“The One Whose Name Begins With J” featuring the Mustard Seed Soul Band from the album His Story Live (unreleased) recorded and produced by Ross Gill.

I was quite interested in the recent court case in New York in which Ed Sheeran was cleared of infringing copyright of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” with his massive 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud”.
It seemed obvious to me that the two are completely different songs apart from a riff which is apparently based on a well-known chord progression. An expert in these things explains much better than I can here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9rBN4UtkWQ
My understanding of plagiarism is that you are basically stealing someone else’s (in this case song) without regard for copyright. Sampling is where you use a part of a song – usually a riff -and have the permission of the original composer – or not as in the case of “Ice, Ice, Baby” by Vanilla Ice who used the bass line of the 1981 song “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie and which went to court- with Vanilla Ice losing.
Influence is simply that – influence. So when composing, being influenced by a certain style of music -there is no issue with this – it is impossible to write a song without having first heard other songs which have a similar style.
While here I recently heard the Christian song “Goodness of God” (Bethel Music) which I think is great, but actually has a very similar chorus line to that of Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings” as in “And I can fly higher than the eagle …..”
Have a listen –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iAzMRKFX3c starting 1 min 34 secs
And “Goodness of God”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f4MUUMWMV4 starting 54 secs “Cos all my life You have been faithful”.
Has Mustard Seed Songs sampled or been guilty of sampling or plagiarism? – I’ll let you know next week- however today’s featured song might give you a clue!!!

Quote of the week