May 4, 2023
"As Elvis Costello pointed out back in 2021 when social media users accused Olivia Rodrigo of lifting elements of 'Pump It Up' for her song 'Brutal'..."
"... most songs borrow from what came before them to some degree. (After all, there are only so many chords!) 'It’s how rock and roll works,' Costello said. 'You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy.'"
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Not a fan of Sheeran (too sappy) but from the clips I heard, he's not stealing anything.
Elvis should know as he writes 3 or 4 songs a day seemingly.
Previous comment, reposted:
As Robert Plant at the last Led Zeppelin reunion concert in 2007 famously recounts, in his inimitable British accent and slang:
In 1935, Robert Johnson recorded a song called Terraplane Blues, and it's appeared in a thousand different guises since. Maybe Johnson got it from somewhere else. I'm sure he did...
Everybody nicks it.
If you're a man is the American workplace and you Think Out Loud suggesting Let's Get it On, you'll find yourself unemployed and possibly in court.
EC is right, of course. Listen to his song “Oliver’s Army” and you’ll hear an obvious steal from ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”
'Let's Get It On' and 'Pump It Up' are such great songs, let people copy them, proliferate more great sounds.
Well, Elvis is king after all...
I agree with Elvis Costello.
There are lots of tropes in Fiction writing too. If someone recycles a mystery plot but dresses it up in new characters, should they be paying royalties?
This gets to one of the biggest problems with copyright law and court enforcement (THE biggest problem is the failure to honor "limited times"). Judges and legislatures have little notion of how art works, of the degree to which every artist borrows from those who came before. We recognize it in science--that we see further than those who came before us because we stand on their shoulders. Somehow, in the laws behind creative works, this simple concept is lost.
The rule of thumb is 7 identical notes before you have to worry.
Business interests routinely lift the spirit of pop hits and dance on the edge of legal liability. This happened when Eddie Money refused to sell the rights to "Two Tickets to Paradise" for travel ads, when Huey Lewis refused to sell "I Want a New Drug" to the Ghostbuster's movie producers, and many more times.
As with prior Althouse posts on this topic, I have little sympathy for greedy $$$$$ bickering among dens of thieves. Getting rich from a derivative song or get rich stealing from yet another derivative song? Oh well, let's instead give some money to the estates of Beethoven, Mozart, etc.
"Pump It Up" was also "stolen" by The Escape Club for their song "Wild Wild West".
"The rule of thumb is 7 identical notes before you have to worry."
Obviously not, since this case is about chords and not melody at all. Unless you mean, "before you *ought to* have to worry."
There are no specific rules like that. If there were, people would follow them and go right up to the line. The most diligent copiers would get a free pass. It's left unclear for a reason. That's the theory anyway. I'm not arguing against clear rules, just saying that's not how it's set up right now.
But you said "rule of thumb," which is something other than a clear legal rule. But that's inconsistent with the idea of not needing to worry. You do need to worry if it's just a rule of thumb.
But Negroes!
If Vivaldi was still alive, could he sue himself?
@Althouse: Obviously not, since this case is about chords and not melody at all. Unless you mean, "before you *ought to* have to worry.""
I'm not the source of this idea, nor have I ever written a song in my life. I've seen it mentioned many, many times. Seven notes was indeed a "rule of thumb" and is mentioned at the link below by non-lawyer music creators. The lawyers do indeed push back in the thread and echo your statements, but it was/is a creators' rule of thumb:
https://homerecording.com/bbs/threads/how-many-notes-can-you-lift-before-it-becomes-plagiarism.367607/
Rick Beato has a great video on this. Can you steal a groove? If so, in part of the song the groove is thus stolen. Beato comes out on the Elvis side, as do I on this one.
By the way I noticed recently that the opening/recurring notes of Taylor Swift's Love Story (the Romeo and Juliet song) match the opening/recurring guitar riff in Kenny Chesney's Beer in Mexico. Chesney's song was released maybe a half year before Swift's. Attorneys, assemble!
If I recall, John Cage won a copyright case regarding 4'33", in which not a single note is played.
Ann Althouse said...
Obviously not, since this case is about chords and not melody at all.
Which makes it unusual that the case is even being heard; chord progressions, rhythms and arrangements can't be copyrighted.
Business interests routinely lift the spirit of pop hits and dance on the edge of legal liability. This happened when Eddie Money refused to sell the rights to "Two Tickets to Paradise" for travel ads, when Huey Lewis refused to sell "I Want a New Drug" to the Ghostbuster's movie producers, and many more times.
Huey Lewis actually did sue the writer of the Ghostbusters theme song (Ray Parker Jr.), which settled for an undisclosed sum. Maybe karma got involved, because in a VH1 Behind the Music episode years later, Lewis stated that Parker stole the song from him and Parker sued for breach of the confidentiality provisions of the earlier settlement and received some of his money back.
Finite degrees of freedom and creativity in conscious expression.
Finitely available and accessible natural resources.
There is an underlying theme that leads to an incontrovertible law of physics.
One thing that goes largely overlooked is that until fairly recent times, performers (actors, singers,etc) did not get wealthy from the arts. The arts were something that you patronized as a sign of the wealth you already had. Performing was a low-status profession.
(There are persistent stories that Shakespeare, who was a far from rich country bumpkin, didn't actually write most of what is attributed to him, but instead it was written by an aristocrat who could not take credit publicly.)
Tom Petty used to make the same observation. Lots of rock songs sound similar.
