Graycap23 said:

SoulAlive said:

LOL...Nona is gonna use that money for more drugs Marvin's kids never did anything meaningful in their own lives.They're just living off the royalties from their father's music.I bet Nona's already celebrating with a brand new crack pipe.

Hollywood is filled with people like this.

Exactly. And what do Nona's personal issues have to do with the case anyway?

Let's ask SoulAlive what exactly he thinks Robin Thicke or anybody else would have done with the money or is it okay for him to use drugs, but not Nona?

Why is it okay for any and everybody in show biz except his heirs to benefit from his legacy??? Sounds backward to me.

And I'm going to keep repeating it until somebody gets it....it was Robin Thicke who filed the first lawsuit.

Why y'all so forgetful?

http://www.rollingstone.c...s-20130816

babynoz said:

Graycap23 said:

Hollywood is filled with people like this.

Exactly. And what do Nona's personal issues have to do with the case anyway?

Let's ask SoulAlive what exactly he thinks Robin Thicke or anybody else would have done with the money or is it okay for him to use drugs, but not Nona?

Why is it okay for any and everybody in show biz except his heirs to benefit from his legacy??? Sounds backward to me.

And I'm going to keep repeating it until somebody gets it....it was Robin Thicke who filed the first lawsuit.

Why y'all so forgetful?

http://www.rollingstone.c...s-20130816

Yep.

TommorowNeverKnows said:

The cats who are saying that Gotta Give it Up and Blurred lines dont sound the same are not understanding what was being debated in court. Contemporary copyright law, doesn't only protect melody of a song. It protects the feel and the texture. While on a melodic and harmonic level, the two songs are onlu vaguely similar. The texture and feel of both songs are near identical, and thats enough to warrant a copyright infringement

So while yes, you can play blurred lines on a guitar and it won't sound like Gotta Give it Up, simply because the notes and harmonies don't line up, this is OLD WORLD infringement. Copyright law doesn't work that way. Rather, It protects every aspect of the song, including the arrangement and groove. So basically what this means if Pharell and Thicke, decided to interpolate the song, but arrange it in say a country folk setting, there would (possibly) be no violation. But because their arrangement is so close to the original arrangement, they have violated the copyright based purely because they copied the texture and feel. But sometimes even a genre change isnt enough to masquerade the alleged infringement

A good example of this type of copyright infringement is the Ghost Busters theme by Ray Parker, infringeing on I Want a New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News

Outside of the riff and the hits, and the over all feel, the two songs are barely the same.

Different melodies and harmonic structures. the arrangement is very similar. You don't have to steal melodies in order to infringe a copyright, this has always been the case. Blurred Lines is not establishing a new precedent at all. And anyone who claims it is, never fully understood contemporary copyright law.

[Edited 3/11/15 18:23pm]

Thanks. That's an interesting explanation.

Because honestly, I don't get the Got to Give it Up comparison nearly as much as the most blatant possible infringement might have been to Funkytown. I've never heard anyone else couple the two. Take a listen.

To me, the Blurred Lines to Funkytown is what the Ghostbusters is to I Need A New Drug... I can definitely hear the similarities. But, I also get the feel of Funkytown in Blurred Lines as well as hear the similarities.

I guess you could say Got to Give it Up and Funkytown do have a similar feel...

[Edited 3/12/15 13:43pm]

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

“We’re just in the moment today and we’re satisfied,” Janis Gaye, Marvin’s ex-wife, added.

It was a hard-won victory for the Gaye family. “My heart started pounding but I still had faith that the verdict was going to go our way,” Janis recalled. And when the jury ruled in their favor, she said, “That’s when I lost it completely. And I was filled with incredibly powerful emotion.”

Geez. It's all about the fucking money. If that Blurred line crap wouldn't have made a dime, they wouldn't give a shit about it all. So really, they should just shut the fuck up and don't pretend like Williams and Thicke shot their old man... oops, someone else did that. They only have a powerful emotion because their cash register made ka-ching. They won the lottery.

