Did you hear about how everybody wrote “Viva La Vida” before Coldplay wrote “Viva La Vida”? This summer Creaky Boards took to the internet to take the public’s temperature on their claim of having written a preexisting song substantially similar to Coldplay’s iTunes anthem. According to Reuters, today’s allegation is a little more legal…
Satriani’s copyright infringement suit, filed on Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, claims the Coldplay song “Viva La Vida” incorporates “substantial original portions” of his 2004 instrumental “If I Could Fly.”
The 52-year-old guitar virtuoso is seeking a jury trial, damages and “any and all profits” attributable to the alleged copyright infringement.
And according to YouTube, it’s a little more substantially similar:
To prove an allegation of musical plagiarism, Plaintiff Satch must demonstrate that Defendant Coldplay had access (hello iTunes, hello irony) to his work, and that Coldplay’s composition is substantially similar (hello identical melodic motif and chord progression). Seems Joe’s got a case, at least, for a moment there it does sound like a shred-version of Coldplay. It’d help Chris Martin’s cause if his song was built of more than one chord movement. Viva and learn. If this doesn’t work out, Joe, there’s always Creaky Boards to sue.
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Why is everyone insulting Joe Satriani? He has pushed lots of music into the next era. He gave lessons to the guitarists of the bands you DO listen to, and has never pulled a stunt like this before.
I think he is justified. Coldplay has had trouble like this before. Is someone gets arrested for drunk driving a second time, don’t you think it is likely they are an alcoholic?
Check out these other songs that sound similar to coldplay – did coldplay copy rush song with their clocks song? Possible. Or how about Coldplay violet hill and the similaritiies to Phantom Planet’s song. I know there is no absolute proof, but it seems possible that they have copied quite a few hooks from other songs. If that is true I think in all fairness they need to give credit where credit is due – however I do like these coldplay songs at the same time – just give credit for your inspiration.
Before I say anything, I’d like to mention I was a Coldplay and Satch fan before this whole mess started. I’m sick of people slamming the other side for how much they suck or whatever. It’s not relevant, this is about a copyright case. And as for the “There are so many songs out there songs are bound to sound the same argument,” then what is the point of copyright? If you have that mindset I can write whatever the hell I want and just say, well there are a lot of songs, I was bound to sound similar to someone. Plain and simple, the songs sound very similar, and I thin it is very plausible that Coldplay unintentionally ripped it off of Joe. Oh, and as to why Joe took so long, he was trying to settle this outside of court. Unfortunately Coldplay turned a cold shoulder and he felt he still had to do something about it.
this chord change and melody are so simple and basic,
i bet there has to be hundreds of songs that sound like these two.
i think that anybody could have come up with this melody without listening to satriani’s song(which sound quite cheesy by the way…),
but that’s pop music , it’s completley Plagiarisded ,coldplay know it and satriani knows it.
it’s easy to convince the general public that it was stolen but as musicians they know that when you come up with a melody this simple you might be borowing it as millions of songwriter do everyday.
If Joe Satriani sais it , its true he is the ruler of the guitar universe and a pure modern musical genius to say the very least. Get em Joe!!!
Coldplay?? These guys need to get a real singer in there band and turn up the guitar and turn down the crappy sound they have now.. Satriani is a better musician that any of those guys put together….
If I were OldPlay I would settle out of court. They suck and Joe has the grammys. What a blow to the OldPlay ego.
I can’t believe how a topic that is about two songs sounding very similar, has turned into a flamewar. Yes, this is teh internets, I’m well aware of it, but please people, think twice before you write inane remarks about musicians you very clearly don’t know. It’s all well and good not to like Satriani’s music, but at least listen to it before you comment. He is neither a shredder with no compositional skills nor does he play metal. Just listen to the song(s) that started this issue. Also, as a musician he has more integrity than most people who get the kind of airplay Coldplay does. To question whether he is in it for the music or for the money is truly a no-brainer: if he were in it for the money he wouldn’t still be recording instrumental guitar albums! Get real people!
Yeheha! its the same thing/
and they should pay about the mistakes .
when you do mistake you pay .
When you can’t speak correct english, you pay.
Ah, thats funny, very funny.
For the record, Coldplay is one of the biggest bands in the world, get over it, sit back on your couch, and listen to Coldplay, because you’re going to be listening to them for a long time to come.
Oh my god!!! Same melody !! i used to love coldplay but now i see that they are just losers !!
Coldplay SUCKS! Chris Marten needs to shut up! JOE IS GOD!!! And to the loser who asks why Joe took so long…Who want’s to sue a guy after he sells one album??? Rack it up Baby!!!
Thank you for telling it how it is. All guitarist who are any good know Joe Satriani. He is a legend.
