Blurred Lines: Pharrell’s All Too Specific Style-Study

A jury found that Pharrell Williams’ and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” too closely resembles Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” from 1977. Determining copyright infringement has always been more art than science; on some level it’s an exercise in pure metaphysics when we try to figure out what a subjective representation is. Relying on a notated score, or the script for how the music unfolds, makes sense because we can simply note-match (more of a science). But in the “Blurred Lines” case, when note-matching doesn’t reveal evidence of direct copy, a hack job, and the jury verdict nevertheless rules that Marvin Gaye was ripped off, we’re left scratching our heads. There is not only a legal context surrounding such a case, but an artistic and socio-cultural context as well. In the interest of unwrapping the significance of the verdict, a quick historical survey of modern aesthetics and the blurring of art and life might help us to establish such context.

Blurring of Art and Life

Art requires perception, even if it’s conceptual, even if it’s textual. We can easily trace a grand narrative across art history in the direction of ever finer perceptual differences marking the distinction between art and life: Of course the advent of photography caused a crisis in the field of painting, and then Cezane subsequently came to mark a point of transition— painting was no longer about capturing or representing reality, but about the process of perception itself. Joyce functions similarly for writing. And I’d argue that Schoenberg does so for Music. However, perception never occurs in a vacuum. Duchamp’s ready-mades showed us that context was equally, if not more, important than perception. A urinal is not always just a urinal; it can become art. And as Warhol eventually showed us: art is just another commodity in disguise, at which point, the minimal difference between the facsimile and the thing itself (say Brillo Boxes for instance) is so negligible as to be indistinguishable, save the price tag. 

While grand narratives are dead these days, contextual variation reigns supreme. Past art is immediately accessible and often pre-given in its greatness. It is no longer merely a representation of the world. Rather, art partially constitutes the world we know. New art, therefore, often hybridizes old forms and instances of Art, taking Art as the source material that yearns to become itself. Duchamp’s mustachioed Mona Lisa showed us this too. 

The blurring of lines between art and life and the notion of hybridization are nothing new to music composition either. Stravinsky’s neo-classical turn, that defining gesture of musical postmodernism, is nothing more than the direct presentation of a hybridization: applying classical form and structure to atonal pitch materials— a mustache drawn across Mozart’s scores. Musical hybridization appears today under a few different names: mash-up, sampling, remix, and poly-stylism. Each name reflects a different approach to eliciting two possible musical effects (though, like the famous drawing of the young/old woman, we can only perceive one at a time): following Stravinsky, hybridization may either be recognized as such due to listeners’ historical knowledge and ability to hear the difference between past and present signals, or it may appear as nothing at all, as simply a new piece of music. The first effect is a matter of consensus, or something for a jury to decide. The second effect is a matter of truth in the face of the unnameable, or something for each of us to decide.

Using and Stealing

This is the context in which the drama of copyright litigation plays out, when art imitates Art a little too closely. But given such a context, the jury verdict that Pharrell Williams’ “Blurred Lines” plagiarizes Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” from 1977 marks a conservative turn in what it means to use and to steal, and is utterly confusing. (I’m leaving Robin Thicke out of this article, as he didn’t actually write anything). Somebody was robbed; but who and of what we have no idea. I’ll try to suss it out. 

Music has no quotation mark, no internal system or syntax for signifying different voices or creators beyond the direct presentation of any and all materials. Instead, music relies on the listener’s ability to recognize original sounds within the context of all the other sounds in a given piece. The absent quotation mark is what makes the old adage “Good composers borrow, but great composers steal” so absurd. There is no real way to borrow. Borrowing is the domain of lawyers and written language. Musicians steal and are robbed. But most musicians agree: not all stealing is equal. There is STEALING!, like when Deep Forest used an ethnographic recording of Afunakwa singing “Rorogwela” as the vocal for their 1992 global hit “Sweet Lullaby,” and then there is “stealing”, as in the case of the Amen Break. The first instance is mind-bogglingly fraught with issues of power, race, gender, colonialism, and nearly every other socio-political tension imaginable. Surely a few of these issues would apply to the second instance as well… but all that awesome Drum and Bass music wouldn’t exist without the Amen Break! And there’s the rub of it; the future also determines the past. As a piece of performance art that strives toward identity politics, Deep Forest’s great STEAL is highly under-appreciated, and will perhaps have its day. But, as a hybridization of electronic minimalism and funk percussion, the Amen Break, and NOT the Winston’s original “Amen Brother,” remade the world we’ve inherited. To “steal” justly is to produce the circumstances for a future in which one’s theft necessarily appears as mere borrowing (regardless of any legal contract). This is what makes great composers great. 