[Edited 3/12/15 14:41pm]

deebee said:

Got to pay it up.

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Marvin Gaye’s kids talk Pharell’s ‘Happy’ similarities to ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’

by theGrio | March 12, 2015 at 9:48 AM

Pharrell performs live at The Riverstage on March 12, 2014 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Marvin Gaye’s family has just come off a win in the fight against Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams’ song “Blurred Lines.” They were awarded $7 million because of the similarities between “Blurred Lines” and Gaye’s hit “Got to Give It Up.”

But when asked about similarities others have pointed out between Pharell’s hit song ‘Happy’ and ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’, a Marvin Gaye classic, the family just isn’t thinking about going down that legal road again. At least, not right now.

“I’m not going to lie. I do think they sound alike,” Nona Gaye, Marvin’s 40-year-old daughter, said of the two songs. But she quickly added, “We’re not in that space.”

“We’re just in the moment today and we’re satisfied,” Janis Gaye, Marvin’s ex-wife, added.

It was a hard-won victory for the Gaye family. “My heart started pounding but I still had faith that the verdict was going to go our way,” Janis recalled. And when the jury ruled in their favor, she said, “That’s when I lost it completely. And I was filled with incredibly powerful emotion.”

A LOT OF Pharrel songs are plagiarized. Another Pharrell penned song is Usher's "She Came to Give It to You", which sounds like the Bee Gee's "You Should Be Dancing". Not to mention my musical idol 's "Nasty Girl" which he passed off as "Slave 4 U' and then the nerve to offer it to the beautiful, talented Janet Jackson first! Which she declined.

Now I have to go back and listen to "Ain't that Peculiar" and compare it to "Happy"....So did Pharrell think he could get away with what he did because Marvin is dead or was it just flat out Ego?

PatrickS77 said:

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

“We’re just in the moment today and we’re satisfied,” Janis Gaye, Marvin’s ex-wife, added.

It was a hard-won victory for the Gaye family. “My heart started pounding but I still had faith that the verdict was going to go our way,” Janis recalled. And when the jury ruled in their favor, she said, “That’s when I lost it completely. And I was filled with incredibly powerful emotion.”

Geez. It's all about the fucking money. If that Blurred line crap wouldn't have made a dime, they wouldn't give a shit about it all. So really, they should just shut the fuck up and don't pretend like Williams and Thicke shot their old man... oops, someone else did that. They only have a powerful emotion because their cash register made ka-ching. They won the lottery.

[Edited 3/12/15 14:41pm]

that's very easy to say

if you was in their shoes, you would have felt the same and did the same thing

and apparently is was about money for PHarell and Robin Thicke too because they made allot of money hijacking Marvin's music because they knew the groove for Got To Give It Up was off the charts...

It's all about that money lol. People are gonna start reaching for the stars with these lawsuits like never before attempting to reach a big payday. Might as well put a mic up to Pharrell's ass, wait for a fart, and claim that it sounds similar to Prince's, Madonna's and MJ's back in '82.

the sampling and hijacking have been going on way too long

and it has been prolific

even in contemporary gospel w/such acts as Kirk Franklin who has sampled the msuic of close to 50 artists during his career

that's not artistry

Who will have enough balls to sue for the 12-bar blues progression? They would have to hold the trial in a football stadium for that one.

scorp84 said:

It's all about that money lol. People are gonna start reaching for the stars with these lawsuits like never before attempting to reach a big payday. Might as well put a mic up to Pharrell's ass, wait for a fart, and claim that it sounds similar to Prince's, Madonna's and MJ's back in '82.

and if today's contemporaries of the past 25 years hadn't resorted to sampling exclusively to shape their music, we wouldn't have these lawsuits

for decades artists whose music was used didn't receive any finacial compensation for it while the person who sampled it made millions

PHarrell and Robin Thicke tried to hijack an all time luminaries when they have the resources to make their own

That's a tired rhetoric. Lawsuits have been going on long before "sampling" came into vogue. This song isn't even a true example of "sampling". Was "Got to Give It Up" playing anywhere in "Blurred Lines"? Where is Marvin's voice? Michael Jackson and his lawyers have been litigated for every single song that placed on the charts by people claiming to have been "ripped off". Nothing new. There are alot of songs that "sound like" other songs. That isn't always grounds for legal action. If everybody went into the studio worrying about getting sued, "artistry" would have ceased to exist a LONNNNNG time ago.

scorp84 said:

That's a tired rhetoric. Lawsuits have been going on long before "sampling" came into vogue. This song isn't even a true example of "sampling". Was "Got to Give It Up" playing anywhere in "Blurred Lines"? Where is Marvin's voice? Michael Jackson and his lawyers have been litigated for every single song that placed on the charts by people claiming to have been "ripped off". Nothing new. There are alot of songs that "sound like" other songs. That isn't always grounds for legal action. If everybody went into the studio worrying about getting sued, "artistry" would have ceased to exist a LONNNNNG time ago.

it ain't tired, it's real....

I've been reviewing song credits for 30 years to see who's actually doing what and sampling became cataclysmic by the end of the 80s, it was becoming a formula rather than something that happened on occassion, the industry became co-dependent on sampling

Kirk Franklin sampled close to 50 songs of prior artists to shape his music presentation

yes Michael Jackson was the target of frivolous lawsuits

but this Marvin Gaye lawsuit was justified, and one that was coming for a long time

it's so bad now, the samples are being sampled........that's just the reality

Robin Thicke relied on sampling from his first major song, using Walter Murphy's rendition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.......

truth be told, it's not these artists' fault for this dynamic, the music industry which used to be the recording industry shaped the environment in such a way where many of the contemporaries of the past quarter century were not allowed to truly cultivate their own talent to develop their own sound

it took Marvin Gaye years before he developed his sound, it doesn't happen overnight

it's not about remakes, remakes are great when done in good taste, in many instances the remakes of classic originals turn out to be greater......

but if sampling was not allowed, lets just say for a year, the industry would shut down during that time period or just play classic songs throughout the day because we wouldn't get any new songs

Scorp said:

scorp84 said:

That's a tired rhetoric. Lawsuits have been going on long before "sampling" came into vogue. This song isn't even a true example of "sampling". Was "Got to Give It Up" playing anywhere in "Blurred Lines"? Where is Marvin's voice? Michael Jackson and his lawyers have been litigated for every single song that placed on the charts by people claiming to have been "ripped off". Nothing new. There are alot of songs that "sound like" other songs. That isn't always grounds for legal action. If everybody went into the studio worrying about getting sued, "artistry" would have ceased to exist a LONNNNNG time ago.

it ain't tired, it's real....

I've been reviewing song credits for 30 years to see who's actually doing what and sampling became cataclysmic by the end of the 80s, it was becoming a formula rather than something that happened on occassion, the industry became co-dependent on sampling

Kirk Franklin sampled close to 50 songs of prior artists to shape his music presentation

yes Michael Jackson was the target of frivolous lawsuits

but this Marvin Gaye lawsuit was justified, and one that was coming for a long time

it's so bad now, the samples are being sampled........that's just the reality

Robin Thicke relied on sampling from his first major song, using Walter Murphy's rendition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.......

truth be told, it's not these artists' fault for this dynamic, the music industry which used to be the recording industry shaped the environment in such a way where many of the contemporaries of the past quarter century were not allowed to truly cultivate their own talent to develop their own sound

it took Marvin Gaye years before he developed his sound, it doesn't happen overnight

it's not about remakes, remakes are great when done in good taste, in many instances the remakes of classic originals turn out to be greater......

but if sampling was not allowed, lets just say for a year, the industry would shut down during that time period or just play classic songs throughout the day because we wouldn't get any new songs

I told u guys YEARS ago that they will be sampling, sampled, samples..........

Graycap23 said:

Scorp said:

it ain't tired, it's real....

