Sounds Like

Marvin Gaye's family has it coming to them. The seven and a half million dollars a court awarded them from the profits made via the sales of his song, "Blurred Lines." Not that I am in any way qualified to make this judgement myself, but that is what the jury in Los Angeles decided last week. Those twelve men and women decided that the biggest hit of 2013 could not have been created without the foundation of Marvin Gaye's hit, "Got To Give It Up." And if you held a gun to my head, I couldn't sing a note of either one of them.
First of all, I will encourage you not to take on this practice: holding a gun to my or anyone else's head and forcing them to sing pop hits. Even though this does sound like a TV show on NBC's Fall schedule. Secondly, I would imagine that this will have the effect of bringing about a series of new lawsuits in which hits of the past are found to bear an eerie if not note-for-note similarity to what is currently streaming on your kids' music devices. The biggest challenge, for me, would be finding the time or inclination to listen to any of "Now That's What I Call Music" volumes one through googolplex. I suspect that if I were to find this kind of time,with or without the loaded gun to my head, I might hear a few tunes that remind me of the ones I might find in my own music collection. If you gave me seven million dollars, I might devote a little more attention to the sounds of now. Even if they sound a little like the sounds of then.
Besides, it's not the first time something like this happened. I remember how Ray Parker Jr. swore up and down that he had never heard of Huey Lewis and the New Drugs when he "wrote" the theme to Ghostbusters. I ain't afraid of no lawsuit. Even music royalty like Beatles aren't above borrowing just a little here and there. George Harrison found himself on the wrong end of a legal entanglement when people heard "He's So Fine" when he played "My Sweet Lord." Money can't buy me love, but it can buy you out of a copyright infringement case. Of course, you could just give songwriting credit to the person you're paying homage to from the start, like Sam Smith did for Tom Petty. There was no backing down with Tom, and the checks will stay with him. Thank you very much.
I know I'm old. You don't need to tell me that. I have an elementary school full of kids who remind me most every day. But being this old informs my life to this degree: I know that Beethoven stole from Mozart. And Procol Harum borrowed liberally from Bach without ever sending a check to his estate. And that, as they say, is showbiz.