Musicology

Wound up in an okay place, but the means are highly suspect. So much press lauding these decisions. They should read them with a different eye, Dark Horse especially. “Dark Horse,” “Stairway,” and “Blurred Lines” collectively had composers paralyzed with fear, right? Plenty of other big songs found their way to litigation in the past …

Pleased? Yes, I am. Satisfied? Not till I read the whole decision. Which so far looks dicey. Check back. Meantime, there are other articles on this site that look at Dark Horse. This first most recent one — Copyright infringement and the Climate Of Fear — covers the idea that a few bad verdicts shouldn’t …

As musicology case law goes, this ain’t much of anything. But it’s The Big Bang Theory, so we can give it a few minutes, can’t we? Like Friends had “Smelly Cat,” so The Big Bang Theory has “Soft Kitty,” a little ditty that gets sung periodically to soothe a character who’s feeling sick. Big Bang’s …

First off, this isn’t headed anywhere, because Billy Idol is credited on The Strokes recent single “Bad Decisions.” Still interested in hypothesizing about how that came about, and the appropriateness of it, and looking forward to the Strokes maybe one day telling the story. First, in case you’ve not heard it, here’s “Bad Decisions” by …

For about five years there’s been a steady stream of infringement cases in the world of pop music. We’ve seen Katy Perry, Robin Thicke, Justin Timberlake, Lizzo, Juice WRLD, Carrie Underwood, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran (repeatedly), Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Childish Gambino, off the top of my head, all in the news facing infringement …

About a year ago, October, 2018, hip hop artist M.O.S. complained that the Migos hit single, “Walk It, Talk It,” is a rip-off of his 2007 track “Walk It Like I Talk It.” I’m a bit surprised. I kinda think this went away a bit too easily. U.S. District Judge Analisa Nadine’s ruling is that …

(This article discusses a case involving Juice WRLD, who, since I wrote the article, tragically passed away. ) Juice WRLD is being sued by Yellowcard. And as I’m looking through some of it, I’m considering, “What’s more important to an infringement case: Similarity or access? It’s similarity, isn’t it? Where there’s tremendous significant similarity between …

Lil Nas X has like a zillion dollars worth of lawsuits coming at him all of the sudden. There’s the Bobby Caldwell “Carry On,” issue. And right now I’m going to look at a new complaint that “Rodeo” sounds too much like a track called “Broad Day” by PuertoReefa and Sakrite Duexe. It would seem …

What’s next, following this week’s en banc hearing? Earlier this week, eleven Ninth Circuit judges heard arguments in the continuing case of Skidmore v. Led Zeppelin, the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ infringement case. This en banc hearing focused not so much on musical matters per se but legal ones such as erroneous jury instructions in the …

Stairway v. Taurus (actually Led Zeppelin v Skidmore) returns to court Monday, Sept 23 for an en banc hearing in the Ninth Circuit and although there are other articles here on Musicologize that cover this case from all angles, I wanted to recap a bit and compile the key aspects. Here’s a quick rundown on …