Pharrell Williams Speaks Out About ‘Blurred Lines’ Verdict
Pharrell Williams is finally breaking his silence following the judgment on “Blurred Lines.”
Sitting down with the Financial Times, Williams foreshadowed what the copyright infringement ruling means for the future of music and creativity, in general.
“The verdict handicaps any creator out there who is making something that might be inspired by something else.”
Williams continued, “This applies to fashion, music, design… anything. If we lose our freedom to be inspired we’re going to look up one day and the entertainment industry as we know it will be frozen in litigation. This is about protecting the intellectual rights of people who have ideas.”
As the Inquisitr reported, a judge ordered that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke pay Marvin Gaye’s family $7.3 million due to copyright infringement for their hit song “Blurred Lines.”
Pharrell Williams held up his argument that “Blurred Lines” was not copying the 1977 Marvin Gaye hit “Got to Give It Up.”
“You can’t own feelings and you can’t own emotions. Everything that’s around you in a room was inspired by something or someone… If you kill that, there’s no creativity.”
Yesterday, the Gaye family wrote an open letter discussing what this ruling meant, dispelling rumors that they were going after Pharrell’s other song, “Happy.”
In the letter, the family said, “We want to put to rest any rumors that we are contemplating claims against Pharrell Williams for his song, ‘Happy.’ This is 100 [percent] false. We have absolutely no claim whatsoever concerning ‘Happy.'”
The family of the late singer continued to defend the decision that it was copyright infringement.
“If Mr. Thicke and Mr. Williams had tried to create a new song and coincidentally infused ‘Got to Give It Up’ into their work, instead of deliberately undertaking to ‘write a song with the same groove,’ we would probably be having a different conversation.”
Fans seem to be split on Williams’ feelings.
@DrRimmer @verge @Priv8LawTutor I wonder if he’d feel the same if it were his songs being copied?
— David Killen (@DavidAKillen) March 20, 2015
@DrRimmer @verge Pharrell is right. Creativity and development is typically inspired by earlier work. It is being suppressed by greed.
— ThreeMonkeys AndMe (@We3forDemocracy) March 20, 2015
@verge I think it keeps music original and stops all the sampling. Make your own new music
— ATrain (@ATrimaine) March 20, 2015
@verge Yeah I’m mean do you know how hard it is to steal a song?
— furious1236 (@furious1236) March 20, 2015
[Photo by David Buchan / Getty Images]
