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![Did The Rolling Stones plagiarize? [no]](https://joebennett.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/gt3-400x250.jpg)
Did The Rolling Stones plagiarize? [no]
Another week, another spurious music copyright infringement lawsuit. The Rolling Stones are being sued by an artist called Angelslang (aka Sergio Fernandez) for alleged similarities between the former's 2020 song Living In A Ghost Town, and plaintiff's earlier songs...
Did Ed Sheeran copy from ‘Let’s Get It On’? [answer: no]
Forensic Musicologist Prof Joe Bennett (Berklee College of Music) spoke to Channel 4 News (UK) on October 1st 2022 about the ongoing copyright lawsuit against Ed Sheeran relating to the basslines of “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s...
Creative processes in Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s ‘I Should Be So Lucky’
This article is an excerpt from my PhD thesis, posted here in relation to a documentary project for which I was recently interviewed. Stock, Aitken and Waterman were one of several case studies I undertook to compare approaches to creative collaboration in songwriting...
Did Mariah Carey plagiarise “All I Want For Christmas Is You”? (answer: no)
Two musicologists explain why the lawsuit against Mariah Carey is unfounded.
Eurovision live musicology blog 2022
Kalush Orchestra (Ukraine), who won the 2022 contest with their song 'Stefania'. A better result than last year with the predictions - I got a home run on the top 3, and only missed one outsider – Serbia, for which I guess I misread the lyric theme. Looks like Europe...
Eurovision live blog 2022 – get ready!
As regular readers will know, I have been live-blogging the ESC since 2011, and in 2020 undertook a larger-scale song analysis for Netflix, where we looked at the meta-characteristics of 259 finalists 2010-2019. To get you in the zone (I'm typing this on Thursday...
Joe Bennett interview (BBC): Ed Sheeran court case
Watch on YouTube Interview with Professor Joe Bennett (Forensic Musicologist / Berklee College Of Music) discussing the Ed Sheeran "Shape Of You" verdict in the UK high court. Interview date: April 10, 2022 BBC World Service: World Business Report Interviewer: David...
JB interview – Ed Sheeran’s copyright case win
According to Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at Berklee College Of Music in the US, “opportunistic plaintiffs” are exploiting a common musical error that listeners can make…
WWE – the walk-on themes
I was recently asked by WWE to analyse and transcribe five of their top 'walk-on' wrestler themes, and to comment on how WWE music is designed to reflect to the personas and character roles of each performer. Some consistent musical characteristics began to emerge,...
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