So I’m sure that you’ve all heard that guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay, contesting that their #1 hit “Viva La Vida” sounds like his “If I Could Fly”. Plagiarism suits have been commonplace in the music industry since at least the early Seventies. Remember the “My Sweet Lord”/”He’s So Fine” dustup? (actually, I wasn’t born yet, so I don’t). In the Nineties, the plagiarism suit hit a couple of my favorites. Michael Jackson was sued for lifting a minute and a half of a classical recording on his hit “Will You Be There” and not giving credit. Sister Janet and Des’ree had a little issue with Janet’s “Got ’til it’s Gone” having a similar melody to Des’ree’s “Feel So High”. And our very own NKOTB were accused of stealing “I’ll Be Your Everything” from Percy Sledge-Sledge lost, by the way. If I was Percy, I’d have spent more time suing Michael Bolton for fucking up my signature song).
Anyway, the two songs have obvious similarities, but it begs the question: with only so many available notes and chord progressions and melodies in the world, wouldn’t it stand to reason that there would be songs that sound similar to one another? It’s entirely feasible that Coldplay had no idea the Satriani song existed, and if they did, they’re idiots because they should’ve known that Satriani would find out and sue. However, I’m surprised there aren’t more songs out there that just by coincidence wind up sounding like other songs.
Here are the two songs: what do you think?
