Hello! Welcome to “Anything Music,” which will be my personal blog discussing various topics within the music industry. For my first post, I decided to take on a copyright lawsuit that not only gained considerable mainstream attention, but created a dangerous new precedent in the music industry.
The lawsuit was filed against Katy Perry by a Christian rapper known as Flame around five years ago. The jury recently ruled in favor Flame, deciding that Katy Perry and her co-writers had taken a six note riff (a musical sequence of notes) from Flame’s Christian Gospel song Joyful Noise and used it in their pop hit Dark Horse. On the surface, this case sounds entirely plausible! However, if we delve deep into the nitty gritty of the case and the art of songwriting, we come to find that the verdict is not only borderline nonsensical, but threatening to the future of the music industry.
Inserted above is a cleverly devised (and now widely accepted) critical analysis of the lawsuit by musical intellectual and YouTuber Adam Neely. Neely elaborates on several important points, including how the original lawsuit’s fine print only makes a point of damages (those of which having only to do with the music video’s featuring of “paganism” and “witchcraft” and nothing really related to the music itself), and how the tambre of the instruments was taken from Flame’s song (which undeniably implies that one can own the sound of an instrument!) Although I could write at length on each point and the absurdity behind them, the one from the video I will discuss and expand upon is the six note phrase in question.
In western music, there are only 7 notes available (with 12 possible pitches when you include semitones), and only so many unique melodic combinations that can be made with what is available. As demonstrated in the first several minutes of the video, there is a considerable number of songs written well before Flame’s song that feature this sort of descending line, some of which sound even more similar to Joyful Noise then Dark Horse does to Joyful Noise!
What does this really mean though? Is Flame the thief? Who is at fault here? In actuality, these similarities between the songs means, or at least should mean, very little. Moreover, nobody really stole anything, at least not in the traditional sense. To make sense of this, let’s briefly discuss the “Four Chord Song.” This musical trend of sorts derives its name from the I-V-vi-IV chord progression that is highly popular and is used by countless artists in a wide array of songs. In the key of C major, these chords are C – G – Am – F (the chords of the Beatles enduring hit, Let it Be), and in the key of E major, they are E-B-C#m-A (the chords of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ biggest hit Under the Bridge, as well as Journey’s classic Don’t Stop Believin’). There are countless other songs (many of which you likely know and love) that use this progression in other keys. To showcase some of these other sings, linked below is a video of Australian comedy group “Axis of Awesome.” The group performs a sketch in which they perform a notable number of different songs that use the same aforementioned chord progression.
Now I won’t get too far ahead of myself, as standard chord progressions such as the I-V-vi-IV are copyright protected (although the Robin Thicke Vs. Marvin Gaye and Ed Sheeran Vs. Marvin Gaye lawsuits now bring the copyrighting of chords, genre, and even feel into question), and it’s not even as though Dark Horse and Joyful Noise share the same progression. All this being said, my point is not that past hits with identical chord progressions and no lawsuits prove that this lawsuit is ridiculous. Rather, my point is that many musical compositions share various commonalities, which is expected given all musicians forge their music using the same 12 keys and 7 notes. Moreover, songwriting itself relies heavily on walking the thin line between what is seen as influence and what is stealing. In fact, David Bowie when asked if he considered himself an “original artist” quickly replied, “Not by any means. More like a tasteful thief.”
When it comes to the fundamental building blocks of musical pieces, you cannot own chords, and you cannot own scales as Adam Neely’s thumbnail proclaims. Yet, Todd Decker, the expert musicologist who argued for Flame’s side of the case, bafflingly managed to convince the musically uneducated jury that the descending line in the minor scale seen countless times throughout music was an original idea of Flame’s. The cases’ ensuing victory for Flame carried a slew of implications and uncertainty within the music industry. Just what exactly can artists draw from? How much further will outlandish lawsuits inhibit the creativity of the songwriters of tomorrow?