ROBIN THICKE
Fight with Marvin Gaye heirs. (
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Robin Thicke has hit the children of Marvin Gaye with a federal lawsuit denying that his summer mega-hit “Blurred Lines” is a ripoff of the Prince of Motown.
At issue: Can you copyright a groove?
Thicke said the three Gaye kids have warned him that “Blurred Lines” — which has sold a staggering 4.6 million tracks in three months — used musical elements of their funkmaster father’s 1977 hit “Got To Give it Up.”
The Gayes have reportedly tried to earn a big-bucks out-of-court settlement with Thicke to avoid a nasty legal fight.
To shield their song, Thicke and his two collaborators, Pharrell Williams and Clifford (“T.I.”) Harris Jr., filed a pre-emptive suit in Los Angeles federal court Thursday.
They said the Gayes claim that the two songs “feel” or “sound” the same. But “being reminiscent of a ‘sound’ is not copyright infringement,” the suit said.
Thicke and his collaborators said they “created a hit and did it without copying anyone else’s composition.”
There was no immediate response from the family of Gaye, who died in 1984, or from Bridgeport Music, owner of Funkadelic’s song “Sexy Ways,” which also was named in the suit.
Thicke has freely acknowledged that Gaye’s song inspired him.
“Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got To Give It Up,’ ” he told GQ. “I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.’ ”
“Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half-hour and recorded it,” he said.
The half-hour paid off big time. “Blurred Lines” is in its 10th week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Thicke’s suit said his intent was to “evoke an era,” the late 1970s when Gaye had moved from his “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” days to his later Motown years.
Gaye’s heirs, his suit said, wrongfully claim they own “an entire genre” of music.
The surge of “Blurred Lines” becoming the summer anthem of 2013 was helped by its racy music video, which features nude models prowling around Thicke, Williams and T.I.
The video has had more than 137 million views and triggered criticism that it exploited women.
Thicke last month defended it as “feminist.”