Coldplay and Joe Satriani plagiarism bun fight
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
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? (more...)