Why is it okay for the band to rip off Soul Asylum but not others?

Joe Satriani took Coldplay to court in 2008 for the 'uncanny' similarities between If I Could Fly (Satriani) and Viva La Vida (Coldplay). Because the court couldn't prove that Coldplay had heard the song and made a conscious effort to reproduce it, the case fell through.

That's the point, there needs to be proof beyond considerable doubt that the artist has consciously tried to rip-off the original song. A difficult thing to do, as there are only so many combinations of chords, and there are a few popular chord progressions. Take a look at this video:

It doesn't have to conscious, if it's close enough to the original. Like the Bittersweet Symphoy case, where the Verve guy claimed he had composed it, but the string arrangement was exactly like in The Stones' song The Last Time. They had to give a piece of the royalties to Mick and Keith.

In Australia Men At Work had to pay royalties to a guy who'd composed a childrens tune "Kookaburra", when the court found two bars (!) that were similar.

Ice

I hear little to no similarities between the two songs.
Now Put the Boy Back in Cowboy is Fat Bottom Girls for sure

Agreed. And are you referring to Runaway Train and Saturday Night? It's all over the demo for Sat Night, not so much the album version.

While I think that both songs have their own identity, I can see where they were coming from with Saturday Night (especially on the demo).

The interesting thing is that I just watched the videos for both songs back to back and I think it's quite obvious that they tried to somehow "capture" Soul Asylum's video since the colour scheme, the editing, the shots and many of the angles are really, really similiar:

This is such an old thread, hah.

I never went as far as comparing the videos. Looking back, I don't know if it was intentional or just those types of videos were pretty fashionable in the mid 90s.

I didn't do it on purpose either. 2 years ago, when this thread started, I got heavily into Runaway Train and must've watched the videos of it a million times since I was interested in finding out the stories behind the missing children pictures and their outcome.
I had not watched the video clip of Saturday Night for years and years and yesterday came across it on Youtube. It seemed too familiar, so I went back and watched them one after another

Arrrr man first that "I'll be there for you" story and now "Someday ill be Saturday night" is a rip off! FFS

This blew my mind...srs

It's not a rip off. You're talking about a chord progression that has been used in hundreds of thousands of songs. The only reason bon jovis is similar is because of the arrangement. The acoustic guitar with electric lead. The melodies are totally different.
And technically even the chord progression is different.

RT is C Eminor A minor G
iBSN is D F#minor G A
And I don't mean the different keys.
RT is 1-3minor-6minor-5
IBSN is 1-3minor-4-5

Similar but different
It's the 1-3minor you're hearing.

But the thing is .. there are only 11 chords. 22 if you include minors, but there's not that many chords.
The combinations are not endless.

There are thousands of songs that have the RT and IBSN chord progressions.
Hell Ive written a dozen songs with each.

Plagiarism, i believe has to be 70% of the original song used.
They just have similar chords and arrangements but the melodies are totally different.
That's why bon jovi wouldn't win plagiarism on heaven on earth.
The chorus chord progression is the same, but the melodies are totally different and the entire rest of heaven on earth is totally different.
And kind of awesome btw.
Chordwise, Heaven on Earth is really creative and punky. You'd think the Gogos wrote it.
But it's super pop arrangement hides it.

Honestly, when a song becomes a hit, every label has their songwriters take the chord progression and write new melodies to it and that's the next 5 years of singles for every artist.

Truly.

Like in the 50s every song was
C Aminor F (or Dminor) G
1-6minor-4 (or 2minor) 5
In the 90s & 2000s, ESPECIALLY IN COUNTRY, every song was
C-G-Aminor-F
1-5-6minor-4
(This is the chord progression in that video someone else posted where they sing 101 different songs while playing the same 4 chords over n over
I myself have a dozen of those songs, too.

In fact, my claim to fame as a musical artist is that I have a song with a chord progression I have NEVER EVER heard in popular music of any kind.
And I wrote an additional 5 songs using it and variations of it and no I won't tell you what it is until I get the hit.

I'd I don't it will be lost forever until some other artist finds it

But to give you an example
Seeing the RT chord progression, this song of mine is the exact same progression. In a different key, but it's totally different. I wasn't aware they were the same till just now.
But I could name 100 hits that use it.

I will admit, hearing them back to back, RT and IBSN do sound too similar.
It could have been intentional but it really could be a coincidence.
Either way it's fine because that's a famous chord progression that's been used a million times. It wasn't original when RT came out.
It wasn't original when I wrote this.

https://youtu.be/PV8hkRwL6TU



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