Let's Examine the Evidence

You be the judge of the latest lawsuit which alleges Coldplay's hit "Viva La Vida" is a rip off of Joe Satriani's "If I Could Fly". I'm obviously not an expert on this sort of thing, but while there are similarities it is not just a complete rip off of Joe's song. Songs with this few of chords can sometimes sound a lot like other songs. Hello...do you not remember Bowie's "Under Pressure" and Vanilla Ice's or was it Rip Van Winkle's (both funny names) "Ice Ice Baby". Admit it, you liked that song. Anyway, I don't think anything ever came of the lawsuit filed by Bowie and those two songs were definitely similar at the beginning. If you researched it you would probably find many songs written through time that sound like other songs, etc.






EDIT AFTER FURTHER RESEARCH:


This is not the first time Coldplay has been accussed of using another band's song to create Viva La Vida. This song obviously has some similar tendencies of a lot of other 3 to 4 chord songs with a similar chord progression. I bet it is very common. Great minds think alike I say. Difference in this case is that Coldplay is making million's off of it and Joe is not. Plus how are they going to prove that Coldplay ever heard this song by Joe. Joe is a "has been" and is obviously not played on the radio a lot, much less in London. The fact is, it is possible for one song to sound like another. Here is the other plagiarism claim...gotta love the mustache...reminded me of Mr. Bowker Five from when he was a lady's man.


And yet another song that someone says sounds like Viva. If you don't watch any of the other ones...watch this as it is really funny watching the girls in th video do the robot.