A lawsuit filed by the late Marvin Gaye’s children, accusing Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams of copying their father’s track Got To Give It Up to create Blurred Lines, has been successful. Robin and Pharrell are to pay $7.4million to the family. Wow.
‘Right now I feel free,’ Nona Gaye said after the verdict was announced. ‘Free from… Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told.’ A lawyer for Robin and Pharrell has said that this decision could have a serious effect on musicians who try to emulate an era, or another artist’s sound – after all, a lot of pop music sounds similar to other stuff.
During the trial, we learned that Robin Thicke didn’t even write the lyrics, wasn’t present during the writing process, and that Pharrell crafted the song in about an hour in 2012. It went on to sell over 7.3million copies in America alone, and earned the two musicians millions of dollars. While Robin’s other work hasn’t done so well (cough his album Paula cough), Pharrell has sold over 100million records worldwide. In court, it was ruled that there were eight distinct elements from Got To Give It Up that featured in Blurred Lines, something that Pharrell and Robin continued to deny. See for yourself…
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.