I've been reviewing song credits for 30 years to see who's actually doing what and sampling became cataclysmic by the end of the 80s, it was becoming a formula rather than something that happened on occassion, the industry became co-dependent on sampling

Kirk Franklin sampled close to 50 songs of prior artists to shape his music presentation

yes Michael Jackson was the target of frivolous lawsuits

but this Marvin Gaye lawsuit was justified, and one that was coming for a long time

it's so bad now, the samples are being sampled........that's just the reality

Robin Thicke relied on sampling from his first major song, using Walter Murphy's rendition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.......

truth be told, it's not these artists' fault for this dynamic, the music industry which used to be the recording industry shaped the environment in such a way where many of the contemporaries of the past quarter century were not allowed to truly cultivate their own talent to develop their own sound

it took Marvin Gaye years before he developed his sound, it doesn't happen overnight

it's not about remakes, remakes are great when done in good taste, in many instances the remakes of classic originals turn out to be greater......

but if sampling was not allowed, lets just say for a year, the industry would shut down during that time period or just play classic songs throughout the day because we wouldn't get any new songs

I told u guys YEARS ago that they will be sampling, sampled, samples..........

exactly....

teh well is running dry, because culture has been eviscerated

Thicke has sampled Marvin Gaye's music on several occassions

http://www.whosampled.com/Robin-Thicke/?sp=1

his very first "hit" song was a sample

anyone one of us on this forum could have taken some lyrics and recited them over the background music and it would have gotten airplay because of the classic rendition by Walter Murphy...

[Edited 3/13/15 8:43am]

[Edited 3/13/15 8:49am]

the sampling had created such a distortion

there are actually people out there who are younger who believe Rick James' SUPER FREAK samples MC Hammer's U CAN'T TOUCH THIS when Hammer's song of 1990 sampled Rick's sone of 1981

that's how bad it is....lolll

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Marvin Gaye’s kids talk Pharell’s ‘Happy’ similarities to ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’

by theGrio | March 12, 2015 at 9:48 AM

Pharrell performs live at The Riverstage on March 12, 2014 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Marvin Gaye’s family has just come off a win in the fight against Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams’ song “Blurred Lines.” They were awarded $7 million because of the similarities between “Blurred Lines” and Gaye’s hit “Got to Give It Up.”

But when asked about similarities others have pointed out between Pharell’s hit song ‘Happy’ and ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’, a Marvin Gaye classic, the family just isn’t thinking about going down that legal road again. At least, not right now.

“I’m not going to lie. I do think they sound alike,” Nona Gaye, Marvin’s 40-year-old daughter, said of the two songs. But she quickly added, “We’re not in that space.”

“We’re just in the moment today and we’re satisfied,” Janis Gaye, Marvin’s ex-wife, added.

It was a hard-won victory for the Gaye family. “My heart started pounding but I still had faith that the verdict was going to go our way,” Janis recalled. And when the jury ruled in their favor, she said, “That’s when I lost it completely. And I was filled with incredibly powerful emotion.”

In response to some critics claiming that the family is mistaking inspiration for theft, Nona said, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being inspired. I’ve been inspired when I made music before. Inspiration’s fine, but the line is when you decide to take the complete and utter essence out of the song. When you take all the meat, and leave the bones.”

“When I first heard that he [Williams] had said he did it [wrote the song] in an hour, my first thought was, ‘That’s because it was already done in 1977.'” Janis added. “So why would it take you any longer than 20 minutes… to redo something that had already been done 40 years earlier?”

But for now, the family is just happy the legal battle is over. “It’s been a long journey so we need time to reflect… Right now it’s all surreal,” said Marvin Gaye III.

A LOT OF Pharrel songs are plagiarized. Another Pharrell penned song is Usher's "She Came to Give It to You", which sounds like the Bee Gee's "You Should Be Dancing". Not to mention my musical idol 's "Nasty Girl" which he passed off as "Slave 4 U' and then the nerve to offer it to the beautiful, talented Janet Jackson first! Which she declined.

