LOS ANGELES – Rock guitarist Joe Satriani has sued British band Coldplay, accusing the Grammy-nominated stars of plagiarizing one of his songs. Satriani’s copyright infringement suit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, claims the Coldplay song “Viva La Vida” incorporates “substantial original portions” of his 2004 instrumental “If I Could Fly.”
The 52-year-old guitar virtuoso is seeking a jury trial, damages and “any and all profits” attributable to the alleged copyright infringement. Coldplay, whose soaring atmospheric tunes are often compared to those of Irish rock band U2, received seven Grammy nominations on Wednesday, second only to rapper Lil Wayne.
Earlier this year, we posted this from the first band to accuse Coldplay of plagiarism for the same song. And now this from Joe Satriani, one of the guitar greats. So who is stealing from whom?
Maybe Gwyneth Paltrow is high-maintenance, and Chris Martin needs the money.
Satriani’s “If I Could Fly” came out in 2004. He’s suing the deepest pockets I guess. I’d like to sue for the 4 minutes of my life back for listening to all three tracks.
Maybe we’re reaching a threshold where nothing can be original now because already someone else came up with it.
Coldplay sux bad anyway, who cares!?
Maybe Coldplay should try writing some songs/music that don’t sound like everything else!!
While we’re on the subject of plagarism, can somebody try suing MSNBC and every other news network in the world, for repeatedly using the same cliches over and over again?
Like “in hot water”, “face the music” and then giggling at their own clever play on words.
Yep–I’ve seen some copyright cases lost because the judge decides “there are only so many ways to draw a Mouse.” etc.
I’ve wondered about the music notes thing though. What with a normal music scale and progression limiting things quite a bit, the quadtrillion choices must be narrowed down to only a few million that are useable at all and fewer more that are melodic.
Some good sounds have been taken until the copyright runs out. That simple.
Hell, If I’m not mistaken – Happy Birthday is still copyrighted.
Satriani wants a jury trial. Plus I think there is sufficient similarity to make a case.
I like Joe, I don’t give anything one way or the other for Coldplay.
My sweet lord, shoo lang shoo lang shoo lang.
bobbo’s right, only so many decent melodies out there. I write music, and I constantly find myself incorporating the theme song from Captain Kangaroo in almost everything I write. It’s uncanny, it’s like it’s embedded in my soul or something. Can’t put a copyright on that, can ya? Well, I guess you can, so y’all pretend I didn’t mention it, maybe nobody’ll notice.
An old art teacher of mine in college always said that “creativity is well disguised plagiarism”.
I enjoy Coldplay’s music and have seen them in concert. It is hard to believe that this is even a valid case. Especially in this ‘remix’ culture.
Wow, Dawn Yanek is hot!
Yeah the Happy Birthday song is copyrighted but when you sing it, you’re “stealing” the entire song; melody and lyrics.
But what Coldplay allegedly has done is stolen a melody, not the full song and lyrics directly, since Coldplay is singing the melody, while Satriani plays it on a guitar. But if it’s just a portion of the chorus melody, is it really plagiarism?
After reviewing both claimants, the question emerges: How did Coldplay steal the same song from two different sources? Or did one of the two sources steal it from the other first?
The core “la LA la” is identical, all right, and the musical phrase that answers it is about 85% identical, but together they only represent the short hook of the tune.
If Coldplay—who actually saw the previous plagiarism claimant in concert—borrowed some of the gist of that, which was far, far, from the Vida final, then they did major creative translation of the essence of it.
If the second claimant saw the first claimant (or vice versa) and came to the same conclusion that Coldplay did, then who’s the thief? Did Coldplay ever witness Satriani’s tune? And under note by note, musical idea by musical idea, how much of it is similar or identical?
Is this unoriginal borrowing or is it adaptation? Or is it coincidence? How well does Vida fit other Coldplay stylizations?
Your ear latches onto the initial “la LA la” and you think you have a culprit, cut and dried, but it is WAY more complicated than that.
Every time I see these cases trying to find the wrong is very fuzzy. I think ‘well, I guess we have to protect artists who produce the music’ but the word that bothers me is ‘protect’. Is copyright really serving a purpose? Is protection a purpose worth the effort?
There are industries that don’t have this kind of ‘protection’ that are robust with lots of innovation. Like clothes desiging. Copying is actually a part of their business, they anticipate it will happen. Seems to work pretty well to me and there’s none of this weird trying to figure out what la la la means.
wow, too bad certain melodies that are pleasing to the human ear are pretty universal. there’s always some dip shit who says they did it first. THIS particular one is so generic and uncomplicated im sure it appears in 1000’s of sondgs in almost the same exact iteration.
Hell, If I’m not mistaken – Happy Birthday is still copyrighted.
Just the lyrics. The “creators” of “happy birthday” stole the melody, intact, from “Good morning to you”, a very old song of which the copyright expired long ago.
I own the rights to the color blue.
I listened to the whole thing and still didn’t hear “Islam is the light”.
What gives?
Remeber with musical plaguerism it comes down to ‘does the average person think the songs sound the same’. The songs do not have to sound 100% identical. Hell, a similar song in a different key can be called to order. Judges are well of aware of standard musical ‘cliches’. This does not sound like one of them. I’m sure they’ll settle out of court anyway. And, yes, there are plenty of good, original, song writers out there (movie writers also) but too many people are lazy.
It’s not just a few notes. There’s significant similarity. Try this comparison: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofFw9DKu_I . Satch’s piece predates the Creaky Boards song. If you just want a few notes of similarity you can go all the way back to Marty Balin’s “Hearts” with Jefferson Starship.
Sorry, didn’t think it was that long of a link.
http://tinyurl.com/5sptww (corrected)