14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this week, a judge ruled that the biggest hit of 2013, the Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams (and T.I.) collaboration “Blurred Lines,” wasn’t original, being in fact a complete rip-off of the 1977 classic by Marvin Gaye “Got to Give It Up.”
Thicke and Williams have been ordered to pay $7.4 million (€6.97 million) in compensation to the Gaye family, who are also seeking an injunction against the song, preventing anyone from ever making money from its sale.
Apparently, the Gayes are not done with Pharrell, because they are also accusing him of stealing “Happy.”
“Happy” is “Ain’t That Peculiar,” only slightly modified
In 2014, Pharrell followed up the success of “Blurred Lines,” on which he shared co-writing credits with Thicke, with an even bigger hit, “Happy.” With this first victory under their belt, the Gayes are now looking at it as potential grounds for a new lawsuit.
“I’m not going to lie. I do think they sound alike,” Nona Gaye, Marvin’s daughter, tells CBS. You can find a mashup of the two songs in the video below, to see for yourself if Nona has a point.
However, she adds, for the time being, they’re not filing any papers yet, probably because they’re still busy to tie things up with “Blurred Lines.” “We’re not in that space. We’re just in the moment today and we’re satisfied,” she adds.
One possible reason for not suing yet could be that Marvin Gaye didn’t even write the song, Smokey Robinson did. If the Gayes want to pursue further legal action against Pharrell, they have to get Smokey to file the papers, because he holds the copyright over the song.
“Blurred Lines” and the rip-off scandal
Attorneys for Thicke and Pharrell will probably try to appeal the ruling on “Blurred Lines,” and they might even succeed in lowering the amount they have to pay as compensation. However, it’s not as much the fact that they stole another artist’s work and tried to pass it as their own, but the way they handled the plagiarism allegations from the start that really damaged their image.
When the Gayes first started talking to the press about the similarities between the two songs but were yet to threaten to sue, Thicke admitted in an interview that Marvin Gaye’s track had inspired him, in the sense that he’d told Pharrell he wanted to come up with a track with the same “feel.”
Then, as it became clear that the Gayes were taking matters to court (but were yet to do it), he and Williams filed a preemptive lawsuit against them for wrongly claiming copyright.
Thicke would change his story about “Blurred Lines” at least 2 times (that we know of) during the lawsuit, ultimately trying to throw Pharrell under the bus by alleging that he was so high on pills and booze on the night they recorded it that he didn’t even really take part in the creative process. He just claimed he did because he wanted to take credit for the hit.
To give you an approximation of what a huge hit “Blurred Lines” was, we’ll add just this: it made $15 million (€14.1 million) in total. About $5.6 million (€5.2 million) of that amount went to Thicke, $5.2 million (€4.9 million) to Pharrell and the rest to the record label.
