Sunday 29 March 2009

Coldplay vs Satriani - will it ever get to court ?

I've never been a Coldplay fan. Personally I find their brand of rock very boring and derivative but you can't argue with their commercial success and yes .... lots of people out there do like them.

So I was intrigued to hear back in December last year that Joe Satriani had filed a suit for plagiarism accusing the band of ripping off his 2004 track “If I Could Fly” for their own Grammy-nominated hit “Viva La Vida.” Satriani accused Coldplay of stealing “substantial original portions” of his track.

If you're into the musical theory, then the video below covers that in great detail however you can also just listen and let your ears decide (its not the greatest quality but good enough to hear - the owner has done a pretty good job with "mashing" the 2 tracks)



Anyway, its all gone a bit quite on this one. The last big news was that Satriani's legal team were due to serve the writs on Coldplay at this years Grammys but that seems to have been and gone now.

Personally, I hate this type of thing - I remember the whole Belinda Carlisle and Bon Jovi spat in the eighties over the similarities between "you give love a bad name" and "heaven is place on earth". They're almost always unsatisfactory and show the musicians involved in a poor light. In this case however I have to feel for Joe satriani. This isn't the first time that Coldplay have been cited for plagiarism - see the list in the video above - and the amount of "lifted" material goes way beyond co-incidence.

Anyway - you decide but feel free to post comments or updates to the story.

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