I hear 'Nasty Girl'. A bit. I always heard 'In The Closet' more as this video testifies

[Edited 3/13/15 17:24pm]

PatrickS77 said:

Scorp said:

scorp84 said:

That's a tired rhetoric. Lawsuits have been going on long before "sampling" came into vogue. This song isn't even a true example of "sampling". Was "Got to Give It Up" playing anywhere in "Blurred Lines"? Where is Marvin's voice? Michael Jackson and his lawyers have been litigated for every single song that placed on the charts by people claiming to have been "ripped off". Nothing new. There are alot of songs that "sound like" other songs. That isn't always grounds for legal action. If everybody went into the studio worrying about getting sued, "artistry" would have ceased to exist a LONNNNNG time ago.

it ain't tired, it's real....

I've been reviewing song credits for 30 years to see who's actually doing what and sampling became cataclysmic by the end of the 80s, it was becoming a formula rather than something that happened on occassion, the industry became co-dependent on sampling

Kirk Franklin sampled close to 50 songs of prior artists to shape his music presentation

yes Michael Jackson was the target of frivolous lawsuits

but this Marvin Gaye lawsuit was justified, and one that was coming for a long time

it's so bad now, the samples are being sampled........that's just the reality

Robin Thicke relied on sampling from his first major song, using Walter Murphy's rendition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.......

truth be told, it's not these artists' fault for this dynamic, the music industry which used to be the recording industry shaped the environment in such a way where many of the contemporaries of the past quarter century were not allowed to truly cultivate their own talent to develop their own sound

it took Marvin Gaye years before he developed his sound, it doesn't happen overnight

it's not about remakes, remakes are great when done in good taste, in many instances the remakes of classic originals turn out to be greater......

but if sampling was not allowed, lets just say for a year, the industry would shut down during that time period or just play classic songs throughout the day because we wouldn't get any new songs

Well said. Almost none of these so called artists would have a career without the benefit of electronics and samples.

Perhaps this verdict will encourage and empower musicians who produce original compositions again. Nobody wants to pay musicians when they can just buy a machine to produce sounds and pay one guy like Pharrell to operate the machine.

[Edited 3/13/15 18:05pm]

babynoz said:

Scorp said:

it ain't tired, it's real....

I've been reviewing song credits for 30 years to see who's actually doing what and sampling became cataclysmic by the end of the 80s, it was becoming a formula rather than something that happened on occassion, the industry became co-dependent on sampling

Kirk Franklin sampled close to 50 songs of prior artists to shape his music presentation

yes Michael Jackson was the target of frivolous lawsuits

but this Marvin Gaye lawsuit was justified, and one that was coming for a long time

it's so bad now, the samples are being sampled........that's just the reality

Robin Thicke relied on sampling from his first major song, using Walter Murphy's rendition of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.......

truth be told, it's not these artists' fault for this dynamic, the music industry which used to be the recording industry shaped the environment in such a way where many of the contemporaries of the past quarter century were not allowed to truly cultivate their own talent to develop their own sound

it took Marvin Gaye years before he developed his sound, it doesn't happen overnight

it's not about remakes, remakes are great when done in good taste, in many instances the remakes of classic originals turn out to be greater......

but if sampling was not allowed, lets just say for a year, the industry would shut down during that time period or just play classic songs throughout the day because we wouldn't get any new songs

Well said. Almost none of these so called artists would have a career without the benefit of electronics and samples.

Perhaps this verdict will encourage and empower musicians who produce original compositions again. Nobody wants to pay musicians when they can just buy a machine to produce sounds and pay one guy like Pharrell to operate the machine.

[Edited 3/13/15 18:05pm]

very very true

Pharell and Thicke are both assholes so I'm shedding no tears for them, but I do think this verdict is ridiculous. The groove is clearly a rip-off, but the actual SONG is nothing like it.

Incidentally, listening to these two songs side by side gives a valuable indication of how the craft of songwriting has deterioriated over the last 40 years. Gaye's song isn't even one of his best, but it's actually got a melody. Where the fuck is the melody in BL? And the lyrics are juvenile and amateurish. The fact that this piece of shit was a mega-hit is really a sign of the times.

