Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

[Stumpy Pepys]

Blurred Lines Jury Orders Pharrell, Robin Thicke to Pay $7.3 Million to Marvin Gaye Family.

Loath as I am to defend Robin Thicke, I'm baffled by this.

Blurred Lines is clearly influenced by Got To Give It Up and is going for the same groove, but it doesn't plagiarise it. Does it?

[Jah Womble]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

While I agree that this does set a peculiar precedent, I welcome it in the hope that musicians will try and work a bit harder - and also because Thicke and Blurred Lines are simpering pieces of misogynistic sh*te that deserve everything coming their way.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Yeah, fuck 'em.

[G-Man]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

The ain't nothing like real thing defence failed. Ain't that peculiar.

[ursus arctos]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Pharrell and Thicke had no idea what's goin' on.

[MsD]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

I thought Pharrell gave it up quite quickly? He seems like a principled man, generally, and wears Westwood hats, which put him in my good books.

[Ginger Yellow]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Blurred Lines is clearly influenced by Got To Give It Up and is going for the same groove, but it doesn't plagiarise it. Does it?

Well, clearly the jury thought it did. And from the limited coverage of the trial I've read, it sounds like the evidence/testimony certainly pointed in that direction.

[Various Artist]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Thicke vs Gaye

It sounds like the balance of possible outcomes when I try to hit on girls.

[Come along, Min]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

My first thoughts on hearing it was that it was a straight lift of Got To Give it Up. I don't particularly like it though and managed to avoid it to the point of being quite surprised how big a recording it became.

Pharrell's one of greatest in the game but he should have spotted that someone from the Gaye estate was going to want paying over it. Maybe if it hadn't become so big they wouldn't have bothered.

Much prefer their Wanna Love You Girl collaboration from (looks up) TEN years ago!. Time flies.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

I can't believe that pile of shit made them $15m in the first place.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: I can't believe that pile of shit made them $15m in the first place.

Quite liked it myself.

[Various Artist]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

I thought it was crap at first, but it grew on me. Like mould, perhaps, but grew nonetheless. I have to say I hadn't ever considered the similarity with the Gaye song before, but the telling thing was that when the item came up on BBC radio news this morning they played a snippet of Blurred Lines in the background... except when I listened for a few seconds, I realised it was a snippet of Got To Give It Up. Which to be fair did rather prove the point of the case.

[caja-dglh]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote: I can't believe that pile of shit made them $15m in the first place.

It's only about 1/3 of an Andy Carroll.

[ursus arctos]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Some interesting background.

how are you celebrating this afternoon’s extremely wise decision by a california jury to award marvin gaye’s children $7.3 million for the theft of his music by robin thicke and pharrell williams? one reasonable idea is to watch the blurred lines video, with its balloons and plastic and extra-wide grins, and to marvel at the misery of the men who made it. and not just the misery they must feel for having to give up the money they’ve made. the bleaker misery is the one thicke revealed last year: after telling gq he asked pharrell to copy gaye (” i was like, ‘damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove!’), he changed his tune in a deposition. “i was high on vicodin and alcohol when i showed up at the studio,” he testified. “i wanted to be more involved than i actually was by the time, nine months later, it became a huge hit, and i wanted credit.” in the first version he encourages his producer to copy gaye, and in the second he’s an addict who lies to a magazine to get undue credit for a hit. fun times, either way!

[Hugh Fatbastard]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Velvet Android wrote: ...I have to say I hadn't ever considered the similarity with the Gaye song before...

Got to give it up was all over the radio in the 70's. You must be a young 'un.

I heard Williams admitted to paying an homage to GTGIU and attempting to 'grow it' with Blurred Lines.

If that's true, then he knew what he was doing and might have expected trouble.