Plagiarizing Style

What’s particularly confusing about the Pharrell verdict, as Chris Richards at the Washington Post pointed out in his reaction piece on how the verdict is bad for Pop Music, is that:

The jury was reportedly instructed to make its ruling based on written melodies, chords and lyrics, not the sounds of the respective recordings. If that’s the case, how these eight jurors arrived at their verdict is incomprehensible.

Apparently, the case hinged on the infringement of publishing rights, not master recording rights. But, and I agree with Pharrell on this, there is no instance of direct copying from the score. The melodies and chords are all slightly different. The rhythm is remarkably similar to listen to, but I’d certainly notate it slightly differently. The tempo is basically the same, but COME ON! We live in a time when EDM’s almost meaningless genre variants are defined by specific tempo markings, and a particular kick/snare pattern. In this sense, saying that “Blurred Lines” is a Marvin Gaye rip-off is akin to saying that musical styles (or even genre) should be regarded as copyright-able works themselves. I don’t even know what that means! Minimal difference in music might be perceptually taxing, but, in the blurring of art and Art-in-life, we shouldn’t quash an opportunity for new musical styles to arise in order to ensure that a “feeling” or “vibe” remains the sole propriety of someone’s estate.

The Old and the New of it

My wife listens to her Bonobo radio station on Pandora frequently, for its vibe. Should Bonobo be receiving royalty payments because I often can’t (or don’t care to) tell the difference between a Bonobo track and some other artist who fits the Bonobo bill? It’s all Bonobo, even when its not. Who cares? Which artists have a more legitimate complaint? Those that serve as the model that other music is reminiscent of, or those whose work is streamed in the shadow of an already more popular model? These days, old products and technologies like vinyl records and 3D movies are continuously sold back to us (often at a premium) as if they were new. We rarely question this. We usually bask in the commercial activity of being able to buy new albums on vinyl because how awesome was vinyl back when it was the only way to listen? Some Golden Age thinking takes hold and we retroactively construct the context for a product’s re-emergence. But the “Blurred Lines” verdict has ensured is that there will be no repackaging of Marvin Gaye; he’s safe, secure, and rotting away in the annals of music history collecting royalties for his publishers and progeny. But the verdict also precludes Marvin Gaye from becoming the progenitor of a new Pop Music style championed by Pharrell Williams. The future’s ability to rewrite the past has thus been severely limited, and I, for one, take that as a bad sign.

On Limiting Historical Possibility

Pharrell’s repackaging of Marvin Gaye’s vibe in a Pop context, ultimately called the bluff of our contemporary consumerist culture a bit too closely. Making the old new again is great, just don’t make things appear too similar, less we realize nothing’s changed. But something has changed, an untaken path for music has now been barricaded off. As my wife said regarding Pharrell’s desire to write a track that had the feeling of “Got to Give it Up,” “He tried to be Prometheus, but turned out to be Icarrus instead.” Burned by the source of energy he was trying to share.

For all its apparent dead ends, echo-chambers, and stagnation, the contemporary music landscape and its wide variety of styles offers hope that variety itself may become a foundation upon which new musical histories may be constructed. As the perceptual difference between art and life, between new and old forms, grows ever finer, let’s hope that the conservative stance of limiting historical possibility does not extend further.

In the end, it’s perhaps Marvin Gaye that lost out— on the possibility for a future musical style to further influence his legacy.

© 2015, Sean Peuquet. All rights reserved.

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