FEATURE:
For Crying Out Loud: How to Write a Bestselling Pop Song
IN THIS PHOTO: Ed Sheeran/ALL PHOTOS/IMAGES (unless credited otherwise): Getty Images/Press
Is it Possible to Create a Song Without Being Sued?
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IF you look at the recent…
IN THIS PHOTO: Ed Sheeran with Anne-Marie/PHOTO CREDIT: Will Beach
news stories relating to Ed Sheeran; it seems suing and legal matters are all you can see! Sheeran is suing a musician after losing £20million in revenue.
“…And now, according to The Sun, the 27-year-old is filing his own lawsuit against musician Sam Chokri, after losing royalties to the song Shape Of You. The tune has allegedly made £20million in revenue, but Ed hasn’t seen a single penny after it was put ‘into suspense’ on 10 May, when musician Chokri claimed the singer had copied his track Oh Why. The Performing Rights Society decide royalty payouts and banned Sheeran from receiving any after considering an expert report submitted by Chokri earlier this year”.
If you feel Sheeran’s lawsuit is an over-exaggeration and a little severe; it seems those suing Ed Sheeran are taking things even further!
“In 2016, after Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke lost the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit (for the first time), more than 200 recording artists banded together in support of Williams and Thicke because of the slippery slope the original verdict created. Essentially, they argued that forcing artists to pay massive amounts of royalties to other artists who had clearly influenced them—even if there was no direct copying in a song itself—would “stifle creativity and impede the creative process.” The appeals court upheld the original verdict, though, with the dissenting judge noting that Marvin Gaye’s family had managed to both “copyright a musical style” and opened the door for similar legal battles.
Well, it looks like she was right, because lawsuit magnet Ed Sheeran is now being sued for copyright infringement for the third time since 2016. According to Variety, he’s being sued for $100 million in damages for allegedly ripping off “Let’s Get It On” by—of course—Marvin Gaye. The suit accuses him and co-writer Amy Wadge of having “copied and exploited” the Gaye song for Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud,” including “the melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bass line, backing chorus, tempo, syncopation, and looping”.
One can extrapolate a couple of thinks from the latest lawsuit. It seems the estate of Marvin Gaye, and those associated, have nothing better to do than look at modern Pop artists and see if they are stealing/borrowing the odd note here and there. You have other big acts launching lawsuits but I wonder why Marvin Gaye’s people are so particular about brining inflated, multi-million-dollar suits against anyone who goes near one of the Soul legend’s songs. If you look at Ed Sheeran’s song and listen to Marvin Gaye’s classic; it is not as though the two are dead-similar and duplicates. There are similarities and suggestions but is that enough to take it to court and ask for such a ridiculous amount?! It seems (the lawsuit) has little to do with copywriting and creative possession: it is about bleeding artists dry and taking advantage. I am not a huge Ed Sheeran fan but feel it is unnecessary suing the man for what amounts to nothing much.
We have got to a point where the slightest similarity to another song can get you in court and faced with financial ruination. Sheeran has made a lot of money in his career but that does not provide a motive to go after him and his wallet. I struggle to see what suing people do and how it solves things?! The songs are not similar enough to warrant legal process and it is a bit pathetic Marvin Gaye’s representatives feel they should take these measures. Sheeran, as it has been reported, is no stranger to these kinds of turmoils. The man has had a fairly productive career so, along the way, it is inevitable he will run afoul of someone. If there is an obvious rip-off of a song then, sure, it is only right you take legal action and approach the star. Rather than launching an expensive suit; why not go to them and negotiate when it comes to royalties. Ask them to split royalties, rather than trump some ludicrous lawsuit that asks for a huge amount of money – based on no real-world calculations and sense of common sense. I am not sure how the Ed Sheeran case will play out but I assume he will have to give some royalties to the Marvin Gaye estate/representatives. Earlier this year, we saw Radiohead and Lana Del Rey embroiled in a rather strange lawsuit that really didn’t go anywhere. I wonder whether Sheeran will face the same consequence (getting off) or he will have to part with a few million.
IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey/PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Carrithers
It seems these legal disputes are started by people other than the artist themselves. Radiohead didn’t go after Lana Del Rey; Marvin Gaye, obviously, didn’t hear Sheeran’s song – it is the people charged with looking after the paperwork and royalties that are taking the trouble to be annoying. What does all of this mean for artists writing songs right now? If you are a Pop artist like Ed Sheeran; do you carefully listen to what is being written and get scared when there are a few notes the same (as another song)?! Ay Wadge co-wrote Thinking Out Loud and Jake Gosling produced – do they get sued, too?! Asylum and Atlantic are the labels who released the album, x, and they are not in the line of fire! Consider, also, the fact Sheeran’s album was released four years ago. How did it take so long for the Marvin Gaye people/lawyers to notice these similarities?! It cannot be that obvious considering Thinking Out Loud has been out for ages and played all around the world! It is ridiculous we have reached a point where lawyers/record labels are going to so much trouble dissecting songs in case they sound similar to their artist’s works. It is not only composition and melody that faces the scorn of those willing to sue. Back in February; this came to light:
“Earlier this month, British-Liberian artist Lina Iris Viktor made a bold statement by accusing Kendrick Lamar of copyright infringement and cultural appropriation. “Cultural appropriation is something that continually happens to African-American artists, and I want to make a stand,” she said to the New York Times, stating the rapper stole her series of gold-patterned paintings, Constellations, and used them in the "All The Stars" video made for Black Panther: The Album. On Wednesday (February 21), the artist filed a lawsuit with not only Lamar, but SZA, who contributed to the song and visuals, too.
