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| Marvin Gaye Looking Over Robin Thicke's Shoulder |
A jury this week awarded the estate of Marvin Gaye a $7.3 million judgement against Robin Thicke and Pharrell for unauthorized use of Gaye's 1977 hit "Got To Give It Up" in their song "Blurred Lines."
You be the judge. Listen to Gaye's classic riff compared with Robin Thicke's work.
This situation sheds light on two incendiary issues confronting the entertainment industry that will create further problems if not addressed and corrected.
The first issue involves the artists themselves and their casual attitudes to ownership rights of other artists. Contemporary recording artists grew up after the age of 'sampling' which began in the late 1970's and early '80s when DJs started interacting with and manipulating the vinyl records they played. The practice became accepted because sampling used song portions of limited duration and in many cases the sample was changed by altering turntable speeds and by spinning records manually. Common use of sampling created a tacit approval for the practice that artists today take for granted. Pharrell and Thicke may not have been malicious in their use of Gaye's work. It's just as likely that they had no idea that what they were doing was wrong.
That raises the second issue. Legal protection is central to any creative endeavor and recording companies have their fair share of legal brains in their offices. Even casual listeners of Sam Smith's Grammy-winning song "Stay With Me" recognize the similarity to Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne's "I Won't Back Down." Capital Records, Smith's recording company, employs Clearance and Permissions lawyers to pre-empt situations where there is clear evidence of creative precedence. In his comments about the song, Petty said the problem slipped through the cracks at Smith's record label. In this particular case, Smith and Petty worked out an amicable agreement recognizing Petty as co-writer of "Stay With Me." Not every artist is as magnanimous as Petty.
But the "Blurred Lines" case raises another concern about the legal practice at play. The Gaye family in their suit accused EMI, the publisher of Marvin Gaye's music, of not aggressively pursuing their concerns because the EMI music catalog had been absorbed by Sony ATV which manages Thicke's music. With consolidation of the music industry, these conflicts are bound to re-appear.
To address our current culture's increasingly ambiguous detachment from the concepts of privacy and intellectual property ownership, musicians who profess respect for another artist's work that becomes inspiration for new material should accept that their respect may need to be recognized financially. In a related entertainment field, the National Football League, respect is equated with money by many players. This concept should be the litmus test for artists to help avoid future legal problems.
The breakdown of legal protections are creating an environment where artists who use other artist's work without permission may not be protected and where claims of the original artist are not aggressively pursued. A solution to these costly dilemmas may be for major record labels to push artists to reveal more in future about their inspirations and thought processes for their music than they required in the past. And, it may help for labels to hire at least one music history-aware lawyer who is familiar with artist catalogs from the 70's and 80's.
Look for more of the same in the immediate future, as some current hits bear uncanny resemblances to past singles: Suzanne Vega, have you heard Centuries by Fallout Boy? They may have conceived it in Tom's Diner. And Kelly Clarkson's Heartbeat Song may raise her blood pressure if it's too similar to The Middle by Jimmy Eat World.
What's old is new again. It just might cost a lot more.
