Thicke: Slicke or Dicke?

We’re decades beyond the time when a songwriter penned a tune on paper, then gave it to musicians to perform.

Caramanica is the fucking worst, seriously

Despite the fact that the jury was told to rely on the sheet music, the lawyer for Marvin Gaye's family focussed in his closing argument greatly on Robin Thicke's lies and behavior. Also, as noted:

pharrell and robin thicke's defense was so bad, i don't know how anyone could've expected them to win. nagl to tell the court you're "not an honest person" and that you were drunk and high on vicodin for all of 2013. that alone probably sealed the deal, especially if this is a jury so removed from pop culture that they'd never heard blurred lines or got to give it up. oh, and pharrell mixing up the basslines. were they trying to lose?

― flappy bird (spazzmatazz), Thursday, 12 March 2015 00:55 (12 hours ago)

Article below was written while the trial was going on

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/business/media/pharrell-williams-acknowledges-similarity-to-marvin-gaye-song-in-blurred-lines-case.html?_r=0

it's going to be hard to work all this into an svu episode but i hope they try

“Right now, I feel free,” Nona Gaye said after the verdict. “Free from ... Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told.”

i feel like this is a little much

should have said "no more pretending, cuz now i'm winning"

well you've got the "omg how can you sue someone for stealing a song's 'feel'" contingent who missed that this element was thrown out of the case, and then you have the "omg how could you think these songs were the same" contingent, who missed that the jury didn't hear the songs, but rather enjoyed electric piano interludes in between bits of self-contradictory testimony from the accused. and just about everybody's missed that the gaye estate was given less than 50% of the estimated profits of the song - that basically robin & pharrell's hemming and hawing got gaye got a sample credit.

― da croupier, Thursday, March 12, 2015 12:03 AM

where's the best place to read about this stuff? i missed much of this too as i'm sure a few of us have.

this thread and all the links in it

our own pappawheelie has been posting about this on facebook and he has some personal experience with having a massive hit yoinked; would like his perspective

The detail in Matos's piece about this suit being a pre-emptive strike initiated by Pharrell and Thicke makes this whole thing even funnier.

Kinda like George Brett stepping out the batters box saying "better not check the pinetar on my bat, bitches"

robin and pharrell's lawyer is going to appeal the decision thankfully

We had two great musicologists -- Judith Finell and Ingrid Monson

I misread this as Irwin Chusid.

/We’re decades beyond the time when a songwriter penned a tune on paper, then gave it to musicians to perform./

Caramanica is the fucking worst, seriously

There is, it should be said, a similarity in the bass lines of the two songs, and perhaps, more broadly, in their shared lite-funk feel.

I mean, did anyone on this thread hear two seconds of "Blurred Lines" and not immediately think they had nicked "Got to Give It Up"? The idea that these songs are only tangentially linked insofar as they share a style or feel is just ludicrous on its face.

the percussion/groove obviously is fairly similar, esp in the first ten seconds, I think most of the general public are focusing on the vocal melodies/chord progressions which are their own thing

next in line to sue

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-V26jy5zHA34/TYpZnRXS2FI/AAAAAAAADXE/LuoS4K3nw4c/s1600/Fat+Albert+1.jpg

Not sure the Coz wants to be anywhere near a courtroom right now if he can avoid it.

Is iggy pop gonna sue the are you gonna b my girl band

Iggy should join forces with Love and Holland-Dozier-Holland

(unless they sue him first)

I feel like arguments about how derivative x artist is of y are tedious and immature. This case is the worst example of this phenomenon I've seen since 9th grade.

I'm not sure you should be able to own a bassline. But i'm not a professional musician so maybe these types of laws protect artists idk

I'm not sure you should be able to own a bassline.

Bootsy Collins would like a word with you

me neither, i don't agree with the verdict, i'm just incredulous @ pharrell

"it sounds like you're playing the same thing". like Jesus an IRL example of "when someone asks if you're a God, you say 'yes!'"

Don't know if this is authentic, but so unenlightened to care about authenticity anyway. Supposedly the official documentation of the verdict:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/258475949/Pharrell-Williams-Robin-Thicke-v-Gaye-jury-special-verdict-filled-Blurred-Lines-pdf

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/13/marvin-gayes-family-says-pharrells-happy-is-another-copy

Ok, they're totally just trolling.

lol omg wut

Gaye had nothing to do with the writing or production of Ain't That Peculiar anyway

Gaye said a couple times that he wrote or produced many of those early Motown w/out getting credit, as no doubt Nona heard many times growing up.

I feel like arguments about how derivative x artist is of y are tedious and immature

OTM

Tbf I think the lawyer saying blurred lines came solely from "the hearts and souls of Pharrell Williams and robin thicke" deserves an omg lol wut are you trolling too

Spent so much time scrutinizing Blurred Lines yesterday that youtube has been recommending me Thrift Shop all morning.

serves you right

I'm waiting for the Gaye estate to get round to 'Thrift Shop'. Also 'All About That Bass' and 'Fancy'.

I've never heard either, which amuses me greatly.

You haven't heard either 'Blurred Lines' or 'Happy'?

I don't get it. Even if the basslines and sheet music were key factors in this they're quite obviously different.
http://joebennett.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/gaye1.jpg
http://joebennett.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/thicke.jpg

Top one's Blurred lines, bottom is GTGIU

other way around, lol

haha my bad, thought i c&p'd the other way

gotta say it must be a weird and horrible trip being robin thicke this past year or so. can think of very few songs that have made then ruined a person's life, let alone so quickly...(damages include forever being known as the date rapey song guy, the marvin gaye ripoff guy, the fibbed songwriting credit guy, the guy whose reaction to his own success led to his divorce, the guy whose album-length attempt at getting his wife back -- anchored by the song in question -- tanked profoundly...)

and yet that isn't punishment enough

world's tiniest violin playing a ripoff of some sad song for him

world's tiniest rape anthem

when is the hendrix estate going to get thicke for nicking the cover of BAND OF GYPSYS for PAULA

just saw another IS HOMAGE DEAD piece went up

http://www.playboy.com/articles/defending-the-groove-the-real-chilling-problem-with-the-blurred-lines

And now, as a result of the “Blurred Lines” decision, musicians' lawyers are going to be all freaked out about not just songs that sample or quote other songs but songs that sound too much like other songs. There is no standard for how much one recording’s groove can happen to sound like another’s, because there cannot be a standard for it. And when there’s no standard for what’s legal and what’s not, that’s a textbook example of a chilling effect: there is no degree of resemblance that is safe. Imagine if, after “Rapper’s Delight” came out, nobody had been willing to release a song with the same basic sound for fear of being sued.

it is cracking me up so much that critics are running around in fear that music is suddenly going to become less derivative

everyone just spitting out examples of music that sounds like other music while they still can

before they get sued for copying other critics

like c'mon

The last time something like this happened was the 1992 Gilbert O'Sullivan/Biz Markie lawsuit. Before it, there was an informal understanding that including samples on hip-hop records was fine as long as you didn’t use more than a few bars; after it, lawsuit-fearing artists and labels demanded that every sample had to be cleared, and the result was that the art of sampling was kneecapped. (This is also why, for instance, Karmin’s 2011 single “Crash Your Party” was, absurdly, officially co-written by John Coltrane, who died several decades before several of his “collaborators” were born and didn’t actually write anything heard in “Crash Your Party”: it includes a sample of Black Sheep’s “The Choice Is Yours (Revisited),” which in turn samples a Ron Carter bass improvisation from a McCoy Tyner recording of Coltrane’s “Impressions.”)

oh yes i remember how the art of sampling disappeared in 1992