Coldplay May Get Served Lawsuit At Grammys

Coldplay may get served legal papers at this weekend's Grammy Awards.

Last year guitarist Joe Satriani alleged that Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" borrowed a little too heavily from his "I Just Wanna Fly." Satriani's lawyer Howard King is planning to blanket the Grammys with servers to hand the band a plagiarism lawsuit.

Fox News reports:

King says, "We have warned their British lawyers that we have hired a fleet of process servers lined up to dog the band everywhere they go this weekend in the hopes of serving them."

King even promises to have camera crews roaming around with the process servers to get the whole thing on tape.

Coldplay denies the charges.

Read about Satriani's complaint here.

Hear a song comparison:

Comments

[tinyfeet]

Fact: You cannot copyright a chord progression. All snarky remarks aside, that's the law. You can copyright a tune, or lyrics. If you could copyright a chord progression, we'd all have to pay someone for the right to play twelve-bar blues. Whether the band sucks or not is beside the point.

[DS3M]

Chord progressions have no bearing here. It's a simple case of lifting a melody from one song to be the underpinning of a second song. The Tune was lifted from Satriani. You proved your contra-argument. Congrats.

[TTM]

And here is where Satriani got the riff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G57CgtX-BsI (0:34)

[Myshkin57]

Same melody and chord progression in almost all the songs linked here:

http://theopenend.com/2009/01/31/coldplay-vs-joe-satriani-who-owns-the-descending-melody/

[toe]

Satriani's case is ridiculous. There are tons of songs using this melody, many that are decades older. You can hear several examples here:
http://theopenend.com/2009/01/31/coldplay-vs-joe-satriani-who-owns-the-descending-melody/

[Myshkin57]

Great link. And even beyond the chord progression, the key and rhythm are the same as pretty much every other Coldplay song, so Satriani has no case. And, I'm pretty sure Satriani knows all this and is trying to cash in.

[toe]

You're right, it only makes sense as a publicity stunt.

[dentuso]

They need to throw in Billy Joel's "Honest" into there as well. Same chord progression and basic melody again.

Satriani is making a complete and utter jack@$$ of himself.

[dentuso]

"Honesty"

[ruffmama]

wow! That is an eye-opener!

Definitely a weak case!

[CubFanHere]

Wow, you should send this to Coldplay's legal team. What a great link that proves Satriani's case is totally b.s.

[Gronkie]

This link was fantastic! It definitely puts Satriani's complaint into context, and he has NO CASE! In fact, if Satriani has a right to sue Coldplay, then a whole lot of other musicians have a right to sue Satriani. He opened Pandora's Box with this one and he might want to drop this case before he gets served himself.

[Zenith1959]

I remember reading back in the nineties, that a singer/songwriter from somewhere in Africa finally got some money for the use of the famous chorus from "The lion sleeps tonight", takes a while sometimes

[Hcaukfied]

Let me state first that I am not a musician, I listened to both songs and I don't hear how Cold Play ripped off Satch. I hear a slight resemblance but not enough to say that he has been ripped off. The Cold Play song stands alone as being uniquely different from the Satriani song. I like Stach, and I was expecting to hear a blatant rippoff but I just don't hear it.

[kingfireman]

um, this will go nowhere. the guy will end up looking silly. I just listened and this progression isn't as heavily bitten as most people here are claiming. Please listen again. if you are in the business and/or art of music, you will know how easy it is to come accross some similarities likes this. To take a few seconds of melody and allude plaigiarism is quite a leap.

[StopCensoringMe]

This may cause Gwyneth to start smoking again.

[jtmoney]

#1, bands take influence from other bands. they always have, always will. plagarism is hard to prove. # 2, there are a limited amount of chords, and only so many ways you can arrange them, there is bound to be songs that sound alike and there is no way to avoid this #3, this is obviously a publicity stunt by the way Satriani is going out of his way to publicly embarrass them, and even announcing he is doing this in advance, and have cameras to document this. he's doing an attention grab. it's pretty shallow. and i'm not even the biggest coldplay fan, some of their music is okay but this seems a bit extreme and like somebody trying to steal the limelight.

[NoSillyName]

If only they'd not avoided the servers, we might never have heard about this case.

[whiteboyblues]

Who cares, the both suck!

[GhostofBillHicks]

HaHa!That's what I was thinkin'

[andvoodoo2]

I like the song. That said, as an artist myself, I can't abide a thief of intellectual property.

BTW, my daughter is a musician. She listened to both songs and doesn't think Satriani will prevail.

[Zillacabra]

The wisdom of children trumps all! My daughter is an actress (just starred in her preschool's Christmas play) and she doesn't think Heath Ledger will win the Oscar.

[bentax645]

I thought they copied MUSE....Could it just be a coincidence? Like George Harrisons "My Sweet Lord" and the song "She's So Fine" by the Shyrells

[JGatsby]

Have you listened to the two songs? Its nothing like the similarity between "He's so fine" and "My Sweet Lord". In that case there were a couple of bars from the chorus that used very similar chord changes. In the ColdPlay case it sounds like Coldplay took the Satriani instrumental and just added a vocal track. Someone on YouTube layered the two songs together (playing at the same time) and it sounded like they were meant to be that way. I'm usually not supportive of people suing each other over things like this. Musicians borrow riffs and chord changes all the time, but this example is really glaring.

[NoSillyName]

"He's So Fine", sung by the Chiffons, written by Ronald Mack (d. 1963).

[jondoe99]

How disappointing. I was hoping someone had filed as a class against them (It should be criminal) for lack of originality and being dangerously boring, and for ripping off a dull wanky guitar "song". You know what they say: If you're gonna steal...

[HLL]

To my ears, Coldplay totally ripped Satriani. Viva la Vida is a clone of the chords in I Just Want To Fly.

Get ready to pony up, boys. You owe Satriani a lot of moolah.

[Oldtimer]

Joe Stariani deserves justice. Coldplay should settle immediately.

[Propagandhi]

"... but that was when I fooled the world" ?

[klambake7]

wow.. and i always thought they were just ripping off radiohead