A smarter person would have approached the Gaye estate at the beginning and asked for their permission / signed off on royalties.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

I can believe it made that much money. It's a very catchy song, particularly if you don't pay too much attention to the really awful lyrics.

writing music is tricky. You want to write something melodic and catchy, but you really really really don't want to have the George Harrison My Sweet lord moment, when someone says to you that sounds just like this. It's particularly tricky when writing an irish traditional music piece. First of all there are fairly limiting structural requirements on any tune, then there are a limited number of places you can go after each note, and there are thousands of pre-existing tunes, so It can difficult not to wind up inadvertently throwing in something, or a variation thereof, that you heard somewhere else.

So for example whenever I'm just wandering around, I'm frequently playing tunes in my head, and playing around with the melodies, and thinking up variations, but sometimes I'll come up with a tune, then there's the frantic search to find a piece of paper, to write it down. Then I'll go home and try it out, and usually playing it will reveal to me, what tune i've accidentally ripped off, or what variation of some other tune I've 'created' and most of the time I'll just decide it's shite.

It would seem that the jury reckoned that these lads didn't even take that precaution. See also tom waits getting a big cut of sam smyth's stay with me.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Got to give it up is that song which is never on a one disc Marvin Gaye Best of, but should always be. That and Piece of clay.

[Various Artist]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Tom Petty, Berba. I can't imagine the crossover between Tom Waits and Sam Smith is that high, somehow...

[steveeeeeeeee]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

Surely there's some Afro/Cuban track from the late 60's which sounds just like GTGIU? "Blurred Lines" is copying the groove of GTGIU, which isn't exactly ground-breaking.

[garcia]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

the tom petty/sam smith example is surely more obvious than the gaye/pharrell one. i mean he's basically lifted the whole melodic hook of the song.

the first few scenes of the movie "frank" are about the process berbaslug describes. domhnall gleeson is wandering around town with a notebook trying to write lyrics. he's looking out over the beach, gazing out the window of the bus, walking down the street, singing idiotic lyrics to himself based on what he's seeing "lady in the red coat, do you know the lady in the blue coat" etc.

suddenly inspiration strikes, he arrives home and rushes upstairs telling his parents he's got to get the idea down while he remembers it - begins tapping out a little riff on his keyboard - "a minor... to e... and up to g ... to c... back to a"... he starts playing faster and faster, and suddenly he realises he's playing the piano riff from "it must be love" by madness, which he earlier overheard leaking out of somebody's headphones on the bus.

[garcia]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

oh hang on, i just realised sam smith has actually settled with tom petty over that song.

[garcia]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

sam smith's people said "Not previously familiar with the 1989 Petty/Lynne song, the writers of 'Stay With Me' listened to 'I Won’t Back Down' and acknowledged the similarity."

is that credible? here's one of the writers telling the story himself. relevant bit starts around 4 minutes in. he was born in 1987, so two years before petty's song came out. he says i won't back down did reasonably OK but it's never really been on the radio since. to me this is really quite a famous song and i struggle to believe anyone who was moderately interested in music wouldn't have heard it at some stage, but i suppose i'm eight years older.

what i do find a bit surprising is that nobody involved with the production apparently noticed the similarity. the first time i remember hearing the sam smith song was actually watching the grammies (i never listen to the radio). i'm not particularly knowledgeable about music but i immediately thought, that's i won't back down - so i would have expected writers and producers to recognise it too. they might be younger but music is supposed to be their profession.

i dunno, maybe the guy is telling the truth.

the interviewer offers the consoling thought "there's only so many notes in the world to work with."

[Come along, Min]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

steveeeeeeeee wrote: Surely there's some Afro/Cuban track from the late 60's which sounds just like GTGIU? "Blurred Lines" is copying the groove of GTGIU, which isn't exactly ground-breaking.

I suggest you find that track and present it to Pharrell & Thicke. You might just crack the case!

[Incandenza]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

garcia wrote: oh hang on, i just realised sam smith has actually settled with tom petty over that song.

He (or rather his American publisher) probably were watching the Blurred Lines trial closely and saw that as the better option.

[Jah Womble]

Pharrell/Thicke vs Gaye

...and suddenly he realises he's playing the piano riff from "it must be love" by madness...

Labi Siffre.