On Tuesday, after just several days of deliberation, a federal court found Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams guilty of infringement on Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got To Give It Up” and has awarded Gaye’s family estate $7.4 million as compensation. According to the Gaye’s attorney Richard Busch, all but two bars of Thicke and Williams’ “Blurred Lines” contained copied elements of the song, including bass, keyboard, the hook, and a repeated theme.
Busch noted several interviews given by Thicke and Williams, in which Thicke suggested to Williams to write something like Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up,” and Williams having said he was “trying to pretend” to be Gaye while he wrote it. Busch also brought in a musicologist to analyze the two songs. He found there to be a “constellation” of eight similar elements. And if that weren’t enough, Busch shared the financial details of “Blurred Lines.” According to the LA Times, the pay days are as follows: “$5.6 million for Thicke, $5.2 million for Williams and another $5 million to $6 million for the record company, as well as an additional $8 million in publishing revenue.”
The Thicke/Williams camp contended that Williams had wrote the song alone, with no influence of Thicke nor any mention of Gaye during their discussions in the song’s advent. They also went so far as to play the eight-person jury songs from U2 and Michael Jackson to show how songs could have similar chord progressions and sound differently. The jury didn’t buy it.
Oddly enough, the jury never got to hear the full recording of “Got To Give It Up.” Compare the two songs below:
This explains the whole situation: