There’s a similarity between the two songs, but that’s it. Just because two pieces of music have the same tempo and chord progression doesn’t mean that the one is a copy of the other.
I’m thinking that Chuck Berry better get moving and sue *everybody *while he still has time to spend some of the money…
Bass line, instrumentation, mixing, yep it was meant to sound like Marvin Gaye
This matters not at all; what matters is that someone still holds a valid copyright. You are aware that copyrights can be bought and sold or even given away, right? Or do you think that Christopher Tolkien has no legal right to his father’s writing? That the estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. has no legal right to his writings and speeches?
Dude, you contradict your first statement with your second statement. Or don’t you see that?
The single sold 14.8 million copies world-wide.
The money amount is absurd and I hope it’s lowered on appeal. Actually, unless they can find a way to give the money directly to Marvin Gaye himself, I hope the amount is reduced to one dollar. I bet if he were alive, the suit never would have happened in the first place.
Beginning guitarists are often surprised at how many songs use the identical chord progressions. I can teach someone five chords. G D and C, Am and Em. Teach them 10 songs with just those chords. Give them a capo and they can learn another 15 songs in the keys of A and C. Its fascinating to me how many different songs can be created just by altering the tempo, or melody just a little.
It is possible to plagiarize music. Especially if a melody is too similar. I just didn’t hear that many similarities in Blurred Lines. It felt like and sounded like classic R&B to me. But not a rip off of Marvin Gaye.
Seems to be a habit with him. Daft Punk won five grammys last year, mostly on the strength of “Get Lucky,” which Williams co-wrote and sang.
Yes, although it’s pretty clear that Daft Punk and Nile Rodgers were equally involved in that case.
As for copyrights, I tend to think they shouldn’t be bought and sold. Inherited, maybe, but when you get the situation of a third party buying the rights and then suing over a work they had no hand in creating and no connection to the original artist, it seems like a bastardisation of the original intent of the law.
All these posts about lawsuits for songs sounding too much alike, and not one mention of John Fogarty being sued for sounding like himself?
Son, I am disappoint.
Anyone claiming not to hear the similarity between the songs needs to listen again, or perhaps stop being disingenuous just because they don’t like the principle of the court case. The backing on the two songs sounds so similar I assumed when first hearing Thicke’s version that he’d actually sampled the Gaye song. Creatively, sampling the song would have been fine (by my just-made-up arbitrary musical ethical code) but copying the backing track then claiming it’s all their own work is just dickishness to add to their misogyny.
I can imagine Marvin cringing in his grave at his daughter weeping at the verdict though.
As far as I am aware no one has been accused of sampling.
I can’t stand Robin Thicke and I couldn’t stand “Blurred Lines,” but I think the similarities between those two songs are pretty shaky.
It was a weak pastiche of Marvin Gaye, and a weak pastiche deserved neither to sell 7 million copies, nor to be civilly actionable. The former is down to people’s taste, and there isn’t much we can do about that, but the latter is disturbing.
I mean, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” is a far more direct ripoff of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” than “Blurred Lines” is of “Got To Give It Up,” and so far as I know there was never even any serious noise about a lawsuit. Probably because Madonna is still alive, isn’t exactly hurting for money, and contented herself with criticizing Lady Gaga rather than pursue legal action, and probably in part because Lady Gaga wasn’t the most hated person in pop music a year later.
Lost in all this is that Thicke preemptively sued the Gaye estate to force the issue.
Don’t the writers of the songs Al parodies get songwriting credit and, thus, royalties?
Or how is “Given to Fly” not basically a reworking of Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California”? (And let’s not get into the Led Zeppelin can of worms.) There’s a lot more of these I can dig up that I think are a lot more similar than the two in the OP. I mean, what, aping a 4/4 flour-to-the-floor drum track with cowbell and a couple of hi-hat barks and a sparse bassline is now grounds for infringement? How many thousands if not tens of thousands of songs share these sorts of characteristics? I was well familiar with the Marvin Gaye song and it didn’t even occur to me that Blurred Lines was inspired by it when I heard it the first gazillion times. Meanwhile “Born This Way” and “Given to Fly” immediately reminded me of “Express Yourself” and “Going to California.” And I don’t think those are infringements, either, but more direct borrowings, especially the “Given to Fly” one.
Thing about sampling, though - real literal sampling - is that it’s much like putting quotation marks around a piece of written work. It’s not trying to hide that you didn’t write it by changing things ever so slightly. It’s clear to everyone that you’re not claiming credit for that particular piece of the work. You oughtta get permission for it, but it’s not dishonest.
I’m not real full of respect for sampling in most cases, so in that sense I agree with you, but I do see the difference between sampling and plagiarism. No one could possibly doubt that “Under Pressure” was sampled for “Ice, Ice, Baby”. There’s no argument over whether (that part of) the song sounds like its predecessor. That’s sampling. This is not sampling. It may be plagiarism, may not, but what it isn’t is sampling.
Yeah, that’s totally ridiculous. I wonder if he can appeal and be judged by someone that knows something about music?
Like that’s a new thing. Led Zeppelin stole eighty percent of their material - hell, it’s not like Marvin Gaye was working in a vacuum.
I find this decision preposterous. I don’t care if Robin Thicke is the world’s biggest asshole or a saint, the law should be fair to all and this is just crazy stupid. Pretty much every musical artist in the entire world could be sued into the ground under this standard, and everyone who sued them could be sued in their turn.
When legitimate artists sample they give credit to the original. My beef is sampling has gotten way out of hand and it is that type of attitude in the industry that leads to a slippery slope of musicians then taking a piece of music and claiming it as their own. Easy if a guy has been dead a long time. In this case they lifted the base line and the production and claimed it as their own. For Marvin Gaye’s family that’s a slap in the face considering how innovative his sound was. That’s plagerism. And for criss’ sake, today’s artists need to get original. They are boring as shit.
‘sounding similar’ is not, musically speaking, a big deal and should not come with threats of law suits. A similar bass line? Really? That’s all the standard is now?
If this were enforced %100 of the time, there would be either be no new music or music would get really really different.
Call me crazy, but I’m assuming the plaintiffs did more than make an assertion about similarity. If they found an expert to analyze the two songs and they determined a significant number of chord progressions and other elements were identical, then that would settle the question. The personal opinions of armchair music listeners doesn’t really matter.
The first time I heard Blurred Lines, I instantly assumed it sampled “Got it Give it Up”. Was surprised to learn that this assumption wasn’t universal.