Plagiarism and “pop” walk hand-in-hand - 1965-2022:
So-called “sampling” (often without permission in the US) has made fortunes for some at the expense of others … but that’s a different kettle of fish …
An extreme example of this dramatic shift is Elvis Presley’s word-for-word copy of “Tutti Frutti,” a song released and relatively undistinguished a year earlier by black artist Little Richard.
Ed Sheeran says he’s done if he loses this court case. Not exactly sure of the context.
Here’s an analysis of the Thinking Out Loud case by a criminal defense attorney using someone else’ analysis of the music part. He says that Blurred Lines was Ed Sheeran’s but it wasn’t. He did say an interesting thing. Ed Sheeran already won this case on the lower level court. The Gaye family appealed and won, so it’s being tried again.
Yes the video you linked was from 4 years ago. The one in the lawyer’s video was from 6 days ago. The one from 4 years ago was probably for the first trial. He updated it for this trial.
… and he seems to have hardened his view - he was ambivalent in the earlier version but in the new version agrees that acknowledgement and remuneration are probably due …
Why just the US? I’ve heard a lot of singers talking about sampling, mostly from the UK since that’s who I’ve been listening to lately. From George Ezra to Ed Sheeran to Lewis Capaldi and people they hang out with that get mentioned.
Something that has struck me about this plethora of plagiarism cases is the proportion of UK singers/songwriters involved. Just picking an article at complete random of the biggest plagiarism cases, at least 2 of the 8 involved UK singers. This article had Ed Sheeran and Oasis out of 8 and had a mention of Sam Smith.
Different laws and different interpretation of the laws:
Legal and ethical issues
To legally use a sample, an artist must acquire legal permission from the copyright holder, a potentially lengthy and complex process known as clearance. Sampling without permission can breach the copyright of the original sound recording, of the composition and lyrics, and of the performances, such as a rhythm or guitar riff. The moral rights of the original artist may also be breached if they are not credited or object to the sampling. In some cases, sampling is protected under American fair use laws, which grant “limited use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holder”.
Imo, any discussion of sampling, being a different kettle of fish, would require a new thread …
I expect that Sheeran will be found NOT guilty of copyright infringement …
Testimony wrapped up in the Ed Sheeran copyright infringement trial at the end of the court day Wednesday, as the judge sent the Manhattan jury into deliberations with a pointed admonition: “Independent creation is a complete defense, no matter how similar that song is.”
U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton’s instructions may have left a high bar in the jury’s minds for just how much evidence the plaintiffs’ attorneys needed to have established to prove that Sheeran and his co-writer actually copied Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” when they wrote the pop hit “Thinking Out Loud.”
Stanton told jurors that the lawyers for the heirs of Gaye’s co-writer, Ed Townsend, needed to “prove by a preponderance of the evidence… that Sheeran actually copied and wrongfully copied ‘Let’s Get It On’” — as opposed to the coincidental, negligible similarities argued by Sheeran’s attorneys.
If the judge actually said that then I would consider that a prejudicial statement …
The jurors have commenced their deliberations and a verdict is expected soon. The plaintiff’s lawyers are reportedly in court but no one from the defence (Sheeran’s team) yet.
No surprise there …
But will Sheeran like it when AI is “influenced” by his recordings …
I’m saddened at how much stress Ed Sheeran was put under to defend a claim that was decided in 3 hours. Having to miss his grandmother’s funeral for this seems unfair to me.
Love the Sergio Mendes song but according to the wiki, that was not the original. Dionne Warwick was the first to record it.
Goes to show that it isn’t necessarily a great song or even a great performer that makes a hit. A lot has to do with timing and culture as well.
Ed Sheeran says that after the trial, Kathryn Griffin-Townsend gave him a hug and said she believes him.
He made it seem like a misunderstanding, but to me, if she believed him, she could have dropped the lawsuit before she lost.
After listening to Ed Sheeran music for this and in his documentary, I found out I’m not a fan of Ed Sheeran music. I like the Thinking out loud video, but the rest of his music is not my cup of tea.
I didn’t say “original” - I said “real”, i.e. the version that Rik Beato was using as his example.
In fact, as Rik points out, who sings it is immaterial to the complex construction of the song which is entirely due to the talents of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann:
Trying to plagiarize that song would be (almost) impossible.
I wasn’t correcting you. I was just pointing out that the song itself was played by multiple people but only one made a hit with it. If someone got sued for that, would it be exclusively the songwriters that got sued? I somehow think they’d sue Sergio Mendes and not Dionne Warwick.
In that last clip with Ed Sheeran, he said if he lost the case, he’d keep playing gigs but would have given up songwriting in favor of singing other people’s songs.
I’m not understanding this part. If all it takes is for someone to take a 4 chord progression and sue on that basis, couldn’t they do that from this song? From Beato’s video, he was pointing out how hard it was to learn the whole song since it didn’t repeat often, but taking 4 chords from it seems like it could easily happen.
I haven’t watched much of his stuff. Is he saying that pop music should be more complex?
I’ve been listening to George Ezra’s podcast where he interviews lots of pop singers/songwriters. Some of them feel that the genre is based on the easy listening sound that comes from the same type of format. Making the song more complex might push it into another genre.
Whether a song is a “hit” or not or who sings it is immaterial in plagiarism cases - it’s the writer who gets sued.
You’re asking a question about musical theory - Rik Beato is an expert - I’m not.
However, as Sheeran pointed out, chords are only “building blocks” and progressions are common structures - it’s what you do with them that makes the difference for songwriters, e.g. using key signatures, temp, melody, harmony and even the “unexpected”, as Rik Beato illustrated.
To use a simple example (as opposed to the complexity of Rik’s), 12-bar blues is predominantly based on the I, IV, and V chords of a key.
Seventh chords can make the pattern “interesting”:
and the pattern may evolve even further:
By now, millions of songs have been written by millions of songwriters using the same progression - the chord progression wasn’t plagiarized - it was the structure.
… but not every blues writer/player became a millionaire - Eric Clapton did, though, because what he did with the structure was readily identifiable.
So, with Sheeran, he copied not just the chords of Gaye but the sound of Gaye (but, obviously, not the lyrics), as Rik Beato illustrates.
No, in the video he was illustrating that “pop” music WAS more complex.
“Easy listening” is just what much of current “pop” music is.
In a recent study, researchers from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria studied 15 genres and 374 subgenres. They rated the genre’s complexity over time — measured by researchers in purely quantitative aspects, such as timbre and acoustical variations — and compared that to the genre’s sales. They found that in nearly every case, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.
“This can be interpreted,” the researchers write, “as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills.”
So music all starts simplifying and sounding similar. Not only that, but complexity actually starts turning people off of musical styles. Alternative rock, experimental and hip-hop music are all more complex now than when they began, and each has seen their sales plummet. Startlingly few genres have retained high levels of musical complexity over their histories, according to the researchers.
