One brief take on plagiarism in music. Published in 2023 in Italian for the monthly column "Contrabanda" on Blow Up Magazine.
“Copying” other people’s music is a complicated matter.
In Italy, sticking to illicit behaviours, a distinction is made between plagiarism (the appropriation of the authorship of a composition) and counterfeiting (the economic exploitation of other people’s music, such as old pirated CDs), so that there can be one without necessarily the other.
To define plagiarism - in Italy as elsewhere - there are no precise rules, but rather the evaluation of a series of sometimes evanescent aspects.
One (relatively simple to determine) is the complexity of the song: complex, or elementary? In the latter case, however, plagiarism is more difficult to demonstrate. For example, if I compose a sequence of four simple chords, it is more likely that it is the same as the one of other songs; in which case other variables shall have to be considered.
Last May 4, in NYC, a ruling established that the song Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran does not copy Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye.
For me the ruling was crystal clear, nevertheless… the case had been going on since 2018, based on an identical 4-chord sequence. Sheeran is among the biggest live artists (earnings of $850 million in the 2010s alone) and therefore a succulent target for these attacks. But in NYC the judge, before ruling on the request for $100 million in damages against Sheeran, had been waiting for another ruling, concerning another case.
This latter had Led Zeppelin accused by the heirs of Randy California of having copied the opening arpeggio of Stairway To Heaven from a Spirit song. The same arpeggio that, during this lawsuit, Zep lawyers candidly admitted as part of the “public domain,” ultimately winning a bizarre case from the beginning.
This wasn’t the first time Jimmy Page had to "suffer the slings and arrows" of a copywriting case. Yes, Page the main songwriter of Led Zep, the guy who got painted by his biographer Chris Salewicz as “vain, arrogant, fanatical and power-hungry.” Miss Pamela, one of the most famous groupies of the time, confessed instead to being “surprised by [Page's] sadistic tendencies”, even though “all he did to me was chew me up [?!] and slap me a little.”
I never had a - um - ‘full intercourse’ with the Page, as a matter of fact I never met him, yet in a certain sense he screwed me too. I’m talking about that annoyance in wondering that that certain song - in reality - your favourite player had copied it outright; the guy you thought a great composer was... a thief?
There is a degree of moral dishonesty in churning out a beautiful album (LedZep I) omitting to attributing the guitar arrangement of a traditional to that Bert Jansch who had published it three years earlier, just because of some added frills and a slightly changed title (from Black Water Side to Black Mountain Side.) Following this parallactic slant, the summa of the album is however Dazed and Confused whose - well - riff and lyrics and TITLE were a rip-off from singer Jake Holmes.
The Dazed and Confused episode is now official: in '67 Holmes supported the Yardbirds and the famous band, hearing the hypnotic descending riff, included a cover version of its in their concerts. Shortly after the Yards split up and that's when Page decided that the song was Zep, signing it. This court claim ultimately ended with an (out of court) "agreement." Skipping the blabla, you can understand who won by reading, on the album, the current artistic attribution: "Jimmy Page, inspired by Jake Holmes".
I believe Ed Sheeran when he says to be a victim of the current trend of attacking (on flimsy grounds) famous artists and get them to fork out great sums of money, thus avoiding the risk of an adverse jury and further money outpours.
Sheeran is absolutely right in saying that "most pop songs are built on [harmonic] blocks that have been freely available for centuries" so "you can go from Let It Be to No Woman No Cry and back" without interruption. And that, since "Spotify releases (...) 2 million songs a year and there are only 12 notes available (...) coincidences are bound to happen."
Even more likely if - in judging coincidences - you only consider the arrangement (e.g.: Demi Lovato, who lost a case on a distinctive snare drum and hand-claps rhythmic pattern,) specific timbres or the wooly concept of "atmosphere."
Lemon Tree by Fools Garden was already playing almost thirty years ago (’95) to modernize an original hit (Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police.) Elton John with Dua Lipa and Britney Spears broadened the scope or re-extending old-timers life-span beyond the original (and, because of that, after some time even boring) versions.
My prediction is of a future where music piracy will be directed towards shaping increasingly crafty replicas and the art will become avoiding lawsuits and bringing the music business to higher levels of compositional and publishing skills, possibly boosted by Artificial Intelligence.
A technology, AI, which for now has made its timid appearance in the courtroom in NYC, used by Sheeran’s lawyer. Let’s Get It On sung commanding sound laughters from those present when the computer played it sounded as - I'm quoting "Business Insider" here - “something like HAL committing lethal karaoke in a sci-fi horror movie.”
(...)