. I started checking various lyric sites and found some conflicting interpretations. Turning to Wiki was not much better"
I’m guessing for copyright protection they must have filed a written copy somewhere or is the fact that they released it on a CD is enough. It doesn’t seem that that could be the case on a song so ambiguous lyrically speaking because they could claim any song that came out afterward was infringing on it.
You don’t have to file anything anywhere to obtain a copyright. Presumably, however, if Pearl Jam wanted to pursue a case of copyright infringement against someone for illegally copying their lyrics, they would have to publish those lyrics for comparison.
But decipherable language isn’t the only thing that can be copyrighted. Since you can copyright musical notes (or at least novel strings of them), I don’t see why you can’t copyright mumbling. But they would have to prove infringement. Sure, Eddie Vedder can sue Lady Gaga or somebody and claim that Poker Face is actually the lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter set to a different tune, but they would have to prove that to a judge and jury with evidence that the two songs are alike. Anyone can sue anybody, winning is a different matter.
I’m not a lawyer, nor even particularly interested in the law (except IP law, slightly), and everything in this post was almost certainly learned from other SDMB posters long ago. I just got here first.
This is really the “most correct” answer. You could probably come up with reasonable “official lyrics” for the single version (b-side of Jeremy, no?), but even that would be open for interpretation.
As DrCube said, it’s not necessary to file for copyright. Any creative work is automatically the intellectual property of the person who came up with it. However, filing sure does help if you ever want to go after someone for infringement. I think any professional musician would take the trouble to file for copyright, but although I have no experience in this area I suspect that submitting a copy of the recording would be enough. The instrumental part of a song is under copyright as well, and I doubt many rock musicians submit sheet music when filing for copyright. A lot of popular musicians can’t even read sheet music.
FWIW I’ve heard that the lyrics to the studio version of “Yellow Ledbetter” were largely improvised on the spot, not written beforehand. Whether Eddie Vedder ever made an attempt to write them down afterwards I don’t know, but no such official version of the lyrics have ever been released* and, as Drain Bead mentioned, the lyrics vary between live performances.
I’m not sure about this, it might be sufficient to play “Yellow Ledbetter” and the allegedly plagiarized song in court. Since the official lyrics had never been published before then it would be unlikely for even a deliberate plagiarist to duplicate them perfectly (especially since the words are infamously difficult to make out), so the question of how much the songs sounded alike would probably be more significant than whether the later song actually used the same words.
*You can find the lyrics to most Pearl Jam songs on their website, even ones where the lyrics were not included in the liner notes/CD booklets, but not “Yellow Ledbetter”.
Not for the song in question. I remember there was a book of guitar music from Pearl Jam’s first album, but this wouldn’t have included “Yellow Ledbetter”. I think that such books are usually transcribed by someone outside the band anyway, since a lot of rock musicians can’t read music well enough to write out their own songs.
There is not any officially sanctioned version of the “Yellow Ledbetter” lyrics available to the public. If there was ever an authoritative version of the lyrics written down, and I doubt that there was, it has been kept private. Trust me on this, it’s like the Holy Grail of Pearl Jam lyrics. People have been wondering about it for close to 20 years, but there isn’t anything available except for the best guesses of fans. Eddie Vedder probably doesn’t even remember himself exactly what he was singing on the studio version.
There IS a clear answer to the history/mystery of the song:
Yellow Ledbetter was featured on the site “Five Horizons” as a Song of the Month, with some perspective given.
Folks at TwoFeetThick.com wrote a summary of the meaning, along with printed lyrics from a Japanese CD.
I was at Vedder’s 2008 solo show in Newark, in which he was asked “what are the lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter” … after some joking around (something about “they don’t wave… I see them on the front porch, but they don’t wave…”), he offered the following:
It seems strange to me that the record company lawyers wouldn’t have taken the extra step for protective reasons. Still, maybe not. If they had submitted a copy for copyright protection would that information be available to the public through the records office? phungi, thanks for the info and the links.