lol I’m not a fan either, although I do like that Thinking out loud song.
I’ve been following a few of these plagiarism trials lately. It starts to feel less about the music and all about the money. That’s when I start to wonder if the integrity of the music is the point.
It seems as though anyone famous enough is open to one of these lawsuits.
Then that leads to the industry itself. Is it the song that makes it popular or is it the publicity that makes it popular?
Lewis Capaldi says that it has less to do with his songs and more to do with his marketing team as to whether he has a hit. Maybe it’s modesty, but I buy the idea that if someone else were marketing his song, it may not have gone anywhere.
If that’s the case, then if Paul Simon hadn’t popularized the song, it may not ever have been heard, leading to no money at all.
“Scarborough Fair” was already a well-known and popular song, considered as “traditional”, performed and recorded countless times - no-one recorded it just to make money - except Paul Simon, who, of course, got massive “publicity” from the inclusion of his songs, including “Scarborough Fair” in “The Graduate”
Except that he did make money, and that’s what they’re fighting over. If they’re fighting over bragging rights or the integrity of music, that’s one thing, but Carthy kept talking about millions of dollars which only the publicist saw.
I have no intention of debating over phrases such as “they’re fighting over bragging rights” and “Carthy kept talking about millions of dollars” in the context of my personal experience of the “Scarborough Fair” issue in the 1960’s.
Ed Sheeran sang and played his guitar for the jury. His defense is that 4 chord progressions are common in music. He says that he wrote the song too quickly to be thinking about copying other music.
I was just thinking that there must be a way to analyze this with computer data. There must be a way to feed the chords into the computer of thousands of songs, then determine how many have the same 4 chord progression.
Then going forward, song writers could put their song in the music analyzer to see if their song is similar to any others and change it if it’s too similar.
After reading the article, I wasn’t finding much to admire. He kept saying that he was one of the top songwriters of all time, but if he’s the only one who knows that, it doesn’t lend much credibility. He didn’t seem to want to bother to try to convince anyone else. In the entertainment business, if you’re only entertaining yourself, is that success?
As he had last week, the British singer-songwriter played guitar and sang from the witness stand to underscore his testimony, telling jurors his song “Thinking Out Loud” had actually been inspired by Irish musician Van Morrison. “I find it really insulting to devote my whole life to being a performer and a songwriter and have someone diminish it,” (1) said Sheeran, who is being sued by heirs of Gaye’s co-writer Ed Townsend.
Lawyers for the heirs last week displayed a video of Sheeran transitioning seamlessly between “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s Get it On” in a live performance they said amounted to a confession that he had ripped off the song. Sheeran said he and other performers frequently perform such “mash ups,” and that he had on other occasions combined “Thinking Out Loud” with Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.”
He also said that an expert witness for the heirs, in transcribing his song, had altered it to make the chords and melody more like “Let’s Get It On.” “I don’t know why he’s allowed to be an expert,” he said.
Sheeran became combative under cross-examination by Patrick Frank, a lawyer for the heirs. He ridiculed Frank’s questions about how often Sheeran collaborates with others in writing songs, which he said was common practice. “You’re not, like, breaking new ground here,” he said.
Sheeran’s co-writer Amy Wadge took the stand after his testimony concluded, telling jurors about their friendship and collaboration of 17 years. She also denied copying “Let’s Get It On” and pointed to other songs with the same chords as “Thinking Out Loud,” including Shania Twain’s “You’re Still The One.”
(1) IMO, the crux of the matter - is Sheeran an “original” artist … or just a conceited copyist …
Sheeran is consistently using a lack of imagination and a recourse to “influence” as a defence …
There has been a boom in plagiarism cases in recent years. Katy Perry, Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran have all been sued recently. What they have in common is that they’re at the top of the charts. Sheeran won his last case for Shape of You. Katy Perry won her case on appeal for Dark Horse.
This is a nice article on the complexities of copyright infringement and why there have been so many more cases lately.
This article talks about the economics of music making and how some people are funding their craft by lawsuits.
