The family of Marvin Gaye is still pursuing its legal options against Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and Clifford Harris, Jr. (AKA T.I.) after Gaye’s son reportedly declined a six-figure offer from Thicke to end the family’s accusations that he completely ripped off Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” in creating the mega-hit “Blurred Lines.” And you’d think that would be all of the creative theft that we could handle for one summer, but then one Redditor did a little digging and discovered another song on YouTube that sounds awfully familiar.
The video in question was posted to YouTube in 2011 and features a young man named Zack Kim playing his original song, “Robot Dance.” It definitely sounds a lot like the Daft Punk hit “Get Lucky,” but as a lot of people on both Reddit and YouTube have already argued, there are only so many chords and sometimes songs are just going to sound alike.
Still, check Zack’s video out for yourself and then compare it with “Get Lucky.”
If you only listened to a small clip of “Robot Dance,” do yourself a favor and jump to the 4:17 mark when Zack unleashes a very impressive solo.
Theft or not (and I’m leaning toward not), I think it’s pretty interesting that the two artists/groups currently being accused of theft (one obviously far more seriously than the other) not only featured Pharrell as a guest on the two tracks in question, but they were also Stephen Colbert’s first and second choices for his Colbchella Song of the Summer. I don’t know what any of this means, but I’m going to spend all night with my crack team of researchers getting to the bottom of this.