There are no specific rules like that. If there were, people would follow them and go right up to the line.
Even worse: A.I> would follow them and go right up to the line.
"The rule of thumb is 7 identical notes before you have to worry."
Not true - the estate of Marvin Gaye won a $5 million copyright infringement lawsuit that found the Pharell/Robin Thicke sone "Blurred Lines" infringed the copyright on "Got to Give It Up" primarily by copying the "feel" and "groove" of the song - the songs do not have the same melodies or harmonies (i.e., 0 identical notes), but the infringement finding was upheld by the 9th Circuit.
“ Obviously not, since this case is about chords.”
Axis of Awesome - most pop songs use the same 4 chords.
https://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I
“Star Wars is Born Free upside down” - Roger Williams
Copy pasta to your browser 👉🏽 https://youtu.be/C-OSaU6-liM
A threshold of correlation or fluid dynamics?
Perhaps we should ask ChatGPT et al to be "independent" arbiters.
Elvis' argument is in essence that anyone can play the same 4 chords, but the songwriter adds something, call it "creative spark", that makes the song something new. It seems to me that the outcome of this suit could be felt more broadly than just songwriting.
For example, a key issue in the current Hollywood writers strike is the writers' concern that the studios might just start using AI to write the scripts and put them out of work. One of their key arguments is that the AI is just putting together bits of old scripts and lacks the "creative spark" that the writer brings. If Sheeran loses, it's harder to make this argument, particularly when something like this goes to litigation.
Sheeran just won! Good result.
FYI this came before: In 2014, singer Sam Smith settled a lawsuit over similarities between his hit “Stay With Me” and the 1989 song “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Petty said “About the Sam Smith thing. Let me say I have never had any hard feelings toward Sam. All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam’s people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement. The word lawsuit was never even said and was never my intention. And no more was to be said about it. How it got out to the press is beyond Sam or myself. Sam did the right thing and I have thought no more about this. A musical accident no more no less. In these times we live in this is hardly news. I wish Sam all the best for his ongoing career. Peace and love to all.”ty and co-writer Jeff Lynne of ELO are now credited on “Stay With Me” and receive royalties.
Good news. Sheeran prevailed.
Again, if everything goes into the public domain after twenty years then there's not so much that can be stolen, and there's less potential profit in suing.
"I’ll take Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando
Mix ‘em up in a tank and get a robot commando
If I do it upright and put the head on straight
I’ll be saved by the creature that I create"
Hmm... no "Lawsuits I hope will fail," tag. Ed Sheerhan withers under this application of cruel neutrality.
Listening to the two songs they don't sound too similar to my untrained ear, but I suppose a jury could think differently. But a standard of it sounds similar doesn't sound too legal-like to me.
Took the jury only 2.5 hours to return a verdict in favor of Sheeran, rejecting the copying claim. But the case dragged on for six years before it finally got to a jury. Not many defendants would have the staying power to see it through.
I think I will rush to file copyrights on every chord progression under the sun. Then I will be king of the world.
Sheeran won.
Just saw, Sheeran found not liable for copyright infringement!
Ed Sheeren won his case. Somewhere, George Harrison is smiling. Harrison lost his case when the owners of the copyright for “He’s So Fine” sued him for plagiarism with his song “My Sweet Lord”. George aired his frustrations with the song copyright laws by writing “This Song” about his court case.
Rick Beato, a music educator and producer, has a great YouTube channel on which he breaks down and analyzes songs. He did a track by track comparison of the two songs and thinks Sheeran owes Marvin’s estate maybe 25%. Played side by side, the verses are almost identical (musically…obviously the lyrics are different). He posted a new video today before the verdict was announced.
So glad to see Sheeran won
I think Sheeran's song has little in common with Let's Get it On. By contrast, My Sweet Lord is almost note for note and chord for chord like He's so Fine.
Rock n roll and blues are tough to argue in terms of plagiarism because of long histories of "borrowing." Blue and R & B records often led to "answer" records, and blues as a form varies so little that it's the individual performance that makes a records unique (or not).
If it were just a matter of a progression or riff being stolen, Bo Didley and Chuck Berry could have won every suit. Berry did on some occasions, but it was because the offender recycled a lyric or melody line.
SF writer Spider Robinson anticipated exactly this problem in a 1982 short story, 'Melancholy Elephants.'
"For example, a key issue in the current Hollywood writers strike is the writers' concern that the studios might just start using AI to write the scripts and put them out of work." -- PerthJim
This is not completely the issue. It goes without saying that producers will try to use ChatGPT as it evolves and gets better. But something, some piece of writing, is fed into the AI before it can create its own material. The WGA is negotiating for the original writer to get residuals. Everything in Hollywood is about residuals.
Wonder how influential it was on the jurors that Sheeran was present and testified on his own behalf?
(Read that same SDNY judge presided over the Spacey and Trump trials. Spacey testified in his own defense and was found not liable.)
Wonder how influential it was on the jurors that Sheeran was present and testified on his own behalf?
(Read that same SDNY judge presided over the Spacey and Trump trials. Spacey testified in his own defense and was found not liable.)
I really like both Sheeran's song and of course Marvin Gaye's song. They both have great sentimental meaning to me because of their romanticism and the women in my life when the songs were performed.
They are very similar in terms of being very romantic songs. However, there is no way one is a copy of the other.
I am glad Sheeran won and let's let Marvin RIP.
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