Saturday, December 06, 2008

COLDPLAY JACKING SATRIANI, OR COINCIDENCE?


I had Joe Satriani's 1987 album Surfing With The Alien on cassette in 92 (the muthafuckin' nine-deuce), it was one of my favourite albums alongside Compton's Most Wanted's Music To Driveby, which I also had on cassette.

Now to the story at hand, Coldplay are being sued by Joe Satriani for apparently using "substantial portions" of his song "If I Could Fly" in their song "Viva La Vida". Opportune timing by Satriani considering the just announced 7 Grammy nominations for Coldplays album Viva La Vida. Way to discredit them.

Reuters have the full article.

The video below shows the similarity between the two songs.



Here's my take: A member of Coldplay heard "If I Could Fly" at some point in time and when writing the vocal melody for "Viva La Vida", they subconciously interpolated Joe Satriani's four bar guitar line. Its definitely not an uncommon thing when writing music, but where does that leave Coldplay in this situation? Essentially there is no way to prove that they did not knowingly plagiarize Satriani's song and the melody is unquestionably close. I guess we'll just have to wait and see which way this one goes.

Compton's Most Wanted - Hood Took Me Under


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