Apparently Joe Satriani’s lawsuit over the similarities between his 2004 track and Coldplay’s megahit from last year “Viva La Vida” has been settled, as the suit was dismissed earlier this week. A few legal types have suggested to Billboard that money might have changed hands, which I guess will ease Satriani’s sting over Coldplay not being forced to apologize for what they’ve done. Relive the days when lawsuits ruled these two parties’ world with John P. Strohm’s thoughts on the case, or embeds of the two tracks after the jump. MORE »
POSTS FROM "this thing looks like that thing" CATEGORY
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Joe Satriani’s Suit Against Coldplay Flies Out Of Court
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Mariah Carey Wants The World To Know What Love (For Her) Is
Not content with plundering the songbooks of years ago, Mariah Carey has moved on to re-creating her Sony-era photo shoots as the release date of Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel looms ever nearer. Above, a side-by-side comparison of the cover for her 1997 album Butterfly and a just-released photo shoot in which she pretty much looks the same, albeit with slightly lighter lipstick. And this isn’t even the first time she’s engaged in some time travel during this album’s promotional cycle! MORE »
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OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder Brings Leona Lewis To The Copy Machine
Hot on the heels of Ryan Tedder fending off self-plagiarizing accusations by eagle-eared listeners who picked up the similarities between his compositions for Kelly Clarkson and Beyoncé, the OneRepublic main main/inexplicably in-demand songwriter is seemingly copying himself again. After the jump, hear the new OneRepublic single “All The Right Moves” and Leona Lewis’ latest single “Happy”—both of which were penned by Tedder—and tell me if I’m crazy for hearing the same damn song, albeit at slightly different speeds. MORE »
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Americans To “X Factor” Hopeful Danyl Johnson: “Hi, How Are You?”
Danyl Johnson is a 27-year-old schoolteacher from Reading, England, whose audition for the Leona Lewis-spawning British talent search The X Factor over the weekend has become the latest Simon Cowell-sparked YouTube singing sensation. His rendition of “A Little Help From My Friends” was dubbed “the best first audition I’ve ever heard” by the cranky American Idol arbiter, although to these ears it sounded like it could veer into Danny Gokey yarl territory at any moment. But Johnson’s success has resulted in some confusion among people scouring the Internet for information on The Guy Who Could Be A Cuter, More Marketable (And Everyone Hopes Less Prone To Exhaustion) Susan Boyle—and it’s both amusing and all too familiar to this observer. MORE »
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The Sugababes’ New Direction Is Causing People To Get Lost In This Club
A note to the Sugababes: It’s probably not a good sign that someone just came over here searching on “pussycat dolls new song too sexy for this club” while presumably looking for your bombastic new single “Get Sexy.” And said Internet sleuthing was from someone inside the UK—your home turf—at that! MORE »
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Which Pop Star Will Lady GaGa Rip Off At This Year’s Video Music Awards?
An article from the still-vaguely-interested-in-music channel MTV’s news arm runs down a few potential sources of “inspiration” for the Video Music Awards performance of kleptomaniacal pop star Lady GaGa, who along with Jay-Z was just announced as a performer on the Sept. 13 broadcast. MORE »
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Roisin Murphy Knows That Lady GaGa’s Imitation Is In Fact Flattery
Yesterday the news went around that Irish dance innovator Roisin Murphy had called out the steamroller that is Lady GaGa for ripping off her style, and the speaking-up was cheered, as the similarities between the two performers’ looks had been a point of contention for a while among connoisseurs of really good pop music. As it turned out, though, Murphy was in fact the victim of another game of Press Telephone, and issued a statement yesterday entitled “STOP PRESS! WHEN SHOULDER PADS CLASH!!” It read, in part, “I respect Lady Gaga’s work as an artist and as a fellow fashion icon. She is a very talented performer, playing the piano, singing live and dancing too. I Don’t Care about Shoulder pads!” Of course, Murphy’s lack of being bothered didn’t stop a member of Oh No They Didn’t from putting together a matrix of Roisin and GaGa similarities. And, well… it’s very striking, to say the least. MORE »
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ProTools: Proving What Anyone With Ears In 1989 Already Knew
Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” sound an awful lot alike, according to a shocking video posted by some guy with a lot of time on his hands and a copy of The Greatest Two-Hit Wonders Of The Late ’80s. Call me obtuse, but I always thought that said similarity was what fueled the popularity of those two songs, in large part? [Paul's Ponderings via Fark] MORE »
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Jay-Z Has A Secret Machine Working In His Art Department
Jay-Z’s artwork for his forthcoming Blueprint 3 was released to the world today, and it’s something like a Rorschach test: Everyone sees something different in it! MORE »
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Jill Sobule Finally Lets Her “Katy Perry Sucks” Flag Fly
When Katy Perry’s Girls Gone Semi-Wild For The Sake Of Riling Up Any Men Around song “I Kissed A Girl” first made inroads into the pop consciousness, singer/songwriter Jill Sobule—who’d made a few alt-rock waves with an identically titled, yet 10% as annoying track 13 years earlier—was semi-diplomatic. “Katy Perry’s song is a kind of catchy party song,” Sobule told Entertainment Weekly, “although I will admit that I do smile when a critique mentions my version in a more favorable light. Is that wrong?” Well, a lot can happen over 14-ish months, and such was the case with Sobule, who in an interview with the online mag The Rumpus dropped any sense of diplomacy and went straight to name-calling. Also swearing! MORE »
