Marvin Gaye’s children filed court documents Wednesday claiming that the “Blurred Lines” singer, Robin Thicke, copied their father’s hit song, “Got to Give It Up”. They are also accusing Thicke of copying another one of Gaye’s popular songs “After the Dance” when Thicke recorded his song, “Love After War”, in 2011.
The lawsuit not only claims that Robin Thicke and the “Blurred Lines” co-writers, Pharrell Williams and “T.I.” Clifford Harris Jr., copied their father’s song, but also states they believe Son-ATV failed to protect the copyright status.
Thicke also filed a suit in August asking the judge to declare there was no copyright infringement stating, “Being reminiscent of a ‘sound’ is not copyright infringement.” The suit also states: “Plaintiffs, who have the utmost respect for and admiration of Marvin Gaye, Funkadelic and their musical legacies, reluctantly file this action in the face of multiple adverse claims from alleged successors in interest to those artists,” the suit says. “Defendants continue to insist that plaintiffs’ massively successful composition, ‘Blurred Lines,’ copies ‘their’ compositions.”
Gaye’s children believe differently. In a recent interview, Thicke supposedly said he was wanting to create a song similar to Gaye’s because it had always been one of his favorites. “Pharrell and I were in the studio making a couple records, and then on the third day I told him I wanted to do something kinda like Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got To Give It Up,’ that kind of feel ’cause it’s one of my favorite songs of all time’,” Thicke reportedly said. “So he started messing with some drums and then he started going ‘hey, hey, hey’ and about an hour and a half later we had the whole record finished.”
Image via Wikimedia Commons
