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Post by Mutagen on Dec 3, 2014 8:58:48 GMT -4
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Post by discoprincess on Mar 11, 2015 9:37:18 GMT -4
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The Brunette
Lady in Waiting
Posts: 359
Jun 6, 2007 18:57:39 GMT -4
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Post by The Brunette on Mar 11, 2015 9:52:52 GMT -4
Robin Thicke has a big ... debt
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Post by LurkerNan on Mar 11, 2015 12:19:40 GMT -4
I still don't see the songs as being the same, except for the backbeat. But I think Pharrell can take the financial hit a lot better than Robin Thicke. Maybe next time Thicke won't shoot his mouth off about the origins of a song he really didn't write.
Although I wonder if they have a way to appeal the verdict. The copyright was only on the sheet music, so that was the only thing the jury was supposed to be comparing, and as I understand it the backbeat was not included there.
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mementomori
Landed Gentry
Leaning Into Impermanence
Posts: 926
Feb 3, 2013 0:34:44 GMT -4
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Post by mementomori on Mar 11, 2015 13:26:10 GMT -4
I'm pretty sure Pharrell farts $3.5 million whist sleeping so no sweat there ( and I don't in any way think this will professionally tarnish him) but Robin might want to consider budgeting his STI ridden sleaze fests from here on out cuz his ass is taking a hit.
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Post by Matilda on Mar 11, 2015 15:59:47 GMT -4
I can hear some similarities, but it's also clearly a different song. Something about Marvin Gaye's relatives suing just rubs me up the wrong way, it seems really grasping. Maybe Pharrell wasn't being truly original when writing Blurred Lines, but they've got f** all to do with the writing of Got to Give it Up and they're just trying to make even more money from a dead relative. That said, I'm not at all sad for Robin Thicke
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Post by prisma on Mar 11, 2015 16:16:24 GMT -4
I think Robin Thicke is a gigantic douchebag but I don't think it's plagiarism. They're similar, sure, but not to the point of plagiarism IMO. Someone on this board a while ago posted the link to this article by Malcolm Gladwell, and that really informed my opinion about the inevitability of artists borrowing from one another. The whole thing is worth a read (and it's worth noting that Gladwell himself later got into trouble for plagiarizing), but this part is really relevant to the case at hand: I don't think Thicke's version is transformative to the level of Nirvana or anything, but I don't think he's replicating Marvin Gaye more than Kurt Cobain was replicating Boston.
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Post by Ginger on Mar 11, 2015 18:11:51 GMT -4
I think Blurred Lines replicated the style of the Marvin Gaye song (and I think Thicke admitted that from the beginning), but I agree - it's clearly not the same song. If you hummed Blurred Lines and then the Marvin Gaye song without the background instruments, nobody would confuse the two.
Much as I think Thicke is a douchebag, I really don't like this verdict. Like Prisma outlined above, music borrows and builds on what came before it. I think it's a very bad precedent they are setting here by allowing a copyright claim on something that is so dissimilar.
Robin should have hired prisma to argue his case instead of blaming it on drugs and pointing the finger at Pharell.
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Post by ratscabies on Mar 11, 2015 18:46:43 GMT -4
I used to do a late nite weekend radio show in college. One of my favorite things to do was play a song, then immediately follow with the song it was lifted from. Favorite pairings were Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" followed by Badfinger's "Day After Day", the obvious "Ghostbusters" and "I Want a New Drug", Blue Oyster Cult's "Cities on Flame" and Montrose's "Rock Candy". It drives my wife nuts when I point these things out. All that said, I listened to the Gaye song back to back with "Blurred Lines." Aside from the open hihat on the and of 4 (for you non-musicians, the "and of 4" is the half beat between the 4th beat and the downbeat of the next measure), there is no real similarity that I can hear. Sure, a lot of falsetto "soul noodling" vocal bits on both, but that's reaching. Thicke handled it like an asshat, though. Compared to the blatant plagiarizing evident in the Sam Smith song, this is silly. The important question is, how does this affect Weird Al and "Word Crimes"
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Post by mrspickles on Mar 11, 2015 19:19:34 GMT -4
I used to do a late nite weekend radio show in college. One of my favorite things to do was play a song, then immediately follow with the song it was lifted from. Favorite pairings were Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" followed by Badfinger's "Day After Day", the obvious "Ghostbusters" and "I Want a New Drug", Blue Oyster Cult's "Cities on Flame" and Montrose's "Rock Candy". It drives my wife nuts when I point these things out. All that said, I listened to the Gaye song back to back with "Blurred Lines." Aside from the open hihat on the and of 4 (for you non-musicians, the "and of 4" is the half beat between the 4th beat and the downbeat of the next measure), there is no real similarity that I can hear. Sure, a lot of falsetto "soul noodling" vocal bits on both, but that's reaching. Thicke handled it like an asshat, though. Compared to the blatant plagiarizing evident in the Sam Smith song, this is silly. The important question is, how does this affect Weird Al and "Word Crimes" I've always wanted to create some kind of trivia game for uber- music nerds that is a sort of "6 degrees of separation" thing, like: Link Dusty Springfield to Rough Trade Link ABBA to Adam Ant I think the market for such a game might be pretty limited though.
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