Musicology

Lil Nas X was having a banner week. Old Town Road just tied the record for most weeks at #1. Today we learn he’s is being sued for 25 million for another track, “Carry On.” This is going to be fascinating not because there’s any question that Lil Nas X’s “Carry On” is full of …

“Entities should not be multiplied without necessity!!” That’s Occam’s Razor. Or, as an old friend of mine used to lazily put it, “don’t hurt yourself looking for a more elaborate explanation when a simpler one will do.” This really will only take three minutes. Katy Perry is in court as I’m typing this, defending her …

Hot take: Maybe they did, but not from David Henderson and friends. Today we learn that 5 Seconds of Summer, the Australians who gave us the hit song “Youngblood” last year, are being sued by David Henderson, David Toth and Peter Ferencz because the opening melody lines of Youngblood are very similar to the melody …

Everybody knows Led Zeppelin was/is getting sued by Spirit over “Stairway To Heaven.” And almost everybody knows Ed Sheeran is getting sued (what else is new?) by Ed Townsend over Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On” which Townsend co-wrote. I’ve covered both cases quite a bit, here and here, and actually if you wanna …

In the comedy world, jokes are sacred. If you tell another comic’s joke and fail to give attribution, woe unto you. Accused joke thieves get slaughtered — Carlos Mencia and Amy Schumer spring immediately to mind. But what if an irony is just out there and observable by more than one comic? Maybe it’s coincidence? …

As you may have guessed, a new lawsuit says she did. Heidi Merrill is suing Underwood, saying that NBC’s Sunday Night Football theme song, “Game On,” is a ripoff of Merrill’s own, “Game On” which she’d written a year or so earlier. Moreover the complaint includes that she met Mark Bright, Underwood’s producer, at an …

Headlines broke out earlier this week about Stairway To Heaven going back to court. Those headlines have people confused. So, here’s what’s really happening and what’s likely, according to me, to happen next.  For those of you in a hurry I’ll make these few main predictions: There will not be a whole new trial. Zeppelin’s …

Before we answer that, these guys have real names. Artem Stoliarov goes by Arty and he’s suing Christopher Comstock. He’s Marshmello. I probably won’t use their real names again.  The complaint, filed last week, says Marshmello’s monster hit song, “Happier,” infringes upon Arty’s remix of “I Lived,” by One Republic. So, why isn’t One Republic …

Well, it’s not completely ridiculous. “I Don’t Care” is Justin Beiber and Ed Sheeran’s brand new single (as I type this, it came out yesterday.) I’d be hard pressed to think of another combo more certain to reach #1 as fast as Billboard can refresh? So everyone has heard the hell out of this track …

The inverse ratio rule has been part of copyright law for a long time, but sooner or later hopefully we can agree that it never really made a lot of sense and we should just let it go. And to illustrate we’ll take the two most interesting copyright infringement cases in recent memory; one that …