The 70s vs Pharrell / Robin Thicke

Blurred Lines is cool, fuck Marvin Gaye and his stupid ass no-talent children, the only good from this is now Little Richard is going to sue everyone out of existence.

“Everything that’s around you in a room was inspired by something or someone,”...

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"inspired by" is different from copied. and it's fine if you want to lift something outright, just give credit.

CrowleyHead said:

Blurred Lines is cool, fuck Marvin Gaye

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Yay

Bullshit. So hip hop wasn't new/shocking/pushing forward? People will and always have taken from the past, it's what you do with it that counts, it shouldn't be restricted and policed. Fuck sake.

I was thinking about how this relates to retromania, re-creativity etc. My gut instinct was that anything that fucks over /that/ seam of 70s pastiche - and Pharell and Robin Thicke in particular - has to be good, but then thinking about it it can't be helpful for artists involved in sampling, electronic music etc.

Seems absolutely insane that you can claim intellectual copywrite on a 'vibe' lol.

Its revealed absolutely fuck all, people have been ripping off and lifting from one another long before fucking sampling, Marvin Gaye's family is rich, they're taking advantage of the fact that Thicke is a publicly reviled figure for antics.

You know what's fucked up? They claim in the lawsuit that he's spent so much of his career trying to emulate Marvin as evidence for their validity. So let Ray Charles kids sue you out of existence for how many times Marvin was fixated on trying to be Ray, these greedy fucks.

I feel really bad that a guy who is treated with ignorance because he had a big commercial hit is being made to be a pariah, dumb as it might have been. For years he's been a decent R&B act that was doing decent numbers and just went under everyone's radar because he made more 'grown folks' R&B and ofc. because he's Alan Thicke's son so how is anyone gonna take him seriously? If you'd have told me that years later he was going to have think pieces about being the figurehead of rape culture, that he was going to have everything in the third verse of this song suddenly implode on him, I'd have thought it unnatural.

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i can't stand Blurred Lines, but the legal verdict is bonkers. so many people have made whole careers out of being 'inspired by' (read, copying) one or two other acts.

i find it weird/ironic that pharrell, of all people, is the one who ends up getting sued in this way, given how original much of the neptunes' output was.

jackjambie said:

i guess my issue is that these tracks do nothing really to build on the sounds that they are knicking from. it's not "inspired by" if you literally rip off a sound 100%.

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The question is whether you trust juries to always make the right call there - or in general - even if they've got a big money record company lawyer or a specialist IP troll trying to convince them otherwise. I'm not that bothered about this decision as regards Blurred Lines, it's more about the potential for the whole music business to end up mired in "your song sounds a bit like my song" lawsuits.

@Jackjamble; Your arguments are inane and show you lack any sort of comprehension of the situation. But cheer this shit on, by all means.

Obv its not good for music, but rhythm sections have been screwed for years when it comes to potential IP violations. Apart from the pragmatic concerns, why is its OK to steal a groove but not ok to steal a melody?

jackjambie said:

it's not a sample though is it - this is totally different to sampling in hip hop or electronic music.

it's not about whether or not people should be allowed to take from the past, that's whatever, it's about a really safe and backwards looking approach to "creativity" where you constantly cannibalise popular things from the past in order to get massive hits today and people have been getting away with it for years.

also - the gaye family actually used a "mash-up" in court as evidence apparently.

the whole thing's brilliant.

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This has to be allowed to exist alongside everything else. Fuck setting up the creativity police.

Seems like you're drawing a thin and indistinct line in the sand just because you don't like something.

NATO said:

Seems like you're drawing a thin and indistinct line in the sand just because you don't like something.

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Have you been on Dissensus before?

baboon2004 said:

Have you been on Dissensus before?

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Exactalyally.

Happy doesn't fucking sound like any of the other songs, anyone who thinks it does is a cunt.

Blurred Lines is brilliant, and as an interpolation is much, much better than the hugely boring original (see also much of Marvin Gaye's output, and it wasn;t like HE was the arbiter of feminism).

What did we find out from this case? Industry people be shady. The rest is fucking balls and can suck me for eternity and I still won't cum in their mouth.

I only wish Pharrell was on record as saying he'd eat his hat if he was successfully sued for blurred lines.

Would be hilarious if Daft Punk got sued for ripping off some old music after all that "let's bring real music back" shit they were pushing when RAM was coming out.

The Blurred Lines video was cool but musically its pharrell in coasting mode innit, extending to nicking a bit from a song and then pretending he didn't. They should have seen a lawsuit coming, really, and got it cleared.

The happy lawsuit if it does happen is laughable bullshit tho