Writers/Bands that were sued for plagiarism.

The most horribly unfair and tragic thing in music history's business since Badfinger

Bittersweet Symphony, The Last Time and all the bitter sweet story ...

 

I can’t remember. Search up ‘songs Beatles ripped off’ and you should find it. It’s exactly the same pretty much to the other song, but everything else is very different.

 

Eric Clapton was sued for stealing Give Me Strength off of 461 Ocean Boulevard from some obscure bluesman. It was taken off of 461 for awhile and replaced with Better Make It Through Today which was on There’s One In Every Crowd.

 

Nah, nothing was.
Bruce Springsteen also did not get sued from ripping off Bob Dylan's Love Minus Zero/No Limit for The Line, he also took from Major Lance's The Monkey Time for The E Street Shuffle, took from People Get Ready for My City Of Ruins, and admits copping the riff to Badlands from the Animals' version of Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, changing it from minor to major.
Bruce gets away with more murder copyright-wise, or plagiarism, than any other artist excepting Led Zeppelin, and never gets called for it. NEVER.

 

Ahhh, that one quotes another of my articles. The link is dead, so here 'tis: Lennon v. Levy -- The "Roots" Lawsuit

JcS

 

Aha, it was the one Johnny the Fox posted under your reply. Pretty blatant, that intro.

 

MGMT have been sued for Me and Michael by a philippine band or something

 

Keep in mind, although this depends on the situation, it's usually publishing companies suing, not the artists themselves. We tend to say "so & so" sued "so & so" and often the artists themselves are very hands-off, only really getting involved when asked about it. (Unless of course they have a big chuck or own the publishing) Particularly in older songs where the artists had very little percentage of their own publishing.

There are lots of "under-the-table" settled out-of-court lawsuits. There is a whole songwriting world out there where people write songs and sell them outright, without taking credit, just the upfront fee for songs and they are then credited and assumed to be written by those artists. And legally, the credited person is now the "writer" of the song.

 

What intro? The guitar intro? You can't sue someone for playing a chord or two, which is the intro of that song. There is no melody.

For a lawsuit to have merit, it has to have a consecutive melody line and/or in other cases outright plagiarized lyrics.

If I remember correctly, this wasn't about the song having the same (or similar) bassline, it was because it was actually sampled from the original song and not properly credited.

Yes!

 

The most stunning non-lawsuit is Blondie’s “Call Me,” a blatant rip-off of Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave.”

I imagine the zoned-out 1980 Sabs of yore were likely impressed by Blondie’s riffs, wishing they had come up with it first.

Dazed and Confused,

Bill

 

ELP had quite a bit of form here: they eventually had to co-credit Bela Bartok on "The Barbarian" and Leos Janacek on "Knife Edge" for use of the composers' material which remained in copyright, which someone had forgotten to do when the album first came out (my 2 copies of this have different credits).

 

Well, they tried to get away with much more...

https://gizmodo.com/5694574/20-years-ago-today-milli-vanilli-lost-their-grammy-for-lip-syncing

 

thanks. i never thought about the lennon/mccartney thing till this thread. and it makes sense what you said. all the history reading of this is between john and morris.

 

I had wondered about that. It's easy to rip off Bach since his music is in the public domain, but didn't they know that Bartok's music was copyrighted?

 

Chuck Berry's publishers sued the Beach Boys for using the melody of "Sweet Little 16" for "Surfing USA". The song is now credited solely to Chuck Berry even though Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote the lyrics.

 

no.

 

"Rewrote" would be more accurate. There was nothing about surfing in the original song.

 

Yoko One lost a plagiarism suit over the similarity to her "I'm Your Angel" to "Makin' Whoopee." She just didn't have a shrewd enough music lawyer. The tunes are similar but not identical.

 

It's not quite close enough for a plagiarism suit, but I still believe the "Sun sun sun" in George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" was influenced by the Sunrays' "I Live for the Sun" (written by Murry Wilson).

 

Evidently not: IIRC, Bartok's estate took legal action, or at least threatened to.

 

Eric Carmen had to settle with Rachmaninoff's estate for his hit singles "All By Myself" and "Never Gonna Fall In Love Again", both of which borrowed very heavily from Rachmaninoff. I'm guessing that he assumed the pieces were in the public domain since he gave no credit to Rachmaninoff. At least Barry Manilow credited Chopin for "Could It Be Magic."

 

Michael Jackson was sued for plagiarism in Italy by famous pop singer Al Bano. Object of contention the song Will You Be There from the Dangerous album. Al Bano said that it sounded like I Cigni di Balaka. The Judge concluded that both the artists probably copied an old song by the Ink Spots called Bless You For Being An Angel.

 

Correct, but this is the second time around. It was settled with Quinn and he didn't mention Barton, so now Barton wants his cut. As a result of the lawsuit Maiden stopped playing it on the last US leg of the Book of Souls tour.

"Maiden are currently embroiled in a legal dispute over "Hallowed Be Thy Name" as well as Brave New World's "The Nomad" as they contain music and lyrics from "Life's Shadow," a song from British prog rockers Beckett. The track appears on the band's 1974 self-titled debut and was originally written by Brian Quinn (then using the alias Ingham) and later recorded by his friend Bob Barton. While Barton settled with Steve Harris in recent years, he apparently failed to acknowledge Quinn's hand in the songwriting."

 

Neil Innes getting sued for the Rutles soundtrack. I've always found it slightly ironic that (I think) Northern Songs sued Neil for his parody of the Beatles, and won, getting credit for the whole soundtrack; including songs that were not Northern Songs owned (like Twist and Shout). An absolute pity, since the Rutles is some of Innes's best work, and the point of parody is that you have to have a point of reference for the audience to know what you are spoofing.

Great album done with obvious affection and meticulous attention to detail.