Wednesday, November 02, 2016
Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson Face Lawsuit Over 'Uptown Funk'
Rolling Stone: Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson are facing a copyright infringement lawsuit that claims their hit "Uptown Funk" borrows heavily from funk group Collage's 1983 single "Young Girls."
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7 comments:
What a bummer. I love Uptown Funk, mainly for its new refreshing sound in the midst of horrible pop garbage. To learn that Uptown Funk didn’t actually have any originality is a huge disappointment. The article states” the distinct funky specifically noted and timed consistent guitar riffs present throughout the compositions, virtually if not identical bass notes and sequence, rhythm, structure, crescendo of horns and synthesizers rendering the compositions almost indistinguishable if played over each other and strikingly similar if played in consecutively”. And after listening to the clip I have to agree. I guess you could argue that like many hip hop songs it samples other music, but if the entire beat is sampled you can’t really call it your own music anymore. I’m interested to see how this lawsuit plays out. I’m sure the label will never completely admit to stealing the score, it might just be settled outside of court.
Wow. My first thought after reading the title is "Uptown" has been hot and popular for like two years where did this 80s funk group even come from? Why did they wait for so long to sue?
I was really upset to know that this song faced more than one accusation of copyright infringement since it was released. I think a lot of people would be as disappointed as I am after listening to College's Young Girls. The beats and the chorus are so close to IDENTICAL.
I feel like I've been hearing news about hit song facing lawsuit since I know music, and there's always more buffering than actual actions. The copyright in music industry or even art in general is so tricky and open to interpretation that so many people play the words in their favor. I don't really know how the law specifies what elements constitute a copyright infringement in music writing but I do think that no matter how big a star or how talented you think you are, you KNOW when you copy someone else's work and try to get away with it. It's a shame. I would not buy any BS that they are not aware or this is a coincidence because it's not and they know it. It disgusts me when people do something that they know it's not okay and they argue their way out of it. I'm looking forward to see how these two artists repond and how things unfold.
Oh no. I don't understand how this happens so often. Did Mark Ronson simply steal the beat and then didn't credit them? This has happened with so many large artists at large labels. How does it not get noticed by anyone in the industry at the label.
I also have many questions regarding how credit involving music works. Because, sometimes you can use a beat, but I'm not sure if you sample you take it without paying. The song is remarkably similar. Sometimes with these older bands suing over rights, it sounds vaguely similar and they're just looking to cash out. However, this is very much the same. At least the vocals and content are differing. The bass line is almost identical. I think they will probably win. But even then I am not sure what will happen. Will they get credited with helping writing the song or will they only get money?
I have heard of several copyright infringement cases going to court in the past several years, often accompanied by intense discussion about how to be creative today in modern times is to almost necessarily appropriate or "borrow" from other creative enterprises. The lines between "sampling", or using materials within the outlined bounds of copyright, and outright theft of other artistic work are becoming more blurred with each new published work. The sheer volume of creative output that populates the market right now is astounding, and toes are very easy to step on. After listening to these two pieces, I cannot deny that the similarities are striking. But because we lack a definite line to cross in terms of plagiarizing, I think these accusations will result in very little. Proving plagiarism is exceedingly difficult, and concurrent thought seems to be a very plausible case to argue in one's defense. I am curious to see how this develops.
To be honest, I’m not sure if I completely believe the allegations against Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson. My reason is that if there was only one group claiming that Bruno and Mark stole their song, then it would seem to me that the group had more credit. But, since were three (and maybe there is more) groups have come up and claimed that their song was ripped off by Bruno and Mark, I am a bit skeptical. I listened to all three songs, and there is definitely similarities/ beats/sounds that are in “Up Town Funk”, but rather this being a complete rip off, I see it as a Bruno and Mark listening to various of Funk music, and using various of elements that they liked in their own funk song. This is not uncommon as musicians and other artistic people do it all the time! There was that one post about how the rhythm of this one song was used by many many people including for the use of the PowerPuff Girl’s theme song. Or listen to these four songs: Rixton – me and my broken heart, Rob Thomas – Lonely no more, Rihanna- Unfaithful, and Eminem – Stan ft. Dido, they all sound like the same melody!!! (Yes, I figured this out a while ago, and made a stickies note for it on my computer). So I’m not sure if Collage has a good enough case. I’m sure there is a lot of things I’m missing, so we will just have to see the end results.
I think much of the music popular in our society already either intentionally or unintentionally copies past music. It is difficult to create riffs or techniques in modern music that hasn't been created previously. In this case, I feel that Collage's lawsuit may be a bit unnecessary, but I think it important that they speak up. Bruno Mars's "thing" is very obvious 70's/80's style funk, but I think he may be forgetting the origins of funk as well it's past popularity! I doubt Mars deliberately sampled the riff used in Young Girls, but he and Ronson have the responsibility to do their research before blindly producing a song with such a memorable beat. It is also notable that Mars and Ronson have faced copyright issues such as this in the past. I think Mars is in a situation that could've been easily avoided by research and knowledge of past funk music/artists.
I was not planning on writing a comment on this article but I had just listened to the song so I felt like I needed to defend it. To be completely honest it is ridiculous that there is a lawsuit over this. Ever since being at college the idea of getting inspiration from other art has been drilled into my head. I was expecting that when I played the song I was going to here virtually the same beat but it was pretty much the opposite. The fact that Collage is trying to get money for “profit damage” is obscured and quite frankly embarrassing. Some people that are reading this comment might find It to be biased but to tell you the truth I never even liked the song “uptown Funk”. After reading this article I really don’t see an argument and I hope that for the sake of good art Collage loses this lawsuit. If I were Bruno Mars or Mark Ronson I would probably tell Collage to crawl back under their rock and try to write a song that hit the top 100 chart for more than year.
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