Turns out the most offensive thing about “Blurred Lines” isn’t its questionable lyrics, the female (and goat) nudity in its video, or Robin Thicke’s all-around smarminess: a jury determined Tuesday that 2013’s song of summer did, in fact, copy too much Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.” Thicke and Pharrell Williams owe Gaye’s family $7.3 million.
An L.A. jury reached this landmark decision at the end of a two-week trial, which sounded like quite the dance party: Thicke played the piano, sang, and busted some moves in his seat. According to Variety, it included presentations of “juxtaposed bass lines of the two songs in question” which, when asked about the two songs, “Williams even admitted the similarities, saying, ‘It sounds like you’re playing the same thing.’” Probably not the best thing to say in this particular situation, Pharrell!
Nona, Gaye’s daughter, wept upon hearing the verdict. After the trial, she said, “Right now, I feel free. Free from… Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told.”
The “Blurred Lines” legal saga started last August, when the “Blurred Lines” trio (Thicke, Pharrell, and T.I.) went to court to preemptively protect their megahit from accusations of musical plagiarism. But a U.S. District Court denied their motion; Gaye’s family went ahead and filed suit. The depositions that followed provided some of the most entertaining-yet-depressing revelations about these guys and the music industry. Thicke shares a writing credit on the song and, in interviews, would describe how “Got to Give it Up” inspired him. But in a deposition, he admitted that he’d lied: he “was high on Vicodin and alcohol” the day he showed up at the studio to record. He only took credit for the song after it attained summer smash status. He also acknowledged that he was not sober for a single interview in 2014.
In court, Pharrell testified to writing the entirety of “Blurred Lines” in one hour. The two recorded the song in a single night; T.I.’s track was added after the fact, and he emerged from from this legal battle totally unscathed.
Pharrell released a statement to USA Today in the aftermath of the verdict, via his spokesperson Amanda Silverman, saying he is “extremely disappointed in the ruling made today, which sets a horrible precedent for music and creativity going forward.” Thicke’s reputation is already pretty terrible. His most recent album, Paula, a sloppily assembled, stalker-style attempt to win back his wife, was hated by just about everyone who heard it; silver lining is, hardly anybody heard it, as it only moved 24,000 units in its first week and was deemed one of the “top flops” of 2014. But Pharrell has considerably more to lose: he’s a coach on the insanely popular The Voice, a go-to producer for musicians looking for that Midas hitmaker touch.
“Blurred Lines” was no. 1 on the Billboard charts for 10 weeks straight. Court documents reveal that the song raked in almost $16.5 million in profits; Williams and Thicke earned over $5 million apiece.
The decision is a landmark one for the music industry, where the difference between “inspiration” and “copyright infringement” can be hard to spot. And it comes on the heels of Tom Petty’s settlement with Sam Smith over similarities between Petty’s classic “I Won’t Back Down” and Smith’s Grammy-winning “Stay With Me.” Smith quietly gave Petty a co-writing credit on his ballad, and Petty released a remarkably friendly, chill statement about the whole thing: “All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen… A musical accident no more no less. In these times we live in this is hardly news.”
Yet in the past, Petty had been even less fazed about this sort of theft-lite: in talking to Rolling Stone about how The Strokes had lifted from “American Girl” for their hit “Last Nite,” Petty just laughed out loud; he was also fine with the similarities between “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and his own “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
But as profit margins in the music industry are shrinking — streaming and piracy are on the rise, album sales for everyone but Taylor Swift are plummeting; surely you’ve heard this song before — it appears that even the most laid back rock stars have to protect what earning opportunities they have left. Could this case lead the way for other artists to become more litigious, possibly resulting in a chilling effect on musical creativity? That’s the bad news. The good news is we probably won’t be hearing any music from Robin Thicke for quite a while.