Disaster for music

Why was the main song of 2013 recognized as plagiarism

On March 10, the jury in Los Angeles recognized the song by Robin Tik “Blurred Lines”, which he came up with one of the most influential producers of the present, Farrell Williams. According to the jury, Tick and Williams stole the song of the great Soul-singer Marvin Gay “Got to Give It Up” and must pay $ 7.3 million for this. Medusa is versed in why Blurred Lines was recognized as plagiarism and what this means for the musical industry.

Let's start with the compositions themselves. “Blurred Lines” is the most successful (14.8 million copies sold) and the most discussed song of 2013, which brought it to co -authors of five million dollars and at the same time actually destroyed the career of Robin Tika. An excessively frank video (the version of the uncensored - here ) with naked girls and the extremely ambiguous text (the line “I know, you want it” many perceived as an excuse for rape on dates) secured the image of the wife and chauvinist for ticking, and his next album failed.

The co -author of the song Farrell Williams is one of the most significant and successful modern producers and performers. Williams has 11 Grammy, he worked with many pop musicians, and the 2013th for him turned out to be completely incredibly successful. Then Williams took part in the creation of not only Blurred Lines, but also sang in the DAFT Punk “Get Lucky” song, and also released his own single “Happy” - no less successful than joint work. It can be confidently stated that it was Farrell Williams that played a significant role in the recent revival of fashion for disco fank.

The classic composition of Marvin Gay “Got to Give It Up” was published in 1977. The song quickly became a hit of discos, Gay often opened concerts with it. “Got to Give It Up” can be called an ideal example of a disco finge, this song was inspired by many famous musicians, from Michael Jackson and ending with Robin Tik, who admitted his love for this work of Gay.

Marvin Gay died in 1984, the rights to his songs belong to the heirs. His children Frankie and Nona, having heard “Blurred Lines”, considered that she was too similar to “Got to Give It Up”, and decided to go to court. The total amount of compensation that Frankie and Non GEI wanted to receive was 40 million dollars.

The heirs of Gay decided that Robin Tick and Farrell Williams borrowed the overall composition of the song, and reinforced their feelings with two studies of musical experts. From them it follows that the songs are united by the main melodic phrase in the main vocal melody, several “hooks” - small excerpts characterizing the song, a bass melody, a batch of keyboards and an “unusual choice of percussion”. The claims of the plaintiffs are quite unusual for the vessels of plagiarism. Almost all proven cases of theft of songs relate to the main melody-the so-called “Toplane”, the sequence of notes that can be singing or raging (and identifying a song by it), and here we are talking about a bat, bass party and other details.

Since the court considered the question of the composition of the song, and not about how it was recorded, the original records of both tracks were not shown by the jury. Instead, they could listen to the processed versions of Got to Give It Up and Blurred Lines with a vocal line and a minimalistic arrangement (you can listen to them here ). The similarity was also proved with the help of notes.

The trial dragged on for two weeks and also turned out to be quite unusual. Robin Tick in court admitted that he lied about his participation in the essay “Blurred Lines”, and in general at that time he drank a lot and used drugs. Nevertheless, Tick insisted on his innocence and even played a cut from popular songs before the piano, thereby demonstrating that not only similar tracks are obtained. Farrell Williams insisted that he was simply inspired by the sound of the 1970s and wanted to reproduce the general feeling of a disco finge, and in no case to steal Gay's song. The lawyers of the heirs of Gay accused Tik of permanent lies and called for the jury not to believe the person whose reputation has recently suffered greatly-first of all, because of the Blurred Lines itself, and not the courts and accusations of plagiarism.

It is impossible to say how justified the claims of the Gay family after the verdict of the court, which satisfied the lawsuit and awarded the owners of rights to “Got to Give It Up” $ 7.3 million. Yes, “Blurred Lines” really looks like a hit by Marvin Gay almost 40 years ago-about the same as one punk song is similar to another, and one blues-to the other. The songs have really almost the same bit and a rather similar bass party, but still not so much as to recognize it with complete plagiarism. It is quite difficult to detect a significant similarity in the vocal melody, the main part of any pop singing-well, except that Robin Tick at the very beginning of Blurred Lines imitates Gay's falsetet, but soon demonstrates other vocal techniques.

The recognition of “Blurred Lines” creates a dangerous precedent for modern music-and primarily for hip-hop, the basis of which is a bit taken from somewhere. For the first time, a well -known hit was recognized by plagiarism, where not the main melody is borrowed, but a common feeling and details of the arrangement; If desired, you can find tens and hundreds of the same similarities in other songs, both random and popular, but still quite legal. The influential British magazine NME calls this decision by a disaster for music - but it will really be a disaster if the musicians drowned in lawsuit instead of composing songs.

Pavel Borisov

Riga