An original piece of music with no similarities to already released music doesn't exist

One day, all possible chord progressions, melodies, hooks, etc. will already exist, and light plagiarism, or infringement of copyright will be somewhat inevitable. We experience incidents like these all the time, and as years go by, we decrease our chances of creating an original piece of music with no similarities to already released music.

Sampling is one thing, plagiarism is another. Giving credit where credit is due is important, but how do we navigate through what should be credited and what should not? Have we reached a point where nothing unique can be created, because the music catalogue is already filled up? We saw it with Olivia Rodrigo’s song Good For You (2021) that got dragged to court for resembling Paramore’s song Misery Business (2007) too much and not giving credit. Paramore is now credited as co-writers of Olivia’s 1,2 billion streams hit song, even though the band took no part in actually writing it.

According to The Guardian, numbers show that the average number of credited writers on songs has increased drastically over the last five years, which is due to the composers agreeing to add the authors of past songs that are somewhat similar to avoid infringement of copyright claims.

Read along while we take you through three different cases of musicians being accused of plagiarism.

Marcus Gray vs Katy Perry

My opinion: Not copied

Jury's decision: Copied

Back in 2013, Katy Perry released her hit single Dark Horse, which later would get dragged in court for allegedly copying a Christian rap song called Joyful Noise from 2009. Marcus Gray, the artist behind Joyful Noise, waited five years to sue Katy Perry and her team of infringement of copyright, and actually won in court. The jury decided that Dark Horse did copy the rap song, and Katy Perry and her label were ordered to pay Gray a sum of $2.7. When listening to these two songs side by side, I do not hear a big enough similarity between them to call it infringement of copyright.

Marvin Gaye VS Robin Thicke

My opinion: Maybe?

Jury's decision: Copied

2012 was the year of Robin Thicke’s groundbreaking release of Blurred Lines, a song made in collaboration with Pharrell Wiliams and TI. There were a lot of reasons why this particular song and video caught the eye of the public, one of them being the many claims of it sounding too similar to Marvin Gaye’s 1977 track, Got To Give It Up. In 2013, the Gaye family filed a lawsuit against Thicke, and two years later they won their case, and Thicke and Williams had to pay the family $5 million in damages. Thicke’s excuse was that their track was simply inspired by the “feel” of Gaye’s song. This created a whole new wave of fright in the music industry, as you could now get copyrighted by a “feel” of a song. By listening to the songs side by side, I hear a strong similarity, but in reality they are not similar in either chords, composition or melody. They are set in two different keys, Gaye uses different chords, and double as many chords as Thicke, who only uses two chords throughout Blurred Lines.

Beach Boys vs Chuck Berry

My opinion: Copied

Jury's decision: Copied

This one is easy, and actually the Beach Boys even admitted that their hit song Surfin’ USA was a complete rip off of Chuck Berry’s song Sweet Little Sixteen. The songs are so similar that it seems weird why the Beach Boys thought they could get away with it. Now, Chuck Berry is credited on Surfin’ USA though.