Okay… One more day…
I’m intrigued by the whole Marvin Gaye/Robin Thicke lawsuit. It’s obvious to anyone who has functioning ears that the Robin Thicke song is blatantly stolen from the Marvin Gaye song. It’s painfully clear. The right group won the case. It’s just that simple.
What’s bugging me is the crap that’s gone on around the case. First off, many people are commenting on stories saying that they disagree with the decision. I write those people off as not having functioning ears. I’m sorry. There are copyright rules regarding sampling, and you are allowed to use portions of an existing work within your new work. Courtesy dictates that you credit the source material. That’s not what happened here. They took the heart and soul of the song and just stole it. It’s blatant.
Why then did the Robin Thicke team sue the Marvin Gaye team? You read that right. Someone representing Gaye’s estate made a comment that the songs were very similar so Robin Thicke actually sued the Gaye estate. Really? Is that really how it happened? The case that was decided this week was the Gaye estate’s counter suit. I mean… guys… you blatantly stole the song and then had the audacity to sue the owner of the original song when they dared question your motives? You deserved to lose the whole thing just as a punishment for your stupidity. Chances are if you had kept your mouths shut NOTHING WOULD EVER HAVE COME OUT OF IT! Your little pop song would have dropped off the charts and gone away forever the way all little pop songs do. It was stupid to respond and now you’re paying the price financially.
As for the Gaye estate… what is this injunction crap? That is totally the wrong move. First of all, as just mentioned, it’s a pop song that’s already fallen off the charts. How many copies of it do you expect them to sell from now on? I’ll tell you how many. Not many! Second, stopping the sales doesn’t do anything except bring more attention. What you should have done is asked the court to put Marvin Gaye’s name into both the writing and publishing credits. That way what few copies do sell from now on would result in income. That, on top of the huge cash settlement, would have put Mr Gaye’s family into a very nice financial position for the foreseeable future. Instead you now look like sore winners who aren’t happy with 7+ million dollars. Bad move, folks. Bad move.
Of course all of this mess could have been avoided if the folks who took credit for writing the Thicke song had just been courteous and professional and included Marvin Gaye’s name in the credit from day one. Credibility wise there is nothing wrong with borrowing from your influences, so long as you give credit where credit is due. If it really was just “the groove” that you took, then fine. It wasn’t. You took everything from the original song’s backing track. You should have given Marvin Gaye a writing credit from the start. That would have been the right thing to do, and you would have looked AWESOME doing it. Everyone in the business would have taken notice of it and I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say you would have come off as heroes to the R&B community. That move would have been a great one.
I should note that I keep saying they should have given Marvin Gaye a writing and publishing credit. I realize that I don’t know for sure that Marvin Gaye wrote the song. I believe he did, but if so I don’t know if there were other people collaborating. I should say that the writers of the original song should be given credit on the song that stole from them.
So there. Blogging 101 asked us to write a post based on something we commented on yesterday. Normally I would say that the things I comment on really aren’t anyone’s business besides me and the person who wrote the post that I commented on. In this case though, I was probably going to write something about this anyway. So there you go.
*edits* I knew that he spelled his last name Gaye, with an e, but at about the same time “Sexual Healing” was climbing the charts I had a classmate who spelled his last name without the e, Gay. For some reason in this post I went with Pete’s spelling instead of Marvin’s. Fixed.
Inside the Red Head's Head 