Coldplay have found themselves smack bang in the middle of another plagiarism bun fight. Guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani has claimed that Coldplay have copied elements of his 2004 song "If I Could Fly" for their track "Viva La Vida".

In an interview with Musicrader.com Satriani stresses that he was motivated by a desire to protect his art.

"Everybody's assumes I'm trying to go after these guys in Coldplay, as if I'm doing this with malice," he says "That's the furthest thing from my mind. I'm just doing what I need to do as an artist, to protect what's mine, to protect those feelings I put down in song.

"I did everything I could to avoid a court case with this situation. But Coldplay didn't want to talk about it. They just wanted this whole thing to go away. Maybe they figured this little guitar player guy will leave them alone after a while, I don't know.

Now at this point I would love to include the video that was posted on YouTube that compared to two tracks so that you could have a listen for yourself, and make up your own mind, but that's a little difficult for me to do now because EMI, who happen to be the Coldplay's record company, have asked that YouTube to remove it. So instead of the comparison video, and nice little mashup at the end, you get this message:

This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by EMI Music

EMI don't seem to have a problem with the massive number of other Coldplay videos on YouTube so conspiracy theorists can read into this how they like. Would the record company remove the clip if that didn't think there was anything in it?

In any case, here's the music video for Coldplay's Viva La Vida.

... and here's Satriani's If I Could Fly.

Now having heard the mashup version, that's no longer online, I can say that in my opinion that they matched up quite nicely, and that Coldplay should offer Satriani a permanent spot in their lineup.

For the music geeks, here's some music theory that compares the two tricks. If nothing else, it's an interesting clip.

The Joe Satriani affair isn't the first plagiarism allegation leveled at Coldplay mind you. In mid 2008, New York based band the Creaky Boards

Now, if Satriani is successful in his case against Coldplay, where does that leave the Creaky Boards?

The allegations levelled against Coldplay are even more interesting when you view them in light of a 16 June 2005 interview with Rolling Stone and comments made by Chris Martin on the success of the band:

"We're definitely good, but I don't think you can say we're that original," he notes. "I regard us as being incredibly good plagiarists."

In another article from ContactMusic.com, Coldplay guitarist Jonny Buckland was asked about similarities between the song "Fix You" and the Elbow track "Grace Under Pressure".

"We’ve never so directly stolen off anyone before. We’ve never paid for our plagiarism."

I wonder if Coldplay will go on to make frank admissions like these in the court room?

Which ever side of the fence you sit on, there's no denying that this case will be an interesting one to follow.

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