[Edited 3/14/15 3:37am]

My feeling is that they should have acknowledged the debt to Gaye early on and preempted any court case by reaching some kind of settlement - almost as a courtesy, as much as anything else. Robin must have figured that one out in retrospect, as it might also have given it less of a sense of ripping off a legacy artist, and more like acknowledging that you've been inspired by them. He's managed to alienate his R&B fanbase by greedily holding out, and also by throwing Pharrell under the bus when it was expedient to do so.

That said, $7.4m of a song worth $15m seems like a lot. I think Blurred Lines is pretty slight as a composition, and never sounds like more than a cheap, throwaway record. Nonetheless, it's a cheap, throwaway record a lot of people went out and bought (or downloaded, listened to on the radio, etc), and there's no points in commerce for artistic merit. Elements from GTGIU are certainly there as the basis of the record, but you have to acknowledge the original elements too, as musically unsophisticated and throwaway as they may be, as those have been part of what people were paying for. It's hard to quantify these things, but I'm not sure one would say Marvin Gaye composed half the song - even though his 'input' deserved to be acknowledged to some degree.

Regarding this line of argument about why Nona Gaye should have any claim on her father's music, I'd say, Fine, pull at that thread if you want; but understand that the whole of alienable copyright unravels if you do. (I'm not saying that's a bad thing; just that it's a thing.) She's got no less right to her father's music than, say, Michael Jackson had to get paid off The Beatles' back catalogue, or anyone else has to get paid of something they didn't create but acquired the rights to through sale or inheritance. Personally, I think that's all bullshit and only the person who worked to create the material should have rights of ownership over it, but that's the capitalist legal system that we collectively work under, and whether you suck the fruits of someone else's labour up through a crack pipe, or spend it on a yacht floating around the Mediterranean makes not one iota of difference.

we all just need to admit they hijacked Marvin Gaye's msuic and call it a day lolll

its' not like this was an isolated incident or something that hasn't happened before

been going on for over a quarter century

I want to see each new generation of artists do amazing things.......

I routed for Aaliyah like I routed for Janet Jackson like I routed for Stephanie MIlls

I routed for Chris Brown like I routed for Usher like I routed for Bobby Brown like I routed for Michael Jackson

I routed for Celine Dion like I routed for Madonna like I routed for Pat Benatar/Blondie

it's not a generational preference, no generation is better than the next

but the music is not as good and the industry knows it, today's contemporaries know it, not only the music but the culture of the music representing all genres have been exploited and misappropriated, tapping into the well taking all the virtue

if they just took extra effort to trust in themselves, believe in their talent, they can become their own Marvin GAyes to where they will no longer have to rely on sampling the way they do, because at some point there will be nothing else left to sample

I believe this victory by the Marvin GAye estate is a good thing if people respond to it the way they should

[Edited 3/14/15 12:33pm]

Marrk said:

midnightmover said:

Pharell and Thicke are both assholes so I'm shedding no tears for them, but I do think this verdict is ridiculous. The groove is clearly a rip-off, but the actual SONG is nothing like it.

Incidentally, listening to these two songs side by side gives a valuable indication of how the craft of songwriting has deterioriated over the last 40 years. Gaye's song isn't even one of his best, but it's actually got a melody. Where the fuck is the melody in BL? And the lyrics are juvenile and amateurish. [b[The fact that this piece of shit was a mega-hit is really a sign of the times.[/b]

[Edited 3/14/15 3:37am]

You have a point.

Even worse was Jamie Foxx's Blame It

[img:$uid]http://i59.tinypic.com/vqmn2d.jpg[/img:$uid]

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

[img:$uid]http://i59.tinypic.com/vqmn2d.jpg[/img:$uid]

lollll

SoulAlive said:

laurarichardson said:

SoulAlive said:

LOL...Nona is gonna use that money for more drugs Marvin's kids never did anything meaningful in their own lives.They're just living off the royalties from their father's music.I bet Nona's already celebrating with a brand new crack pipe.

She is his child what of inhireting do not understand. Are you made at Jackson kids?

lollll