Robin Thicke Lawsuit: Marvin Gaye’s Family Claims He Stole TWO Songs

Family of “What’s Going On” singer says Robin Thicke unlawfully copied Gaye’s work for “Blurred Lines” and “Love After War”

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The family of deceased “What’s Going On” singer Marvin Gaye has gone on the legal attack against singer Robin Thicke, filing a lawsuit claiming that Thicke pilfered two of Gaye’s songs for his own work.

The Gaye family filed suit on Wednesday, alleging that Thicke not only stole Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” for his mega-hit “Blurred Lines,” but also lifted Gaye’s “After the Dance” for his track “Love After War.”

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The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in California, follows Thicke’s own preemptive lawsuit in August that sought to protect him from the Gaye family’s allegations that “Blurred Lines” uses the same “feel” and “sound” as Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.”

The latest suit contends that Thicke is guilty of a “blatant copying of a constellation of distinctive and significant compositional elements of Marvin Gaye’s classic No. 1 song, ‘Got to Give It Up.’”

The Gayes cite interviews given by Thicke to GQ and Billboard as evidence that he deliberately boosted Gaye’s sound for “Blurred Lines.”

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“[Producer/writer] Pharrell [Williams] 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,’” Thicke told GQ. “I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something that will groove’ Then he started playing a little something and we literally write the song in about a half hour and recorded it.”

A spokeswoman has not yet responded to TheWrap‘s request for comment.

The lawsuit adds that “Love After War” is “so substantially similar to ‘After the Dance’ that any ordinary observer would immediately recognize ‘Love After War’ as a copy of ‘After the Dance.’”

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The counterclaim asks for a declaration that Thicke and others listed in the suit “are directly, vicariously and/or contributorily liable for copyright infringement,” plus actual and punitive damages.

Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.

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