I love how everyone assumes that Satriani is just trying to “mine for gold” with this lawsuit. If someone were to steal my work, I’d a least, the very least, want them to not have profited from my stolen work. I think if they had ripped, intentionally or otherwise, any other Satriani song, he might not have noticed so much, but he worked on “If I could fly” for quite some time. I believe he said that he toyed around with it for a decade before he released it in ’04. Coldplay’s cold reaction to Satriani’s claims just makes them look more the villains, they should talk to the guy and acknowledge that his melody is in their song, give him credit for it, and move on. I can see the rationale of both sides, but I am with Satch on this one.
On another note, there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking any combination of music, jazz to metal or country or classical or quiet ambient gaelic chants. Music is music, it is there to be enjoyed. It is merely my sincere hope that people will stop using the music that they listen to as a means of defining who they are. Define yourself by who you are, and not what you listen to. It would end a lot of petty arguments.
Im getting sick and tired of the people on here who talk about the irrelevant bullshit, the chord progression, who listens to who, who copied who…FACT OF THE MATTER IS…It doesn’t matter whether Coldplay heard Satriani or not!!! They’re song has portions in it that sound EXACTLY like his portions in his song, they sound alike for a good 15 seconds, the odds of coming up with the same melody, timing, and notes in that given amount of time are astronomical!!!
Heres a little example of what is relevant to the case…Say some guy comes from China and moves to USA, sits down and comes up with this idea…He decides to come up with two rotating handles you do push-ups with and when you go up and down they have a rotational movement that works out several muscle groups, he puts it out on the market and calls it…”The Precise Push-up”…Well little does he know theres already a product out there that has the exact same features his push-up device has and has been on the market for several years now…Its called “The Perfect Push-up”, he may have heard about it, he may have not…The creators of the Perfect push-up nevertheless can sue this guy for all profits because of copyright infringement…
Same applies here in the Satch/Coldplay case…It doesn’t matter whether they heard his music or not, the fact it they used a melody he had already put in his music…So these queers need to sit down, shut up, and pay up…He tried reasoning with them about it, so Satch is bringing the thunder on their gay asses…
Im aware that some douche(s) will probably comment behind me and bash me for my comment, thats why I’ll use this paragraph and respond in saying “Shut up, your gay, kiss my ass, fuck off, you giant douche” Peace..
There are only so many notes on the scale, and so many rhythms you can choose. If Coldplay did steal, they can claim they didn’t. Anyway, they sound different enough. This is definitely not a case of Vanilla Ice!
the irony of course would be if ZZ top sued joe for Big Bad Moon.
If George Harrison were alive today, he would tell you the certain outcome of this pending verdict/case; Coldplay’s going down like Linda Lovelace.
Being in Brazil, I just read about this surfing the web. The first comparison I heard was a mash-up on YouTube and I thought – “jeez, that’s so obvious”. But since Coldplay gave credits to Karftwerk etc on other songs, why didn’t they do so with Joe? They don’t exactly need the money. Doesn’t make sense.
And the mash-up itself doesn’t say too much, it’s not too difficult for a DJ to get even dissimilar songs, beatmatch them and let them run together to good effect.
After listening to the Joe song alone, there is a melodic rift that sounds similar but come on, there are dozens of songs that do that.
Verdict from Brazil? = No go Joe
EVIDENCE!!! It’s called evidence folks! You know, it really appeared to me that OJ Simpson killed two people, but the evidence did not convince a jury of that(one can argue the sanity of the OJ jury, but I digress). Did someone overhear a conversation between Chris Martin and someone else wherein he discussed taking parts from Satch’s song? Are there written notes that can be subpoenaed that indicate that Coldplay were basing their song on Satriani’s? No? Well then what is the case? “Gee, it sure sounds a lot like Satriani’s song.” doesn’t cut it in a court of law!! The funniest development in this case is that Yusuf Islam is now weighing whether or not he should sue Coldplay for stealing HIS song. Q: If Coldplay ripped the song from Satch, why doesn’t Cat Stevens go after Satch instead of Coldplay? A: Because Coldplay sells way more records!!!
Coldplay even named Satriani as one of their inspirations in an interview
well, it’s not a particularly original chord sequence anyway..it doesn’t matter what key you’re in but it’s a basic kind of ‘c; d; g; e minor’ thing which has been kicked around for ages in virtually every shape or form with a few variants and some related chords thrown in and changed around a bit for good measure..it limits what one would choose for a melody by definition, as all the chords are derived from the same major scale..practically any musician could write some sort of tune around this chord sequence, and there are many examples if one cares to listen to enough music, and, yes, they’re all similar..a fuss about nothing really!