Viktor claims she was contacted multiple times by Black Panther representatives asking permission to feature her work. She ultimately refused in order to retain creative control of her art. However, there is a scene in the disputed video that looks an awful lot like Constellations. The 19-second-long segment, starting at the 2:59 mark, shows Lamar walking behind a group of women posed in front of gold-patterned geometric shapes”.
Ed Sheeran settled his last lawsuit – Photograph was accused of infringement and copycatting; he had to pay £16million – and, one suspects, there is another hefty bill coming his way. What irks me is how this kind of event will impact modern music. Will laws change so artists have to put their songs out there and wait until every lawyer and label in the world decides it is clean and original?! There are thousands of songs released every year; we have limited notes, melodies and possibilities when it comes to songwriting and endeavour! How can we create something that is completely fresh and bares no similarities to any other song ever created?! There are tracks that remind one of other songs but, unless it is a blatant and deliberate copy; why would you punish an artist for something accidental?! I guess suing is not new to the music industry: things are getting worse and the sums artists are expected to pay is ridiculous.
PHOTO CREDIT: Unsplash
I quote articles and use other people’s words in my work – as you’ll see in a minute – but credit them and do not mean to pass their work off as my own. In music, we have had seventy years of Pop music and we cannot escape the fact songs will sound the same. There is a difference between someone plagiarising a song and copyright issues:
“When that happens, they will call in a musicologist – but until it is possible to wire your brain into the Spotify database, there is a catch. “We’ll say: ‘This song is similar to another one. Is it too similar and what do we need to change?’ But to go to him in the first place, we need to have already spotted which song the new song sounds like.”
One such musicologist – a forensic musicologist, in fact, and don’t pretend you wouldn’t like that on your business card – is Joe Bennett. Does he agree with the hypothesis that pop might be running out of tunes?
“In cases of melody-based plagiarism disputes,” Bennett says, “melodic probability can be used to ask: ‘How likely are two melodies to come out identically, or very similarly, through coincidence?’ A lot of people assume that identical melodies could be independently generated by separate songwriters, but you don’t need to get very deep into the maths to see why that wouldn’t be true.”
Bennett then goes very deep into the maths, proposing a scenario where he and I each decide to write a melody. “I might start on C and you might start on E – two of the seven notes in the major scale. The odds [against us choosing the same note] aren’t exactly one in seven, but you get the idea. Then you come to the second note: I might choose D, you might choose another E. So then we’ve got a seven to the power of two probability, and that’s just within two pitch choices”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Little Mix
Maybe it comes down to the argument concerning inspiration and the room to manoeuvre. Some artists lack creative depth and intelligence; they will look at other songs and, at times, pinch the odd line or note here and there. I have heard a few songs that sound very samey and one wonders whether the decision, by the recent attempt, was deliberate – they knew what they were doing and chose to ‘borrow’ from the originator. I think, mind, music is so vast and never-ending that we cannot avoid unconscious similarities. Sheeran did not go out of his way to steal from Marvin Gaye; other artists accused of snatching notes/ideas like Little Mix – their song, Shout Out to My Ex resembled G.R.L.’s Ugly Heart, it was claimed – have been under the microscope and raised questions. Look at legends like The Beatles and ask whether some of their early songs sounded similar to other Pop songs or Blues numbers. Are there legal justifications for plagiarism – returning to the previous article – for new artists?
“Interestingly, Bennett goes so far as to suggest that plagiarism could be considered a defensible part of the songwriting process. “It’s a legitimate part of composition,” he states. “You’re creating something that sounds good, while discarding all the ideas you’ve heard before. You might see sculpture as the ultimate metaphor for subtractive creativity; Michelangelo said that every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
Surely, in that case, it must have been easier for the Beatles? Obviously, they had a knack for a decent tune, but they didn’t have the spectre of 70 years’ worth of popular song looming over every writing session. “Well, I don’t buy that personally,” Bennett says. “Yes, there’s been a lot of pop since the Beatles, but one might say there was more music before. People have been making music for thousands of years. I do believe pop behaves evolutionarily and passes on its ideas to the next generation, but I don’t think that makes it any less likely that songwriters will continue to write original cool pop melodies for ever.”
Not everyone is so sure, however. Someone who does at least partially back up the theory that pop is running out of songs is Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills. “We do this silly feature where the idea is: ‘Radio 1 needs to be worried because we’re a new music station and we’re actually running out of music,’” he says. The feature involves playing similar songs side by side. “Our premise is like yours: surely there are only so many notes, melodies and combinations?”
We will see more lawsuits and court cases come up; big names will be put in the firing line and forced to justify their songs – have they deliberately stolen from their client/artist?! I think things are quite ridiculous now and we need to get out of this culture of suing artists if they have, deliberately or not, taken a few notes or have similar melodies in their music. Maybe artists need to study the law and, if they have doubts, consult a legal team or find a way of avoiding legal punishment. I feel everything comes down to the reality: we have so much music out there; there are limited notes, possibilities and ideas. Artists can cover a song and not have to ask for permission – it is a courtesy – but have to pay millions if they write a track that bears some familiar edges. That seems really stupid. Rather than go after artists like Sheeran and achieve nothing in the process – outside of financial gain –; understand that musicians (most of them) are not trying to rip anyone off but, instead, want to create music that…
TOUCHES people in a direct and emotional way.